Mary Margaret Olohan reports that the DeSantis Super PAC is out with new ads hitting Donald Trump for calling Florida’s pro-life heartbeat law, generally limiting elective abortions to the first six weeks of pregnancy, “too harsh.”
The new ad features comments from Iowa governor Kim Reynolds advocating for the heartbeat bill she signed into law (before winning re-election in 2022 by 19 points, outperforming Trump’s 2020 margin by double digits). The ad also features prominent Iowa social conservative Bob Vander Plaats saying that Trump “alienates himself from the pro-life community by saying Ron DeSantis, who signed a heartbeat bill in the State of Florida, that that was too harsh.”
Here's the billboard that will be on the street along the road near Trump events: "Iowa protects children with heartbeats…but Trump says that's 'too harsh.' Why won't Trump stand for life?" pic.twitter.com/lOEC2nGtmn
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) June 1, 2023
Some pundits have expressed skepticism of DeSantis’s playbook of hitting Trump from the right. Isn’t that just the Cruz 2016 strategy all over again?
It’s fair to say that DeSantis needs to make a more comprehensive case against Trump, but this line of attack makes a lot of sense. Cruz won Iowa, after all, and Iowa is probably a must-win if any Trump challenger is actually going to be the 2024 GOP nominee. Republican primary voters support a heartbeat law in their state by an overwhelming margin—68 percent to 27 percent, according to a national Wall Street Journal poll conducted by Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio. Trump’s biggest improvement among GOP primary voters between February 2016 and today is among Republicans who self-identify as “very conservative.” Back in 2016, fewer than 30 percent of “very conservative” Republicans backed Trump, but that number has shot up past 60 percent today:
Fascinating piece from Michael Tesler: "Very conservative" Republicans have gone from Trump's biggest skeptics in 2016 to his biggest supporters in 2024. https://t.co/l3I9lUHdtp pic.twitter.com/0f4eT06Xvm
— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) June 1, 2023
So hitting Trump from the right on abortion, and other issues, makes a lot of sense if DeSantis is going to have any hoping of driving Trump’s level of support back down into the low 40s. Highlighting DeSantis’s signing of Florida’s six-week limit on abortion will likely lead to more handwringing among some GOP donors about the general election, but the actual abortion debate about federal policy is whether there should be a much more modest national limit that would end the barbaric practice of elective late-term abortion.