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--:-- Host: Last summer, Republicans witnessed a monumental ruling many pro-life Americans doubted they would see in their lifetimes, the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Now the GOP is entering its first presidential primary since significant restrictions on abortion became a legal possibility. And candidates are trying to navigate an issue that could make or break their chances not only to become the party's nominee, but also win the general election.
--:-- Host: In this episode of Morning Wire, Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham examines how the fall of Roe is impacting the Republican presidential race and how candidates and presumed candidates are handling the pitfalls and potential of a new day in abortion politics.
--:-- Host: Thanks for waking up with us. It's May 14th, and this is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire. So Megan, we're starting to see candidates and those we expect to be candidates talking about abortion. But before we get into the specifics of how different campaigns are handling the issue, what are the broad differences between this primary season and those of the past now that Roe is gone?
--:-- Megan Basham: I think the obvious difference is this will be the first one where the fight over abortion isn't a fight over Supreme Court justices. Now it's a fight over policy and what can and should be done at a federal level. Americans have a lot of conflicting and inconsistent views about that. So it can make it difficult for campaigns to settle on a clear strategy.
--:-- Megan Basham: A recent Marist poll, for instance, shows that almost 60 percent of Americans say they opposed the court's ruling over turning Roe. And about the same number say they support access to abortion. So that sounds pretty bad for Republicans who are, you know, almost universally pro-life, right?
--:-- Megan Basham: Except here's where the inconsistent part comes in. That same poll showed that about two-thirds of voters want abortion limited to the first trimester, which is 12 weeks. And right now, the only number that Republicans have floated at a national level actually puts the cutoff later than that, at 15 weeks.
--:-- Megan Basham: And, of course, support for limiting abortion to the first trimester gets much stronger when you zero in on Republicans. Then it's at something like 90 percent. And many Republican voters want much less than that, though it can be a little tough to tease those numbers out.
--:-- Megan Basham: What we do know is that any Republican candidate is going to have to be clearly pro-life to get the nomination. The question is where they draw the lines and what strategy they advocate.
--:-- Michael Brendan Doherty: Unlike in past presidential elections, every candidate is going to have to offer detailed policies on abortion. It's not going to be good enough just to say they're pro-life. Every Republican is going to be asked about it because the media will be leaning against them and trying to get them to commit to what they view as unpopular positions.
--:-- Michael Brendan Doherty: So unlike the last 40 years, you really have to have an answer on it. You know, what regulation you favor in the states and what regulations you might favor at a federal level.
--:-- Megan Basham: But there has to be some concern given the Republicans' disappointing results in the most recent midterms. A lot of pundits put the blame for that poor performance squarely on the overturning of Roe and then some of the abortion bans that immediately went into effect right after that in red states.
--:-- Megan Basham: Yeah, they did. And you saw that same argument after the Wisconsin Supreme Court race a couple of months ago. A lot of prognosticators viewed it as a bellwether for this issue heading into the presidential primaries.
--:-- Megan Basham: In fact, HBO talk show host Bill Maher touched on that recently. The people of Wisconsin, as the people all over America, do not want this draconian abortion system put into place. So she was the person who was pro-choice and she won. And this is sort of an alarm bell for the Republican Party.
--:-- Megan Basham: But I spoke to several leaders within the pro-life movement, and they point to other factors that made the midterms less successful for the GOP than they were hoping. The quality of some of the candidates, for example. And they stress that governors in a number of states who took strong pro-life positions actually won their races handily.
--:-- Megan Basham: In particular, they point to Brian Kemp in Georgia, Ron DeSantis in Florida, and Greg Abbott in Texas.
--:-- Megan Basham: I asked Roger Severino, who is the vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, about that claim that a strong pro-life position will cost the Republican nominee in the general election.
--:-- Roger Severino: Well, he thinks that's short-sighted and doesn't take into account the unpopularity of that abortion up-to-birth position that a lot of Democrats have staked out.
--:-- Roger Severino: What we saw with the other side after Dobbs is anger. The left mobilized out of anger, and that was their high watermark. Yet they still lost in the last election.
--:-- Roger Severino: Let's think about this. They lost a pro-abortion, pro-choice House of Representatives, and it flipped to pro-life. They gave it their best shot, motivated by their rage, and came up short.
