Unfriendly unpersuasion

And when justice is gone, there's always force

Another referendum, another defeat for anti-abortion advocates. As I anticipated a year ago when the Kansas referendum went the same way, and the Times points out in its summary of other state elections that went that way as well, when conservatives ask voters to help them ban abortion, voters say no.

As I mentioned yesterday, the post-game spin from the Right on the Ohio referendum — in which voters nixed a procedural barrier with which Republicans had tried to block a planned abortion referendum —has been ridiculous. It has also (apart from some full-body sputters from nuts) been pretty muted.

Even for true believers, it’s difficult to miss what the pattern suggests. When you’re making excuses like “it seems that many conservatives did not care or had their own reasons for opposing this procedural change for amendment,” you’re not even fooling yourself, and the smart course is to stay low-key and let it blow over.

Some rightwingers are suggesting the Republicans back off a bit and go for half a loaf rather than continuing to alienate moderate voters with hardcore bans. But most of them know that the evangelicals and misogynists (but I repeat myself) who are a vital piece of the MAGA/GOP coalition will never go for less than total war.

So when they imagine victory, these fantasies cannot involve the support of the voters, nor any effort to enlist it.

In my alicublog post I referred to the telling starkness of a declaration by anti-abortion think-tanker Patrick Brown: “The issue is that… the pro-choice side beats the pro-life side when the issue is heads-up in the ballot box.” This is the plain truth and both sides know it.

They also know that nothing resembling persuasion — in the sense of “consider our position in this moral conflict” rather than “resistance is futile, broodsows” — has worked for them over the past few decades, and it’s even less likely to work on the latest generation of voters.

When was the last time you read or heard an anti-abortion argument that seemed designed to persuade, rather than just to signal to other anti-abortion people? They just don’t do it. They’ve given up.

This suggests two alternatives for the anti-abortion movement: misdirecting the voters, or simply refusing to accept their decision.

The first involves getting politicians who are anti-abortion into office — Brown mentions Mike DeWine and Brian Kemp — and having them enact or execute abortion restrictions and hoping not enough people notice or remember that they will punish them for it. This is shady, but well within the American tradition: as with the civil rights movement, politicians are sometimes ahead of the voters — though the civil rights-minded pols attempted to persuade their voters and, as mentioned, we’re not seeing that from Republicans now.

But outside the reddest of states, something will have to give. DeWine’s Ohio and Kemp’s Georgia still have relatively liberal abortion laws — if they and their Republican colleagues really drive to the basket on this, they’ll have to expect voter pushback.

I would expect, then, some ambitious Republicans to push for something like the Texas and Florida model — that is, if you don’t like what voters demand, just make it illegal.

I’ve mentioned how Greg Abbott and his crew have made a habit of overturning decisions in the blue jurisdictions within their state, and we’ve all seen Ron DeSantis’ similar strongman act in Florida — most recently, replacing yet another elected blue-city prosecutor (a black woman, for the wingnut trifecta), ostensibly because she doesn’t echo his goon-squad approach to criminal justice but mainly because he hopes shit like this will win him some MAGA Presidential votes.

This is the cutting edge of conservative strategy now: If voters use their power to require something you don’t agree with, just take it away from them. For some of the older and more history-conscious Republicans, it probably feels like payback for court-ordered desegregation. For other Republicans, the cruelty to out-groups is enough.

Texas and Florida may be rogue states but I’m telling you: As the abortion issue continues to prove intractable, some Republicans elsewhere will decide it’s time to take it a step further and tell not just the Democrats but also the independents and Republicans who think women have rights that they’re not having it.

Voting and timing fiddles haven’t worked for them so far, but maybe they can step up their voter-obstruction game; and, if an abortion-specific referendum can’t be blocked, maybe its results can be refused. I couldn’t guess what specific mechanism would be employed for this but, though I knew they’d try to overturn the 2020 election, I couldn’t guess the methods they would wind up using, either.  

Sorry to be a bummer! It’s fun to win, but it pays to remember that the other guys are fascists and you have to be prepared for them to act like it.