Posted on 11/09/2022 4:49:35 PM PST by Morgana
Mehmet Oz’s failure to capture a Pennsylvania Senate seat is due, in part, to his refusal to position on abortion in a “mature, deliberative, and principled manner,” a major pro-life leader said on Wednesday.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser applauded those candidates who aggressively defined their own stances on abortion, explained their opponents’ extreme stances, and then exploited the contrast between the two.
“Works every time,” she said.
“Candidates who conversely adopt the ostrich strategy, which is putting their head in the sand and hoping the reality goes away, or the possum strategy, which is to pretend dead and hope nobody notices your body is lying there, they lose,” Dannenfelser added. “And I think that our candidate in Pennsylvania is an example.”
The United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade during the election cycle of candidates like Oz—who lost because he “hoped that the issue would go away” rather than facing it head on, according to Dannenfelser.
Dannenfelser said that Oz, who conceded the race Wednesday morning, took political advice from leadership in Washington, D.C., which reportedly urged Oz and fellow candidates to pretend the abortion issue did not exist and avoid the topic as much as possible.
“There should not be involvement from the federal government in how states decide their abortion decisions,” Oz said in late October, when asked whether there should be a federal ban on abortion. “As a physician, I’ve been in the room when there’s some difficult conversations happening. I don’t want the federal government involved with that, at all.”
Oz repeatedly stuck with this doctor reference throughout the election cycle, questioned by conservative and liberal media alike on his abortion record (his past comments indicated that he supported abortions, though he insisted that he was pro-life).
But he didn’t go much further than that.
“Define who you are, define who they are, exploit that contrast, it works every time,” Dannenfelser insisted. “But instead they engaged in what is really political malpractice and that is to advise the ostrich or the possum strategy or all sorts of other analogies which lead to a dysfunctional political environment, one in which those contrasts can’t be made. And the positive contrast can’t be leveraged into marginal wins at polls.”
Dannenfelser presented examples of candidates who positioned “very effectively,” including Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis in Florida, J.D. Vance in Ohio, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Greg Abbott in Texas, Brian Kemp in Georgia, Mike DeWine in Ohio, Kevin Stitt in Oklahoma, and Kristi Noem in South Dakota.
“We win when we take a position that is popular and clear and confident, and we contrast that position with our opponents,” Dannenfelser explained. “And in this environment, that is a contrast that wins because our popular position over and over contrasts well with 100% abortion up until the end, paid for by taxpayers.”
“Those are very important highlights because they have been so high profile and there’ll be a lot of analysis of why they landed where they have,” she added. “Brian Kemp signed the heartbeat law, won by 8%. Mike DeWine signed a heartbeat law, won by 26%. Greg Abbott signed the same, which was a trigger law complete with protections, and won by nearly 12%. Ron DeSantis signed a pain capable law at 15 weeks and won by nearly 20%.”
“This basic political rule works,” she insisted: “find your position, contrast with your opponent, and make sure that gets communicated over and over again.”
He was a terrible candidate all around. A Hollyweird carpetbagger who presented himself as the ultimate mushy-middle candidate. Zero fire in the belly. Conservatives in PA didn’t come out for him and I can’t really blame them. He was a nose-holder at best.
Mastriano was consistently pro-life, and list by a wider margin than Oz.
I disagree. An analysis of voters in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh area) said voters went overwhelming for Fetterman and that their most important issue was abortion rights. That was one of the major themes of Democrat ads against both Oz and Mastriano.
Not being pro-life is just ONE thing.
He lives in Bergen Co., NJ. Pennsylvania people prefer their pols to be from PA. They’re funny that way.
He joined the Turkish Army instead of the USA Army.
He’s Muslim.
Endorsing Oz was one of PDJT’s biggest blunders.
He should have said simply that he would respect and abide by the ruling of the SC in Dobbs. Then tear into the lying democrats who were telling gullible women that the republicans were going to ban abortion completely nation wide. You can thank a-hole Graham for giving the rats that issue as a free gift. But yeah Oz made a bad rookie error on abortion.
And we wonder why we lose.
See number 10.
Oz lost barely and he had no help from the governor’s race like everybody else did. Banning abortion my number one issue Mastriano lost by 14. Oz would have won with a different gov candidate who could raise money and who wanted to campaign.
And John Fetterman is? Fool-headed reason.
All Dr Oz had to do was say, as a doctor, he can do no harm. Abortion is a violation of his principles.
This is a state that was once represented in the U.S. Senate by ardent pro-lifer Bob Casey Sr. and radical pro-abortion zealot Arlen Specter at the same time. Interestingly, political affiliations meant nothing to the voters on this issue back then — because Casey was a Democrat and Specter was a Republican.
He lost because Republicans spent more time making fun of his sroke than talking about Fettermans absolutely horrible policies.
He lost because there are 500,000 more registered Dems...and they didn’t switch over.
Did they? Fetterman could always play the outsider card against Oz. And if you look across the country, the most striking feature is the incredible loyalty in the blue states to the Democrats, whatever was actually going on in the country. Looking back, it doesn’t seem like Oz could have won.
He lost because he was the wrong choice.
On this one Trump chose BADLY; I stated as much since day 1.
Oz wasn’t the best candidate.... but no one will convince me that anyone in Pa actually voted for Lurch. Now I don’t mean that in an absolute sense because there are a lot of stupid people out there.... but to vote for person who never worked a day in his life, was demonstrably brain damaged and as stupid as a lamp post in a country where 3/4 of the population think the country is on totally the wrong track? That election fraud went on is obvious.... the fraud likely goes across the board and is part of all races, but I suspect that it is much higher in specific races where the DemRats think they can get away with it because of some contrived justification for why the R candidate might have got less votes and there is no candidate track record as a candidate that can act as a baseline i.e. in this case, by simply saying that Oz was a bad candidate and because voters didn’t like the candidate’s position on abortion.
Yep!
McCormick got in the race and brought a ton of dark money with him, so reasonable normal person candidates like Jeff Bartos were at a severe disadvantage donor-wise.
Then there was Kathy Barnette, but her appeal was narrow, being entirely about banning abortion.
In another year, where there was no Roe overturn, we probably would have ended up with McCormick thanks to the money advantage. He disqualified himself, though, by embracing no-exception abortion bans.
Oz could have done it, flawed a candidate as he was, but his campaign was bad. I think Oz was the only one who could have been viable, but, he ran a bad campaign. Trump did not have a better choice, of the choices he had.
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