Make no mistake. Donald Trump is right that Republicans should be worried about abortion attacks in the 2024 election. His efforts to frame himself as moderate on abortion in the presidential debate, along with the significant reduction of pro-life language in the Republican platform, have made his perspective clear. And Trump’s instincts on how to handle the question in a debate are not terrible. But it can be done better.
And it must.
The uncomfortable fact about the next four months is that abortion attacks on Republicans were already going to be massive. Unprecedented even. But the chaos at the top of the ticket and the worry about losing to Trump is causing a shift to what Democrats see as their best issue.
The Democrat Marketing Machine
Democrat super PACS and abortion groups already had plans to spend $150 million on abortion-themed ads in swing states, with spending by Democratic candidates easily pushing that number over $200 million. But given that the projected spending for the 2024 election is $15.9 billion and massive amounts of that will be allocated for abortion ads, that number is now expected to triple.
On the Republican side, the only big spender on abortion on a national level will be Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, whose spending has grown substantially in elections since 2014. National Right to Life has almost disappeared from election spending in the last two decades, and their state affiliates are almost all insignificant.
Pro-lifers have had great success advocating for legislation for over 40 years, but when it comes to funding, the pro-abortion left consistently outspends pro-lifers on abortion ads and every significant state abortion referendum (in some cases by 10 times the amount).
While we pro-life people have mostly lobbied our friends in legislatures, Democrats have marketed their pro-abortion ideas. Democrats are great at marketing. Us? Not so much.
And marketing thrives on big budgets. Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street donors have offered almost unlimited amounts for abortion propaganda, and they want to see the official Democrat Party spend even more.
But Republicans have remained scared of abortion, and Republican donors have been told abortion is a loser so many times that they simply refuse to consider there might be a way to beat Democrats at this game.
An Effective Pro-Life Message
But there is a way to win with pro-life messages.
I know this because my unique research team and my election operation, Valor America, have conducted the only significant research on this issue over 10 years, and we have used the data we gathered to message effectively.
In 2014, I formed an effort in Texas called the Texas Gubernatorial Project to pursue Hispanic voters using abortion in support of the election of Greg Abbott as governor.
Rather than guessing what might work, we implemented state-of-the-art social science research tests to predetermine which messages were effective with Hispanic voters and which were not. Most of the assumptions of our “expert” consultant friends were wrong. But what we ended up doing, combined with unique research-based targeting, caused what may be the largest movement of Hispanic voters toward Republican voting in U.S. history.
In five weeks of targeted messaging, we saw a movement from 27 percent support to 45 percent support among Hispanic Texans on Election Day 2014, based on Abbott’s internal polling.
In 2016, 2018, and 2020, my new super PAC continued this research along with tests of many America First and MAGA messages. About 50 percent of our tests were on abortion, and we continued to see great success in moving voters, especially rural voters with Latin heritage, toward Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.
What worked in south Texas in McAllen, Del Rio, Laredo, Brownsville, and Corpus Christi in Spanish language messaging (designed with authentic representatives of the voters using a recognizably authentic dialect) would not generally work in Philadelphia with working-class white voters or in Detroit with working-class black men. One-size-fits-all does not work in abortion messaging.
But we have found that there are many things that work across the nation in countless demographic groups.
Fear Doesn’t Work
And there are many other things that never work.
Cowardice, fear, and waffling on the issue are always a problem. Voters always prefer honest boldness over anything that appears to be calculated and manipulative.
Avoiding the issue is the most foolish thing there is when your opponent is loudly attacking. It would be like entering a boxing ring and then asking your opponent not to punch you but to play cards instead.
Being aggressive about the real extremism of Democrats is always smart and effective. No one thinks late-term abortion is OK except Democrat candidates. No matter what abortion question is asked, the answer should include the message that we want to see the abortion of viable babies ended immediately.
One could call out a debate questioner or a Democratic opponent for trying to distract from the issues that voters are more concerned about by bringing up abortion. But it is just as important to hold one’s ground by pointing out how horrific it is that there have been 65 million abortions in America in 50 years, while noting that Democrats never offer any reasonable limits on abortion.
Donald Trump understands that no federal abortion restrictions are even possible with a deadlocked Congress and that pro-life advocates will need to win over people state by state.
He also understands that Democrats will hammer us by spending twice as much on abortion attacks in 2024 as pro-life groups spend on responses.
More than almost any Republican understands — but my team has studied and knows — Democrats also have significant data about what to say and to whom to say it. Their attacks on us are skillful, tested, and often effective.
Punching Back and Winning
There is a lot in 2024 that voters are more upset about than abortion, so the Democrats might have a diminishing returns problem, but that will depend in large part on how boldly our candidates respond to these attacks. If we cower under the table, shaking and crying and begging the Democrats to talk about something else, their punches will not only connect, they will do damage.
But if we punch back with integrity and confidence, calling out Democrats both for their extremism and their attempt to scare voters with issues that are not actually possible for Congress to pass without 60 Senate votes, the Democrats will not succeed.
Newt Gingrich once told me that when opponents tried to talk about Republicans supporting total bans on abortion, he would respond that the Democrats “seemed to support abortion up through high school graduation.”
Rand Paul famously refused to answer a question about his position on abortion by essentially telling the reporter that he would answer once the reporter went and asked the head of the DNC why she supported aborting seven-pound babies.
In 2014 in Texas, the media tried to get Greg Abbott to specify his position on early abortion, but I witnessed him invariably answer that “the real question is why my opponent supports no restrictions on abortion even in the third trimester of viable babies.”
The left knows how to ask emotional questions, and they try to get us to talk about our weaker positions. We should make them talk about their own extremism.
2024 is a good year for Republicans, but anyone who watched close to $120 million worth of very well-designed pro-abortion ads in Michigan and Ohio in 2022 and 2023 (and how anemic the efforts to fight back were) knows that Democrats are ready to do anything to steer the focus back to their version of abortion messaging.
They can and they will, but smart and principled Republican candidates owe it to voters — as well as the unborn children they wish to protect — to be artful, clear, and convincing in defense of this issue.
Donald Trump is right when he says you cannot fix anything if you do not win.
So let’s really work — every serious pro-life Republican candidate — on perfecting a confident, clear, and convincing response on this issue for September and October 2024.
