National Review’s editorial evaluating Donald Trump’s positioning statement on abortion concedes that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs did, in fact, contribute to some of the Republican Party’s electoral disappointments in the 2022 midterms. And yet, it’s empirically demonstrable that the former president’s “various manias” correspond more directly to the GOP’s losses, if only because so many of the candidates who lost competitive races share them. If the party suffers similar defeats in 2024, the editorial concludes, “we can be sure he will blame it on pro-lifers.” In the immediate aftermath of his abortion comments, the former president set himself to the task of proving that proposition correct.
Even in announcing his new position on abortion, Trump made no effort to present the maneuver as anything other than a cynical political calculation. “Don’t be distracted,” he admonished his fellow Republicans. “We’ve had a Great Victory.” Now, having sloughed off the dead weight pro-life maximalists affixed to the GOP’s ankles, the party can enjoy “the Greatest Victory of all, the Presidential Election of 2024.” But it wasn’t until the president threw himself with rare vigor into the work of savaging Senator Lindsey Graham for the sin of gently criticizing the president’s accommodationist approach that Trump really read the stage directions aloud.
Comments