--:-- Roger Severino: It doesn't get better for the pro-abortion left. So the politicians that think that, well, it could have been better, etc., look at the big picture. Those candidates that actually embraced life and spoke about it eloquently and passionately tended to win.
--:-- Roger Severino: And you had governors that stood for life and passed heartbeat bills and won handily in their states. And then you had senator candidates like Oz who ran away from the issue and got trounced.
--:-- Roger Severino: Severino also said that he doesn't think that a 15-week ban is going to cut it. Republican voters are going to want to see their candidates offer something better than that.
--:-- Roger Severino: We didn't fight for 50 years in the pro-life movement to nearly be to the left of France. And if we're talking pain-capable, that's around 5% of abortions. And again, that's to the left of France.
--:-- Roger Severino: Nobody would consider France and Europe to be pro-life. So we want to save as many lives as possible. And how do we get that at the federal baseline should be heartbeat or better.
--:-- Roger Severino: And heartbeat, you have, of course, the incredible focus right on the humanity of the child. It's undeniable when the child's heart is beating. It is a human being, and you would have to snuff it out with abortion, and that life deserves protection.
--:-- Megan Basham: Okay, but here's where we get into the question of strategy, because Severino said the candidates need to have a platform that addresses the issue at a federal level, but already the frontrunner, President Trump, has seemed to shy away from that.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right. When the Washington Post asked his campaign about it a couple of weeks ago, a Trump spokesman put out a statement saying Trump believes the issue, quote, should be decided at a state level.
--:-- Megan Basham: And the Post reported that he's privately telling his staff to avoid the issue if they can. Well, that received immediate backlash from pro-life leaders.
--:-- Megan Basham: The president of the Susan B. Anthony list called it a morally indefensible position. And Lila Rose, the founder of Live Action, tweeted that Trump had, again, quoting, disqualified himself from the nomination.
--:-- Megan Basham: So you have to say very strong words there. Dougherty thinks that Trump stepped on a bit of a landmine here and risks alienating the pro voting bloc who turned out for him in big numbers in both 2016 and 2020.
--:-- Michael Brendan Doherty: He may be seeking moderate Republican voters in blue states who will matter to him in a Republican primary. The way the Republican primary is set up is that states like New York and Florida matter very much.
--:-- Megan Basham: So I don't know if it's a stumble based on his strategy, but I do know that pro-life activists in Iowa and New Hampshire can turn their back on him and do him significant damage in those early state primaries.
--:-- Megan Basham: It's a huge gamble with his electoral fortunes because evangelical and religious right voters who accepted his promise the first time any Republican candidate has ever promised to appoint judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade.
--:-- Megan Basham: I mean, every other candidate before him promised, I'll put up constitutionalist judges or some other euphemism. But he made a much more explicit promise that Roe would fall. And then it did.
--:-- Megan Basham: And now he seems to be backing away from it. Sean Carney, founder and president of 40 Days for Life, shared that disappointment of his fellow pro-life leaders and Trump's framing this as a state-level issue.
--:-- Sean Carney: But he also told me he thinks the optics of using that particular language in relation to what many see as the defining moral question of our time is a little tone deaf.
--:-- Sean Carney: States rights is not a good historical reference that politicians should be talking about. OK, no one should look at a camera that these are states rights. Well, I thought this was about slavery. No, it's states rights. Oh, I thought this was about abortion. No, it's states rights.
--:-- Sean Carney: I mean, we've either dehumanized an entire segment of our population with Judd Scott and Roe v. Wade or we haven't. And we have. And the Supreme Court corrected their first error and Judd Scott. And recently they corrected their second error with Roe v. Wade.
--:-- Sean Carney: They overturned Roe v. Wade and sent it back to the people of the states to decide through their elected officials. But to say that it's a states' rights issue is such a loser of a phrase with a horrific historical reference.
--:-- Megan Basham: Former Vice President Mike Pence, who many do think is going to get into this race, seemed to seize on that weakness. And he was quick to differentiate himself from his former boss.
--:-- Mike Pence: I don't agree with the former president. And he said this on CNN just a couple of days ago. Would you support a six-week ban nationwide? Well, of course. Look, I'm pro-life. I don't apologize for it.
--:-- Mike Pence: I believe that we've got to do everything in our power to restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law. And I'd support federal legislation in that regard if I was in the Congress or had any other job here in town.
