Former President Donald Trump wants Republicans to learn the art of the deal on abortion.
In what has become a standard part of his campaign stump speech, Trump takes credit for building the conservative Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade but urges Republicans to their new power to restrict abortion wisely.
WHO IS FANI WILLIS, THE GEORGIA PROSECUTOR FACING THE BIGGEST CASE OF HER LIFE
“And I have to tell you, the pro-lifers now have tremendous power to negotiate, which they didn’t have before the ruling,” Trump said of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization at the South Carolina GOP fundraising dinner earlier this month. “They have to understand how to talk about it. Because Republicans, you’re going to have to learn how to talk about it.”
Trump made similar comments at the Alabama state GOP dinner this month, where he was introduced by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who is holding up military promotions to protest the Pentagon’s abortion travel reimbursement policy.
“I have to tell you from a conservative and Republican standpoint, you have to learn how to talk about pro-life, you have to learn how to talk about that decision,” Trump said. “Because you don’t know how to talk about it.”
“Pro-lifers have a tremendous power now with that termination [of Roe] to negotiate. They had none,” he continued. “They didn’t have any before that ruling. They had no power whatsoever, [people] could kill babies at any time they wanted, including after what we would call birth. They could kill babies. Now [pro-lifers] have tremendous power.”
“But on pro-life, I will tell you what I did on Roe v. Wade, nobody else, for 50 years they’ve been trying to do it. I got it done,” Trump said in an interview in May. “And now we’re in a position to make a really great deal, and a deal that people want.”
“We’re in a position now — and I’m going to be leading the charge — we’re in the position now where we can get something that the whole country can agree with, and that’s only because I got us out of the Roe v. Wade where the pro-life people had absolutely nothing to say,” he said.
Abortion opponents tend to see the issue more as a matter of principle in legally protecting fetal life rather than Trumpian deal-making. An abortion policy the whole country can agree with seems like an elusive goal, more difficult than ending the Russian war in Ukraine in 24 hours.
But Republicans are struggling on abortion in swing districts and even on what ought to be more favorable terrain, like Ohio and Kansas. Democrats used abortion policy to get back in the game during the midterm elections, and President Joe Biden plans to do the same next year.
Democrats, Trump said in South Carolina, “have energized this issue and the Republicans are going to have to learn how to fight it.”
Trump’s suggestion is twofold: nudge Republicans away from their hard-line branding on the issue by allowing abortion in some of the hard cases while forcing Democrats to defend the least popular aspects of their position.
“Like President Ronald Reagan before me, I support the three exceptions, for rape, incest, and the life of the mother,” Trump said in Alabama. “In terms of running, you have to go with your heart; you have to go with what you want. But to me, the three exceptions are very important. I think to a large portion of people on this issue are very important.”
“Remember, the Democrats are the radicals on this issue. We’re not the radicals on this issue,” he continued. “The Democrats are the radicals because they’re willing to kill babies in their fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth and ninth month and even after birth.”
Trump brought up former Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. “Remember the governor of Virginia, that wack job who thought he was Michael Jackson?” Northam spoke in 2019 on the radio station WTOP during a dispute over late-term abortion in the state, saying, “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
“The Democrats are the extremists on this issue,” Trump said in South Carolina. “And if you think about it, what we have been able to do, bring it back to the states,” has increased elected officials’ capacity to regulate abortion — if politicians who wish to do so can prevail at the ballot box.
This is not the position of the biggest anti-abortion groups. Trump’s past support for legal abortion may not give him the credibility to persuade them despite his role in Roe’s reversal and his policies as president. He is testing his leverage with social conservatives a few short years after winning them over.
In 2016, Trump sometimes outmaneuvered his GOP primary foes because his political instincts came from outside the conservative movement. At the same time, he generally showed good judgment about which factions of the party he could not afford to alienate, social conservatives and gun owners chief among them. It remains to be seen whether he can maintain that balance in 2024.
But Trump’s earlier abortion stance, adopted when he was considering a run for the 2000 Reform Party presidential nomination against Pat Buchanan, was similar to that of some swing voters on the issue.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“I’m very pro-choice,” Trump told Meet the Press in 1999. “I hate the concept of abortion. … But still, I just believe in choice.”
That may be the type of voters Republicans will have to deal with on abortion.
