Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars on ads focused on Republican support for abortion bans, and it paid off with Election Day victories in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia. That continued a string of Republican election struggles since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022.
Frustrated GOP presidential hopefuls are trying to reverse that trend, and newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy laid the blame at the feet in of RNC chair Ronna McDaniel during the recent debate.
"We've become a party of losers. At the end of the day, it's a cancer in the Republican establishment. I speak the truth. Since Ronna McDaniel took over as chairwoman of the RNC in 2017, we have lost 2018, 2020, 2022, no red wave, it never came. We got trounced last night in 2023, and I think that we have to have accountability in our party," Ramaswamy said.
That same night in Miami five Republican candidates offered five different opinions on the extent to which abortion should be limited and whether power should rest with federal or state governments.
Democrats have made their strategy clear. McDaniel says Republicans need to man up behind one of the party platform planks and meet the challenge.
“We shouldn't be silent," McDaniel said on Washington Watch Wednesday. "Listen, we're proud to be a party that stands for the unborn, and I think coming out of Roe after 50 years of silence, and people not having to navigate this issue, it's really important that we define ourselves before the Democrats do. Let's talk about pregnancy crisis centers. Let's talk about getting rid of cumbersome regulation to adoption but let's also put the Democrats on the defense."
McDaniel insists the Democrat position on abortion is so extreme that it won’t hold up if Republicans will take a strong pro-life position.
“They stand for late-term abortion. They stand for gender-selection abortion. Can't we even say to them, ‘Won't you agree that when a baby feels pain, when a baby can physically feel its life being taken away, that is a bridge too far?’ And they won't meet us even there. They are the extreme on this issue, and when you say that to the voters, we win,” she told show host Tony Perkins.
Democrats have a huge money advantage with Big Tech, Planned Parenthood, Hollywood and other outside groups, McDaniel said. Democrats’ pro-abortion messaging outspent Republicans by nine times in the Virginia election, she said.
There’s a narrative that Republican candidates should shy away from the abortion issue and that’s wrong, McDaniel says.
“If you get out and define yourself first, and you say to the, the public, ‘This is where I stand. This is who I am. Let me tell you about where I stand on this issue, and let me tell you where my Democrat opponent is,’ we will win," she predicted. “But you've got to put money behind it. You can't say it behind a paywall or on a phone call, right?"
That campaign money must be used to "define yourself" before Democrats can do it in their own deceptive TV ads, McDaniel said, because an unanswered lie in politics, she said, "becomes the truth."
