For Republicans, abortion has become their gun-control moment
After Tuesday’s midterm elections, it seems safe to say Republicans are having a gun-control moment. “Moment” if they’re lucky.
Because for decades, Democrats were battered for their willingness to vote for gun regulations, and it looks for all the world as if Republicans are about to go down the same road on abortion. In fact, it can be said that abortion is the new gun control.
Hated in some quarters as it might have been, the NRA shaped American politics up and down the ballot like no other organization of its time.
Politicians of both parties feared a dreaded F on the all-powerful NRA report card, which for a serious chunk of the electorate was the only piece of campaign literature that mattered.
Many a pragmatic liberal voted against gun regulations simply as a cost of doing business, because to vote their conscience was a ticket back to the role of private citizen.
As recently as 2012, 70 Democratic congressional candidates received a grade A from the NRA. A decade later, as the ranks of hunters declined and active shooters increased, there were none. Even Republicans don’t seem to care as much anymore — a quarter of the candidates in 2022 were pegged by the NRA as having “indifference if not outright hostility” to the almighty gun.
As guns faded from the national scene, the single-issue voter had seemed to fade along with it. Fealty or opposition to the personality of Donald Trump is now the litmus test, not any particular platform plank. At least it was until June 24, 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Now, suddenly, the single-issue voter is back, and the consequences of the abortion issue appear as dire for the GOP as guns were for Democrats.
Very few issues, on their own, are emotional enough to cause voters to ignore everything else. Not too many voters will instantly disqualify a candidate based on their position on net neutrality.
But they will on guns, and we don’t appear to need any more proof that, now, the same can be said for abortion.
Single-issue voters are important in multiple ways. While they may not be the majority of the electorate, they are an iron bloc that cannot be swayed, no matter how well their opponent does in a debate and no matter how many times their own candidate might trip over a microphone cord. For all the breathiness of the daily campaign trail leading up to the election, none of it matters to a single-issue voter.
Just as important, incendiary single issues make voters out of nonvoters. Gun control got Bubba off the couch and to the polls, and abortion gets Tiffany out of the dorm room.
Opinion polls are excellent at tracking the way things have always been, but they do not — cannot — anticipate, because all their science is based on elections past.
The best polls typically sample pools of registered voters, or likely voters. None of the politicians or mathematicians saw the pink wave coming, because so many of its number had never had any interest in politics before Dobbs made it personal.
And finally, impassioned, single-issue voters go to the polls. They don’t care how hard it’s raining or how long the line is. Efforts at voter suppression only make them all the more determined.
What does this portend for the future? There’s no need to guess, because we’ve seen this movie before. Twenty years ago, only Democrats in deep blue districts were immune from attacks by the gun lobby. Almost by definition, to be a Democrat was to be a proponent of gun control. Today, Republicans are suffering this same guilt by association; anti-abortion is baked into the Republican brand.
Roe v. Wade gave the GOP cover for half a century; it was easy to pay lip service to pro-life positions, knowing that as long as federal protections were in place, there would be no opportunity to pass restrictive laws on the state level, and no opportunity to risk the ire of women for whom the issue was deeply personal.
In a classically male way of looking at things, Republicans calculated that women might be upset for a few months after Roe was overturned, but the little ladies would calm down in time and things would go back to business as usual. So the party barged right through the open door, passing draconian laws that made criminals out of schoolgirls who had been raped.
Savvy Republicans, including Trump himself, are backpedaling with all their might. But many others, blinded by the perceived righteousness of their cause, believe that pro-choice Americans will one day see the error of their ways and come over to their side.
They can point out that, to a degree, that’s what happened with guns. And all it took was 50 years.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Recent elections show Republicans that Dobbs fallout isn't going away
