After Todd Akin last year and Trent Franks this week, abortion is about the last topic many national Republicans want the political conversation to focus on.
Yet social conservatives in town this week for the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference say the GOP would be making a grave mistake to ignore the hot-button culture war issue. To the contrary, they believe it’s key to the party’s fortunes in the 2014 midterms and beyond.
In the wake of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell’s murder convictions, they are prodding GOP leaders to play offense at the national and state level.
“This is a time for the pro-life movement like we have not had in decades,” said former Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), who works for the Susan B. Anthony List, which focuses on electing anti-abortion women to Congress. “We must seize the moment.”
The Republican National Committee’s 100-page “autopsy” report in March, packed with recommendations for how the party can recover after its 2012 losses, did not make reference to abortion. “When it comes to social issues,” it stated, “the Party must in fact and deed be inclusive and welcoming. If we are not, we will limit our ability to attract young people and others, including many women, who agree with us on some but not all issues.”
Still, some GOP politicians are responding to the call of social conservatives to take a more aggressive stand on abortion — even as Democrats sound the alarm about a Republican “a war on women” and after Mitt Romney lost by double digits among female voters.
Next week the House will debate a bill that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks, even though the measure could never clear the Senate or receive the support of President Barack Obama.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely presidential candidate, is poised to sign a law requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before being allowed to go through with abortions. Ohio’s Republican legislature passed a budget last week aimed at making abortions more difficult.
And the Virginia GOP last month nominated E.W. Jackson, who has compared Planned Parenthood to the Klu Klux Klan, for lieutenant governor.
With the economy improving and turnout lower in midterm elections, evangelicals in town for the three-day faith conference warned that the party must give them reasons to mobilize in 2014.
“If they want to just run on economic issues, you’re not going to get the church people,” said Bob West of Tallahassee, Fla., wearing a yellow tie with the words “Choose Life” on it. “That’s the bottom line.”
West said he knows social conservatives who stayed home last November because they did not believe Romney was one of them. He warned that incumbents like Florida Gov. Rick Scott need to demonstrate their pro-life bona fides to shore up support.
Gary Bauer, the 2000 presidential candidate, grumbled that the Republican political class sees abortion as a controversial issue but thinks nothing of holding the line against tax increases for billionaires.
“They’ve got it upside down,” Bauer said. “The social issues we believe in are more popular than the Republican economic agenda.”
Rep. Franks, the Arizona Republican who said at a committee hearing that the incidence of late-term abortions resulting from rape is “very low,” rallied Thursday night at the Capitol with activists in town for the conference. He emailed a fundraising solicitation that said he will never back off being “100 percent unapologetically pro-life.”
Franks authored the bill to be taken up Tuesday that would ban abortions after 20 weeks. On Friday, an exception was added for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. And Franks will not, as had been planned, manage the bill when it goes to the floor.
The likely 2016 candidates who spoke to the conference for evangelicals touted their pro-life bona fides in speech after speech. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for instance, said he introduced an act that would say life begins at conception. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) promised the House will continue looking into reports the Internal Revenue Service targeted pro-life groups.
The rank-and-file believe the steadfastness of the party’s opposition to abortion is a reflection of its character.
“If they back away from that, they’ll never win another election,” said Regina Brown, the national prayer coordinator for the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “Our numbers are in the church.”
Brown, 58, became a full-time activist after her mortgage brokerage business dried up in 2009. The Tampa resident was one of several hundred people who took buses to the Capitol Thursday afternoon to lobby their representatives. She and a group that included home-schooled students sat with J.R. Sanchez, Marco Rubio’s director of outreach, for about half-an-hour.
The friendly session covered immigration, the IRS and gay marriage. A young man from the Miami area urged Rubio’s office to push for more anti-abortion votes in the Senate. After they prayed together and as the visitors filed out, Sanchez encouraged them to stay engaged.
“You all understand where Marco comes from – his policies on life and traditional marriage,” he said. “It’s good to know we’ve got our evangelical friends watching our backs.”
Several activists said they want congressional hearings featuring those who testified in the Gosnell trial, along with former clinic workers and abortion survivors.
“It will not happen with namby-pamby conservative politicians who are convinced that the only way to win an election is to sit on top of that really high gray fence,” said Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union. “If you’re going to run for office, especially for House or Senate, don’t bother running if you’re going to leave your backbone in your state.”
The pervasive belief among speakers and attendees at the conference is that not talking about social issues hurts more than the occasional gaffes that get such intense media attention.
“The problem connecting with young people was not social issues,” said radio host Michael Medved. “It was economic issues.”
The CEO of Concerned Women for America, Penny Nance, touted success at the local level. She said 24 states passed 92 laws restricting abortion in 2011, and 19 laws passed in 2012. Four states now have just one abortion clinic.
“The politicians are often bullied into silence and afraid to speak on this,” she said. “Actually on the issue of abortion, we are winning … We are advancing.”
Mike Huckabee took heat last summer for urging religious leaders to stand behind Akin after the national party abandoned him when he said that pregnancies after “legitimate” rapes are rare. But Huckabee is unapologetic about abortion being a litmus test.
“For me, that’s non-negotiable,” the former Arkansas governor said. “I know that I’m not going to vote for somebody that doesn’t have respect for the sanctity of every single human life.”
Dick Morris, the controversial political consultant, warned at the conference that single women are turned off “massively” by the GOP’s position on abortion. But then he reassured his audience that the problem is “emphasis,” not policy.
“There is an answer to it, and it does not involve changing our position on abortion one iota,” he said. “What we need to say to the single white women in America is, ‘We want to repeal Roe vs. Wade but we know in 40 years it has not been overturned and with Obama appointing the judges it’s not likely to be. So we want to lead a coalition to reduce the number of abortions in the United States.’”
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