The point of a campaign isn’t to win an academic argument about abortion; it’s to get elected.
Some fellow pro-lifers I respect and have worked with over the years are very upset by Mike Rogers’s direct-to-camera saying that he respects the will of Michigan voters and will treat abortion as a state issue should he go to the Senate. The frustration is understandable, with Rogers repeating some liberal tropes about how hard it is to decide whether to have an abortion, but the online anger at Rogers also fundamentally misconceives the current abysmal politics of abortion and the actual stakes of the race.
To begin with, what was Rogers responding to? His opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, used leaked audio wherein Rogers touted his perfect pro-life record in the House to claim that a vote for Rogers is a vote for a national abortion ban. “National abortion bans” are unpopular generally and likely so especially in Michigan, which — by recent constitutional referendum — legalized abortion entirely with no gestational limits or waiting periods. They also aren’t happening. Leaving aside the fact that Republicans can’t get 60 votes in the Senate even to debate criminalizing live-birth infanticide, a lot of staunch conservative senators with sophisticated legal views sincerely believe it’s a state issue and wouldn’t want to touch it. A “national abortion ban” would be lucky to get 30 votes.
But this isn’t about what will actually happen. It’s about El-Sayed’s mendacious effort to scare women into not voting for Rogers by claiming that he will use the federal government to repeal the state law they just passed. If Rogers is explaining how the cloture process works, he’s losing. “That will never happen” is also likely to fall on deaf ears given that Roe v. Wade was not going away any time soon until it did.
That El-Sayed dropped this just before the election suggests that the conventional wisdom about him may be right: His support is soft among suburbanites and Jewish Democrats. Indeed, Representative Haley Stevens, who represents peak-suburban, formerly Republican, significantly Jewish Oakland County, just endorsed Rogers to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
El-Sayed’s publication of this audio is an obvious play. If you’re bleeding support in places like Oakland, scaring those voters into thinking that Rogers is coming for their abortions is smart. After all, the abortion referendum won in Oakland by nearly 30 points. Maybe if they see this ad they, at minimum, won’t be able to bring themselves to vote for Rogers even if that means they just undervote the Senate line on their ballot.
What to do if you’re Rogers? These are voters you need. There’s a common misconception that elections are about persuading people to agree with you. They’re not; they’re about persuading people to vote for you. The dynamics of campaigns are not conducive to winning an academic argument about whether abortion is good or bad — especially so when there’s 72 hours to go. And, regardless, the point of a campaign isn’t to win an academic argument about abortion; it’s to get elected.
For Rogers this means he needs to put the issue behind him as quickly as possible so the good burghers of Oakland County go back to focusing on his opponent’s twin commitments to socialized medicine and Hasan Piker. Rogers needs them to vote for him despite his abortion views. His ad is designed to do exactly that. His wife is with him. He validates their concerns. And he says he’ll respect their overwhelming vote to legalize abortion in 2022. It’s exactly the ad to cut if the goal is to deflect this effort at encouraged undervoting by pro-choice suburbanites.
“No way,” you may reply. “That’s loser talk. He needs to take the offensive and show how extreme Abdul El-Sayed and the Democrats are on abortion. Don’t fight on their terms.” This is not an uncommon view among pro-lifers, but it’s very uncommon among candidates for a very simple reason: It doesn’t work. Again, with 72 hours to go, Rogers isn’t going to change Oakland County’s mind on which party they agree with when it comes to abortion. Furthermore, Michigan’s abortion laws, recently enacted in what was supposed to be the Republican wave election of 2022, are themselves quite extreme. Pointing out that Democrats in Minnesota, Virginia, and Massachusetts are more extreme still is angels dancing on the heads of pins.
The dynamic exists well beyond purple Michigan. There are Republicans fighting tough races in the reddest of states this cycle. You can look pretty hard and not find pro-life ads from Darline Graham, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Roger Marshall, Ken Paxton, or any other red-state Republican. “Well the consultant class is pro-choice,” you might retort. Perhaps. You know who isn’t? Pro-Life Caucus chair Hyde-Smith. If she thought the issue were a winner, she’d be using it. The fact is that post-Dobbs polling warned that the electoral bottom has fallen out of the pro-life movement among Republican women in red states. It’s a complicated problem with a lot of blame to go around, but it’s the current political reality and candidates need to accept reality.
So what are pro-lifers to do? Many are throwing fits about Rogers online (unclear how many of those live in Michigan, of course). But Mike Rogers’s immediate job is not to use rhetoric that pro-lifers find appealing. Nor is it to engage in the pro-wrestling kayfabe that is federal pro-life legislation. It’s to get elected in a state that overwhelmingly legalized all abortion four years ago. The job of pro-lifers is to evaluate soberly the job he would do as a senator given his record and campaign rhetoric.
In the coming Congress there will be two pro-life issues of consequence: preserving the Hyde amendment and confirming judges. There is no reason to believe that Rogers will be anything but a consistent supporter of Hyde, as he was in the House. It’s not at all inconsistent with what he said recently. There’s also no reason to think he will be anything but a reliable vote in favor of conservative judges. Further down the line one can expect Democrats to push federal abortion protections if they win the White House in 2028 — and one can expect Rogers to oppose that as being contrary to abortion as a state issue. In other words, he’ll be a pro-life legislator where it matters.
At the end of the day, with Justice Alito at age 76 and Justice Thomas at age 80, Rogers’s vote on judges will be critically important. Indeed, whether or not Dobbs stays the law of the land very likely depends on whether or not there are 50 Republicans in the Senate over the next six years. Those two seats on the Supreme Court — not messaging bills or campaign rhetoric — are the actual stakes of the Michigan race for pro-lifers.