Tweet Share Share Comment After years of hearing Republican candidates recite virtually the same talking points about abortion on the campaign trail and at debates, something strange happened on Wednesday night: Nikki Haley said something different.
“And what I’ll tell you is, as much as I’m pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me for being pro-life,” she said, following up a more standard abortion-as-evil answer from Ron DeSantis. “So when we’re looking at this, there are some states that are going more on the pro-life side. I welcome that. There’s some states that are going more on the pro-choice side. I wish that wasn’t the case, but the people decided.”
Then, she concluded her answer with a firm dismissal of her party’s long-held official stance. “Let’s focus on how to save as many babies as we can, and support as many moms as we can, and stop the judgment,” she said. “We don’t need to divide America over this issue anymore.”
The message was clear: The party needs to give this up for good. And that message seemed sensible after the GOP’s dismally poor performance in Tuesday’s general election, blamed largely on abortion-related campaigns, notably in Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia. On Fox News Tuesday night, Sean Hannity even called for the party to back down from more extreme abortion bills and erase any reminders of earlier extreme efforts.
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But Hannity’s suggestions merely meant to adjust the details of the anti-abortion fight. Haley, expressing something akin to weariness, insisted the party end its fighting stance altogether. “This is a personal issue for every woman and every man,” she said.
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Read More And Haley wanted the whole conservative audience to understand that they had been misled into thinking abortion could be a winning issue. “But when it comes to the federal law, which is what’s being debated here, be honest—It’s going to take 60 Senate votes, a majority of the House, and a president to sign it,” she said. “We might have 45 pro-life senators. So no Republican president can ban abortions any more than a Democrat president can ban these state laws.”
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In so many other portions of the debate, the GOP candidates made promises that they knew they could not realistically keep. That’s just part of any presidential debate. But Haley’s emphasis on the feasibility of a federal abortion ban may have been intended as a message to those who, like her, had begun to worry about the damage abortion was inflicting on their party.
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When challenged by Tim Scott over whether she would support a 15-week federal ban, Haley refused to get bogged down by the specifics of the debate. “I will sign anything that we can get 60 Senate votes on,” she said. “But don’t make the American people think that you’re going to push something on them, when we don’t even have the votes in the Senate. It’s important that we’re honest about that.”
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The tactic echoed the pragmatic case that Haley made against nominating Donald Trump in the first debate—that he cannot win another general election—one that saw her poll numbers rise even after she criticized her party’s most popular figure. It’s possible this kind of leveling with the voters about what’s realistic, whatever her motivation, is part of why she’s outperformed Trump and DeSantis in a couple of recent head-to-head polls against Joe Biden.
We don’t know why, exactly, Haley felt it was important to “be honest” on this topic. But it seems that she was the only candidate on stage Wednesday night willing to buck the long-held preferences of her party’s base in hopes of steering Republicans away from even greater disaster.
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- Nikki Haley
- 2024 Campaign
Only One GOP Candidate Seemed to Learn Something From Tuesday’s Elections
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09.11.2023
Tweet Share Share Comment After years of hearing Republican candidates recite virtually the same talking points about abortion on the campaign trail and at debates, something strange happened on Wednesday night: Nikki Haley said something different.
“And what I’ll tell you is, as much as I’m pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me for being pro-life,” she said, following up a more standard abortion-as-evil answer from Ron DeSantis. “So when we’re looking at this, there are some states that are going more on the pro-life side. I welcome that. There’s some states that are going more on the pro-choice side. I wish that wasn’t the case, but the people decided.”
Then, she concluded her answer with a firm dismissal of her party’s long-held official stance. “Let’s focus on how to save as many babies as we can, and support as many moms as we can, and stop the judgment,” she said. “We don’t need to divide America over this issue anymore.”
The message was clear: The party needs to give this up for good. And that message seemed sensible after the GOP’s dismally........
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