Bush's Brain seemed pretty desperate to pretend that the Supreme Court overturning Roe V. Wade wasn't going to have much impact on the midterm elections during a panel segment on this weekend's Fox News Sunday. Host Chris Wallace noted that the issue of abortion has been more mobilizing for the right, but that may very well change if the Supreme Court overturns Roe, and asked Rove what the political impact might be.
Rove cited the recent governor's race in Virginia and a Texas governor's race in 2014, and used both to claim that we don't know what the impact will be, but his fellow Fox contributor Jennifer Griffin rightly noted that this decision, which is likely to come in June, just months prior to the midterms, will absolutely have an impact with all of the states that have abortion bans on the books that will immediately be enacted if Roe is overturned:
GRIFFIN: I think there is one very important number that I saw. 21 states have abortion bans on the books. If Roe was overturned or weakened, those bans, abortion bans, will affect 65 million women and three of those states are states, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, that were decided by single digits in 2016 at 2020.
I think this is the one issue that could motivate the Democratic base and I think that it actually will be a shot of adrenaline for the Democratic Party going into midterms.
Wallace asked Griffin how this might impact swing voters, such as suburban women, and as Griffin told Wallace, 60 percent of them are pro-choice, so it may indeed be a motivating factor for them as well.
Rove responded by trying to conflate support for abortion restrictions with support for a total ban on abortion, and pushed the old canard that Democrats are out there advocating for completely unrestricted abortions right up until the moment a child is born, and even Chris Wallace had to correct him and remind him that this is not what we're talking about here.
WALLACE: I completely agree with you with that, but that's not what we're talking about here. Because what we're talking about is the possibility that the Supreme Court might say there is no protection, constitutional protection for women—it's a it's a state-by-state issue—at all, that there's no constitutional right at any point.
After Rove again lamely attempted to pretend this will only hurt people on a state level, and not the national level, and again conflate support for late term abortions with a total ban on abortion, Griffin again corrected him saying it's a shot of adrenaline for the Democrats, and there will be talk of expanding the court.
And, as Kathryn Brightbill reminded everyone on Twitter, this isn't the end game with these people.
Good luck hoping women never wake up to the reality of what's been done to them.
