The Best Reason I’ve Heard Why Roe v Wade Will Kill The GOP In November

Waddaya done for me lately, baby?   Hollywood axiom

Full Disclosure  Those of you who read me regularly, and thank you for that, will recognize the reason for GOP voter depression in November, mainly because I immediately wrote about it in the follow up of the SCOTUS hatchet job on Roe v Wade. But Susan Del Percio put it so much better.

It was on a weekend MSNBC show, I want to say it was Yasmin Vossoughian, and she was talking about how the SCOTUS decision had changed the dynamics of the 2022 midterms. Yasmin’s question to former GOP strategist and Lincoln Project co-founder Susan Del Percio went something like this;

Since the Supreme Court decision, the Democrats have grabbed the abortion issue with both hands and run with it. They’re running on it in their own races, hammering their opponents in the GOP with it, out fundraising the GOP, and Democratic voter registrations are through the roof, especially with women in key swing states. My question is, is it possible that the Democrats could overplay their hand, and GOP candidates could point to Democratic enthusiasm as a way to whip up their own base to come out and vote?

Not a bad question. But Del Percio smiled sweetly, shook her head, and said No, and here’s why. The GOP spent 50 years using Roe v Wade to motivate their single issue voters out to the polls, but that enthusiasm didn’t alarm Democrats, because they had abortion rights, and thought they always would. Now Roe is overturned, abortion bans are popping up all over the place. If you’re in the GOP, how do you motivate voters to come out and vote for something they already have?

Thank you Susan! I said exactly the same thing way back then, but not with quite the same clarity. As I said to Teri, If the Nevada state Democratic party came to me and said, “Look dude, vote for Sisolak and Cortez Masto, and if they win, we’ll give you a brand new Xbox 1, That should be tempting. Problem is, I already have a nice new shiny Xbox 1-X, which I play all the time. Where’s my motivation? How many X-Boxes do I need?

Only the problem is even worse for the GOP this year, because at least an XBOX 1 is sexy. But if you’re a GOP incumbent, you’re stuck telling your base, Look, we got Roe v Wade overturned for you. But if you don’t all show up en masse and vote GOP in November, and the Democrats hold the House, and add a couple of seats to the Senate, the first thing the Democrats will do is to codify Roe v Wade! 

I’m sorry, did you say codify? What the hell is that?! The average voter has no idea of what codify means. And to the average Republican voter, it probably means fish-and chips, you know, cod-fry? GOP voters are the simple clay of the earth, they don’t want to have to think, they just want people and issues to hate! That’s how they roll.

Look at it this way. If the abortion issue didn’t fire up the Democrats for 50 bloody years, just because they had abortion and thought it would never go away, how does the GOP manage to motivate base voters to come out to the polls for an ephemeral concept like codifying a new law that takes it all away. The Democrats didn’t believe it, and neither will the GOP voters.