--:-- Megan Basham: So clearly carving out a different lane there. Okay, well, speaking of six-week abortion bans, let's move on to the man who's currently in second place in the primary polls, even though he hasn't yet declared his candidacy, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
--:-- Megan Basham: He too has been pretty quiet about this issue, but he did recently sign a six-week abortion bill. He did, and he has critics saying that being too pro-life is going to cost him.
--:-- Megan Basham: So this was Nancy Mace, Republican Congresswoman from South Carolina, talking to CBS about DeSantis' decision to sign that bill.
--:-- Nancy Mace: It puts them in a very difficult position for a general election, in my opinion, which is why I have been so vocal on this issue. I would like us to win. I would not only like us to win the electoral college, I want us to win the popular vote.
--:-- Megan Basham: Doherty believes DeSantis understood the risk he was running, but that some on Team Trump are already using it to paint him as a less viable candidate.
--:-- Michael Brendan Doherty: Basically, they're saying that he won't be able to beat Biden in the Rust Belt because of it. And it created an unexpected dynamic where we starting to see DeSantis running somewhat to the right of Trump where people initially thought he would present himself as the more moderate option.
--:-- Megan Basham: Ron DeSantis very knowingly knew what he was doing when he signed a six-week ban, with exceptions, in Florida. He would get attention if he really didn't want to sign the bill. It never would have come to his desk.
--:-- Megan Basham: And currently, it looks like Donald Trump's team across social media views DeSantis' position as a weakness and a mistake. But if we can broaden out a bit here, it appears that another competitor DeSantis is going to face if and when he gets in the race.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, this person thinks that the governor did the right thing, though this candidate also seems to agree with Trump on the question of where the issue should be decided. And that's businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
--:-- Vivek Ramaswamy: If life ends, right, when do brainwaves end? That's how we determine when life ends on the back end. I think we should apply a consistent principle on the front end. That's around the six week mark that brainwaves do begin.
--:-- Vivek Ramaswamy: So I think that's the right way to think about the issue at the state level. But on constitutional grounds, I've been very clear, This issue belongs to the states.
--:-- Megan Basham: Severino says whether it's Trump or Ramaswamy, that's just not going to be a tenable position for any Republican candidate, as they are going to be pressed on what they mean by state issue.
--:-- Roger Severino: When it comes to the federal elections and the primaries, the debate should be on a yes, there is a federal role. Right. Or is any politician going to say that partial birth abortion ban is unconstitutional when Congress passed that years ago? Really? Is any Republican going to say that there's no federal role in banning partial birth abortion? I can't imagine any saying that.
--:-- Roger Severino: And then second is, would any Republican candidate say, if there's a pro-life bill that comes across my desk that protects unborn life, I will veto it? I would be shocked if any of them said that because the policy implications would be so grave for them to say something like that.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, with the couple of minutes we have left, how about the two other declared candidates? Right now, that's former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.
--:-- Megan Basham: What do they say? Well, Hutchinson said he would sign a federal ban, but it would need to include exceptions for rape and incest.
--:-- Megan Basham: Meanwhile, Haley just gave what her campaign billed as a major abortion policy speech at a Susan B. Anthony event a couple of weeks ago.
--:-- Megan Basham: She said she does believe that there's a federal role on regulating abortion, but she didn't specify what that role would be. And according to Politico, she also didn't answer when SBA staffers asked her whether she would support Lindsey Graham's 15-week ban.
--:-- Roger Severino: The issue is not going to be avoidable politically. We had 50 years of fighting to undo Roe v. Wade. We've achieved that tremendous victory. And that just opened up the debate.
--:-- Roger Severino: And by ignoring it, that's the worst possible strategy to take, because that means the left is going to define your position. And we saw that when the left tries to define those that are pro-life and they do it with misrepresentations, that could move votes.
--:-- Roger Severino: And the only way to counter that is with the truth and being fully engaged and not trying to duck the issue.
--:-- Megan Basham: So a few more months until the primary season gets into full swing and they'll all need to be ready with some more specific answers, I think, by then.
--:-- Megan Basham: While we are going to continue covering those answers, Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime. That was Daily Wire culture reporter, Megan Basham.
--:-- Host: And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
