Mulvaney: Why Republican candidates for federal office need to stop talking about abortion

Last week’s off-year elections have given rise to some new “conventional wisdom.” Most of which is wrong.  

One example:  that it was a crushing electoral defeat for the GOP in Virginia. It wasn’t. 

The Associated Press gloated that “Virginia Democrats sweep legislative elections….”  In fact, the Republicans lost three seats in the House of Delegates, and actually picked up one seat in the Senate. The margins were extraordinarily tight. A mere handful of votes determined the outcome. Using the AP’s metric, the GOP “swept” the 2022 U.S. House elections.  

Another whopper: that Democrats had a stunningly powerful performance in Kentucky, and nearly pulled an unthinkable upset in Mississippi. No, they really didn’t.  

Incumbent Gov. Andy Beshear (D) is popular in the Bluegrass State, and popular incumbent governors are always difficult to beat. His margin of victory was about three points better than in 2019, but that was just slightly more than the third-party vote in that race. There was no meaningful third-party this year.  

As for Mississippi, the upset-that-wasn’t had Gov. Tate Reeves (R) winning by almost exactly the same margin as he did four years ago.  

There is one accurate takeaway from Election Day 2023, however — and most especially the referendum result in Ohio enshrining (some, limited) abortion rights. Republicans need to stop talking about abortion. Yet even this takeaway does not imply what many giddy Democrats and some skittish Republicans are suggesting.   

Some people who support abortion as a right think that the GOP is just wrong about the issue on its merits, and that Republicans are now paying the price at the polls. Others — pro-life people — think that the GOP is just wrong on its messaging: that it hasn’t found the “sweet spot” for limits on abortion (12 weeks? 15 weeks? Zero weeks?) in a post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization world. 

Both of those groups are wrong. So are many politicians. At the GOP debate in Miami the night after the elections, the leading challengers for the nomination haven’t grasped what the Roe v. Wade battle was all about, either.   

The effort to overturn Roe — and the win in Dobbs — was never about whether abortion should be legal. Abortion was legal in some states before Roe, and it was illegal in others at the same time. The problem with Roe was always that it made abortion a federal issue — and indeed created a federal right — where none had existed before. To make matters worse, it did so via judicial fiat, not legislative action. 

Did Roe lead to an immoral result? Did it directly contribute the untimely death of millions of children? Yes, it did. But that isn’t why Dobbs set it aside. While the morality, and the emotion tied to the moral outrage, fueled (and still fuels) the pro-life movement, the battle against Roe was always only part of the war — the legal fight, not the moral one. 

And recognizing that should be instructive for Republicans running for office nationwide. It may give them both a morally defensible, legally correct, and politically palatable way to answer the “abortion question.”  

“I am running for federal office, and abortion is not a federal issue,” they should say. “I care very much about the right to life, which is why in my current or prior office, I took certain actions. But no president or federal senator or representative determines abortion policy. I’m running for federal office to deal with things like federal spending and the debt, health care, infrastructure, the environment, and national defense. I am firmly pro-life, and I think I have proven that by my actions up to now. But as president, I will promise to veto any federal legislation touching in any way on abortion. Abortion is none of the federal government’s business.” 

This argument, by the way, has the added virtue of being intellectually sound in anticipation of the next time Democrats inevitably control all the levers of power in Washington. 

Pro-lifers won on Roe. They need to start acting like it. Yes, there are many, many more battles to be fought on the issue. Fifty, to be precise. Republicans need to start doing that, and not trying to figure out how to convince people that the federal government didn’t have a place in the debate when it wanted to permit abortion, but does when it wants to ban abortion.

The bottom line is this: abortion remains one of the most important moral issues of our time. But Republicans should stop talking about abortion when they are running for federal office, because abortion is not a federal issue. Republicans who care deeply about protecting human life should focus their attention on running for, and winning, offices in their state capitals. 

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and acting White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.