GOP got its way on abortion at SCOTUS, now Republicans have to contain an Arizona ruling that blew up in their faces
From Donald Trump on down through the GOP, there’s a scramble to explain away the recent Arizona Supreme Court decision that makes it illegal to have any abortion at any time during gestation except when a pregnancy threatens the life of the mother.
Most amazing to me is the way Trump blurted out that the governor of Arizona, a Democrat, will make things right. Said Trump yesterday, “it’ll be straightened out, and I’m sure that the governor and everybody else are going to bring it back into reason and that’ll be taken care of, I think, very quickly.”
This reaction is essentially a concession to the fact that it will take a Democrat to “straighten out” the mess that Trump created by packing the U.S. Supreme Court with a majority (including Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh, seen above in a public domain photo posted on wikimedia commons) that tossed out Roe v. Wade. Trump continues to take bows for the way that decision came about and claims that his intent was to return the decision on abortions back to the states.
Already documented for his many politically convenient changes of heart on abortion, Trump now is attempting to turn lemons into lemonade by embracing the Arizona decision and making it look as if it’s exactly what he wanted. I doubt that anybody’s actually buying it. The aftermath of this decision is bad news for the GOP.
There’s no explaining away the unintended consequence of Trump’s “back to the states” attitude in Arizona. The fact that the elimination of Roe v. Wade was its catalyst is why I think there’s a problem brewing for Trump and the GOP in November.
Turning abortion law back to the states is a costly political blunder. Even in solidly red states there is a strongly pro-choice undercurrent that doesn’t adhere to traditional political lines. South Dakota is a good case in point. A 2008 ballot measure that would have banned abortions failed by a 55-to-44 margin, mimicking the results of a similar ballot measure two years earlier. This occurred even as GOP registrations in 2008 were about 20% higher than Dem registrations.
Clearly, party registration numbers are no predictor of how a vote on abortion will go.
More recently, the general conclusion about last November’s elections, when Democrats made an excellent showing, is that abortion rights were the key to Democratic wins, even in red states like Ohio and Kentucky.
As this appears to be a winning issue for Democrats, the problem will get worse for Republicans if abortion rights make the ballots in the eight states (including South Dakota) where petitions are circulating to make that happen. Three states (Florida, New York and Maryland) have already put measures on their coming ballots.
Indeed, the issue is so compellingly strong for Democrats that Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez has said that the abortion rights measure on its ballot makes Florida a winnable state.
Based on that, an observation supported by recent voting results, I don’t get where Donald Trump thinks turning the abortion question over to states is supposed to do him and his party that much good.
All the Arizona decision did was ignite another surge of pro-choice activism that cannot, in any way I imagine, be good for the GOP. Arizona went for Biden in 2020, and that was without the abortion issue becoming the force that it now is.
Apparently unaware of the magnitude of the pro-choice tide that has gathered energy since the Roe v. Wade takedown, Gov. Kristi Noem said of Trump’s statement that “it is exactly right.” She seems to be about as politically tin-eared on the issue as scores of other Republicans who don’t seem to get what’s happening.
Trump, Noem and other Republicans who think the Arizona situation favorably underscores the importance of turning the abortion issue over to the states are getting it wrong. They don’t seem to be paying much attention to what has already happened at the polls. Even tougher for them, they don’t seem to think there will be a recurrence in November.
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam. Reprint with permission.
