The Hill: GOP’s successful pushback on Dems’ lies on women’s healthcare
Democrats lie about Republican candidates’ common-sense positions on abortion & IVF.
Over and over, fact checkers and debate moderators are calling them out.
In case you missed it…
Republicans Ramp Up Defensive Strategy On Abortion After Midterm Struggles
The Hill
Emily Brooks
October 22, 2024
https://thehill.com/homenews/4945841-gop-messaging-abortion/
Republicans are kicking their defensive messaging on abortion into high gear, aiming to blunt Democrats’ attempts to paint them as extreme in the run-up to the election.
In debates, GOP congressional candidates are taking a more aggressive approach when talking about the issue, accusing Democrats of misrepresenting their position. Republican campaigns are successfully pitching fact-checks to local media that pick apart the claims of Democratic campaigns, and candidates are going on air with ads to directly articulate their stances on abortion.
In an unusually graphic example of that aggressiveness on Monday, Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) took advantage of a Zoom debate format to push back on his Democratic challenger, John Avalon — much to the dismay of the moderators. As Avalon referenced LaLota’s stated opposition to second and third trimester abortion, LaLota held up a printed piece of paper that said: “I OPPOSE A NATIONAL ABORTION BAN.”
The tactics mark a shift from the last election cycle in 2022, when many Republicans — caught off-guard by the Supreme Court overturning the federal right to abortion that year — largely aimed to pivot their message to other issues like the economy and immigration that ranked as higher concerns in polls.
The GOP underperformed expectations, and the abortion issue was widely credited with breaking an anticipated “red wave.”
Democrats are again heavily campaigning on abortion access this year, with candidates in battleground seats across the country going on offense against the GOP on the issue.
But this year, Republican strategists advised candidates to articulate their position on abortion early — and to use those articulated positions to combat Democratic messaging.
CBS News Colorado, for instance, fact-checked an ad from Rep. Yadira Caraveo’s (D-Colo.) campaign that aimed to link her Republican challenger, Gabe Evans, to hard-line conservative Republicans such as Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colo.).
“He only cares about that Boebert stuff,” a man identified as an unaffiliated voter says in the ad, like “banning abortion.”
Democrats have pointed to a questionnaire Evans filled out in 2022 in which he ticked a box saying he supported prohibiting abortion except when necessary to save the life of the mother. But the CBS News Colorado political correspondent said that statement was misleading, pointing to the issues page on Evans’s website with a lengthy statement on abortion in which he said, “I will not vote for a national abortion ban.”
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But the fact-check, which the Evans campaign pitched to local media, demonstrates how Republicans are seeing some success in being more aggressive. Similar fact-checks have popped up in other close races across the country as Republicans, rather than pivoting to other issues, put the focus on pushing back on Democrats.
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the campaign arm for House Republicans, conducted a major research project last year with focus groups and battleground polling to understand how abortion was affecting campaigns.
Its conclusion for candidates in competitive districts was clear: “You should speak out about what your position is, because Democrats will brand you with a false position if you don’t,” an NRCC official told The Hill.
The pushback has also been evidenced by Republicans getting more aggressive in articulating their positions on the debate stage in several races.
During a debate in Rep. Juan Ciscomani’s (R-Ariz.) race, Democratic challenger Kirsten Engel dinged his vote in the House Appropriations Committee in favor of a bill that would prohibit mail delivery of pills used for abortions. The bill never got a vote on the House floor amid intraparty disputes in the GOP.
“Taking that away really hurts our women in our rural areas,” Engel said, going on to ding Ciscomani for serving on the board of an organization linked to supporting life at conception.
Ciscomani pushed back, accusing Engel of misrepresenting his position and “completely grasping for straws,” reiterating that he does not support a federal abortion ban, supports exceptions and supports in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Nebraska state Sen. Tony Vargas, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), brought up that bill in a debate between the candidates — saying it had “no carve-outs” for IVF or “if a 10-year-old was raped.”
Bacon co-sponsored the bill previously but did not co-sponsor the most recent version introduced in 2023. And in the debate, he pushed back on Vargas.
“You need to read the bill. It doesn’t talk about abortion at all,” Bacon said in the debate, adding he has articulated support for abortion exceptions elsewhere.
The bill is also a factor in an Iowa race. The campaign for Democrat Christina Bohannan, who is challenging Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), ran one ad in which a woman claimed that Meeks would “ban all abortions nationwide, no exceptions.”
One local fact-check on the ad from WQUAD found the overall ad to be false. It did mention Miller-Meeks’s previous support for the Life at Conception Act in 2021 — which she did not support in 2023. But it also said “her voting record also reflects support for exceptions for rape and incest.”
Read the full piece here.