On today’s edition of The Editors, National Review senior writer Michael Brendan Dougherty highlighted how the Arizona GOP seems to be avoiding stances on a sweeping 1864 law that outlaws abortion in the state.
“This is a big problem for Republicans in that we know that a law like this is profoundly unpopular,” Dougherty said. “We know that the ballot-initiative strategy that pro-choicers have been deploying has been very successful. And they’ve usually been very successful at doing, in a sense, what Roe v. Wade did, which is providing legal abortion in many more circumstances than popular opinion probably would do explicitly, but underneath, you know, a kind of euphemistic slogan or set of rules that people can agree to. . . .”
What “Republicans need,” Dougherty claimed, is “a real alternative. They need to rally behind an alternative and argue for an alternative. . . . And they need to unite around it as a party and talk about it and why it’s preferable to what Democrats are going to put on the statewide ballot.”
Yet National Review editor in chief Rich Lowry reminded listeners of the difficulties such a proposed alternative would face. In Arizona, even though the GOP controls the house and senate, “They can’t pass this in law. . . . The governor is a Democrat . . . and she’s not going to sign anything.”
“This,” Lowry said, “creates an ideal environment for a cynical Democratic maneuver: ‘Oh, this 1864 law is so horrible. Let’s leave it on the books . . . all the way till November so we can use it as a foil.”
Dougherty agreed, and thought it would be good for the Arizona GOP to be unified on this issue. He also said that “it would put some pressure . . . because if the 1864 law is so hateful to Arizonans now, and the Republican alternative is clearly preferable to them than that, then it would create some political pressure and it would also ease the pain for Republicans running for reelection.”
The Arizona GOP, Dougherty said, currently has “the worst of all worlds where they have no clear position, they’re afraid to talk about it, and they’re running away.”
“They look like cowards.”
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