“President Trump could not have been more clear. These decisions should be left to the states to ‘determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both,’” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.
“Vote or legislation”, “will of the people”: GOOD. Ccourts: BAD.
But hours after Trump's remarks Wednesday [Arizona went “too far], Arizona Republicans blocked a legislative attempt by Democrats to quickly repeal the law. The Republican House speaker said Democrats were trying to rush it.
Legislation: BAD.
Trump, meanwhile, has proudly taken credit for the Supreme Court’s knocking down Roe v. Wade, because he nominated the three conservative justices who made it possible.
Courts: GOOD.
It is at least the third time — the others were in Alabama, where a [court] ruling calling embryos children caused in vitro fertilization to come to a halt, and Florida, where a court is allowing a six-week abortion ban to move forward — that Trump had spoken against local laws or rulings that have emerged since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Alabama Courts: BAD. Florida Courts and legislation: BAD
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna147222
“From a purely political perspective, both the Alabama and Arizona Supreme Court decisions should be considered in-kind donations to Democratic super PACs,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist. “It has thrust the issue, in stark terms, upon the Republican electorate and those running."
Bartlett said that Republicans from Trump on down are trying to “flip-flop, moderate or change into a position that is looking more like the American public” but that it could take more than one election cycle before the party finds its footing.
Democrats go on offense
With Trump’s “leave it to the states” tactic now facing blowback after the Arizona ruling, it is again clear than Republicans continue to lack an effective way to counter messaging from Democrats attacking them on abortion rights.
“This is the first presidential election where abortion will be front and center,” Republican strategist Alex Conant said. “This is just not an issue where Republicans are likely to win.”
…
Christina Amestoy, a spokeswoman for the group Think Big America — Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s nonprofit group working in battlegrounds like Arizona to help support abortion-related ballot measures for the fall — said the timing of Trump’s statement Monday only further linked him to the court decision.
“Just 24 hours after he said it, we got to see exactly what Trump is supporting by leaving it up to the states,” Amestoy said. “Arizona just rolled back the clock on women’s rights 160 years to a time when doctors didn’t even know to wash their hands.”
The timing was exquisite. Trump was crowing about defanging Democrats on the issue. Then 💥. 😂
The challenge for Trump and the party is that, regardless of how Republicans handle their individual contests, another controversial state ruling will inevitably pop up that everyone is asked to then take sides on.
That’s right. Whack-a-mole. Every day another slave state will do slave state things.
In the nearly two years since Roe fell, abortion rights have won every single race in which they have appeared directly on the ballot.
That hot streak has extended to numerous Democrats — in races for the Senate, governor, state Supreme Courts and others — who made their support of abortion rights (and their opponents’ opposition to them) central features of their campaigns.
It also gave way to a growing number of Republicans who encouraged the party’s candidates to talk more about the issue and back something specific. But even in races in which Republicans went on offense with a deliberate policy approach to the issue, they lost — a data point over which Republican strategists still worry and Democratic operatives still salivate.
In Virginia’s November elections, for example, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin persuaded a large slate of Republican candidates in the legislative races to coalesce behind his proposal for a ban on abortion after 15 weeks — which included exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the woman — as part of his effort to gain Republican control of both chambers of the Legislature.
Strategists and politics watchers, sensitive to the party’s broad struggles on abortion, saw the proposal as an important and hopeful test message for Republicans looking for a more nuanced reproductive rights policy and message — one they hoped could appeal to moderates and independents — in the post-Roe era.
But that failed, too. Democrats walked away with control of both chambers — an outcome that further cemented the notion that Republicans cannot win on the issue even if they run on a non-extreme and thoughtful proposal.