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 completely uninspiring candidate all around - most were probably only voting against Fetterman. Oz gained ground after Fetterman’s extremism started being highlighted, not because they found Oz to be in a more favorable light.
Oz allowed Fetterman’s campaign to define Oz and introduce him to voters after the primary. The damage was done over the summer and the race was lost over the summer. Oz sat around and just let it happen, and people already had formed full opinions on Oz by the time he even started to campaign.
I think the carpetbagger, elitist, rich man imagery did as much damage as his wishy washy stance on abortion.
Just my outsider opinion.
Lazy cheap excuses.
Trump should have stayed out of it.
So the anti-abortionists were so simple-minded that they allowed a man to get elected who is 100% pro-abortion because they refused to support his opponent because he was only 90% anti-abortion?
I don’t understand why people want someone running for national office to declare themselves on the abortion issue.
The Supremes have sent the matter back to the States, and it’s for the State Legislatures to decide now.
The issue has been political suicide for some, as SauronOfMordor noted in this post:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4107492/posts?page=222#222
I realize, Morgana, that this is probably your most important issue; but sometimes you need to be strategic and set the stage for possible future accomplishment.
Democrats do. It motivates a lot of their base.
Some people are very passionately against allowing women access to abortion. Some people are very passionate on the other side. Many (perhaps most) are not very passionate either way, having other issues (crime, economy, etc) as higher in their priorities.
What we have seen this election is, for every person who is passionate against abortion, there are MORE who are passionate the other way. Not necessarily wanting third trimester abortions, but wanting at least first trimester.
You can rail against me all you want, but I am in category 3. If I had a candidate who was solidly free market, willing to expel illegal aliens, and be effective against crime, then he would have my vote without regard to his abortion position.
I think the GOP would have lost anyway because of the abortion issue. McCormick was for a no exceptions ban, so the returns would have probably looked more like the Mastriano race.
Trump took the Court out of the mainstream as POTUS, but now he is a private citizen. The problem isn’t Trump so much as that the GOP seems to have been co-opted once again (last time was Libertarians, this time its Catholics), so we get to play that game again. The Libertarians got the deregulation they wanted, which resulted in the crash that nearly took out the world’s financial market. It looks like this time the game is to relegate women to second class citizenry as the opening gambit. The other thing I know is that the church is a huge fan of open borders and of compliant politicians that the priests can threaten with damnation if they don’t get their way, so we’ll see if all of that happens or not. It’s early days.
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