With the midterm elections roughly six months away, Democrats insist that the likely demise of the Roe v. Wade precedent will be a dominant issue this cycle. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters this week that he and his partisan allies will stress reproductive rights “relentlessly“ while making their pitch to voters.
To which Republicans are effectively responding, “Nah.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told NPR yesterday that he doesn’t expect the issue to matter much at all as voters head to the polls in the fall, at least as far as congressional campaigns are concerned. “My guess is in terms of the impact on federal races, I think it’s probably going to be a wash,” the Kentucky Republican said.
A day earlier, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said something similar, telling The Wall Street Journal, “I just don’t think this is going to be the big political issue everybody thinks it is, because it’s not going to be that big a change.” (In reality, it would be an enormous change.)
Also this week, Sen. Ted Cruz pushed a related line. “Angry leftists, many of whom are pretty ignorant and don’t even know what overturning Roe means, I think a month afterwards are gonna be surprised — ‘Wait, nothing about my life changed,’” the Texas Republican said.
It’s possible that some of these prominent GOP voices genuinely believe that the demise of Roe will be largely irrelevant. It’s also possible that this rhetoric represents a profound example of wishful thinking.
Either way, telling voters reproductive rights won’t matter in the elections is one thing; voters’ actual attitudes are another. Consider the latest national poll from Monmouth University.








