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What They’re Saying: GOP Senate Candidates “Are Learning The Perils Of Political Take-Backs”

News coverage is highlighting how “Republican hopefuls are learning the perils of political take-backs” as they get caught “trying to disappear the hardline anti-abortion stances they took during their primaries” – a clumsy move that has “emboldened Democrats to mount an aggressive offense.”

See for yourself:

Washington Post: Republicans in key races scrap online references to Trump, abortion
Attempts by GOP candidates in competitive contests to pivot away from these issues have emboldened Democrats to mount an aggressive offense
By Colby Itkowitz
August 30, 2022

  • The campaign of Blake Masters, Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Arizona, has removed from his campaign website references to strict antiabortion positions he once championed, along with references to false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
  • The attempts by Republicans in competitive contests to pivot away from abortion and Trump have emboldened Democrats to mount an aggressive offense on those issues.
  • National Democrats have been quick to try to capitalize on these apparent attempts by Republicans to suppress their less popular stances. David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement: “Republican Senate candidates won’t be able to run away from their records. The truth is they’ve made their positions clear, and in many cases we have them on video tape.”
  • The campaign of Masters, who is running against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in a race seen as central to the fight for the Senate majority, has scrubbed hard-line abortion positions from his campaign website, including his support for a federal “personhood law.”
  • During the primary, he suggested support for a much stricter ban in public comments.

Axios: The Big Scrub
By Alexi McCammond and Andrew Solender
August 31, 2022

  • Republican candidates around the country are trying to disappear the hardline anti-abortion stances they took during their primaries.
  • This year’s messaging gymnastics are next-level.
  • Blake Masters, the GOP Senate nominee in Arizona, removed language that said, “I am 100% pro-life,” per NBC News.
  • What they’re saying: “We’ll make sure voters see and hear what Republicans have said in their own words — and if they try to hide from their record it will only reinforce that they cannot be trusted,” said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson Nora Keefe.

ABC News: First-time GOP candidates learn walk-back lessons: The Note
By Rick Klein, Averi Harper, and Paulina Tam
August 31, 2022

  • Whether related or not to the recent debate in GOP circles around so-called “candidate quality,” a striking number of new-to-politics Republican hopefuls are learning the perils of political take-backs and walk-backs in the run-up to Labor Day.
  • In Arizona, Senate nominee Blake Masters was caught yet again — this time by reporters at CNN — removing controversial language from his website.
  • Among the disappeared policy statements were a declaration that he is “100% pro life,” an assertion that Democrats “want to import a new electorate” via immigration and that “if we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today,” ABC News’ Libby Cathey reports.
  • In Pennsylvania… Oz himself suggested that aides speaking on behalf of his campaign were not necessarily speaking for him.

Vice News: Republicans Have Realized That Forcing People to Give Birth Is Wildly Unpopular
By Paul Blest
August 30, 2022

  • Republican candidates, many of whom began their runs for office this year trying to out-extreme each other on their anti-abortion views, are very quickly discovering that those positions aren’t palatable to the overwhelming majority of their constituents.
  • Blake Masters, the Peter Thiel-backed Arizona Senate candidate… published an overhaul of his website that removed a reference to him being “100 percent pro-life,” according to NBC News.
  • Polls since the Dobbs decision in June have consistently shown that a majority of Americans oppose the ruling, and an AP poll last month found a majority would also support a federal law guaranteeing abortion access.

Salon: What abortion ban? GOP candidates abruptly ditch long-held positions in post-Roe scramble
By Areeba Shah
August 31, 2022

  • Not long ago, Masters was on record as favoring a federal personhood law “that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.” He has previously called Roe v. Wade a “horrible decision” and referred to abortion as “genocide.”
  • Masters’ campaign website has also been altered. Previous language about being “100 percent pro-life” has been scrubbed from the site, according to reporting by NBC News.
  • In Nevada, where polling suggests that abortion rights is one of the top factors driving voters to polls, GOP Senate nominee Adam Laxalt — in a neck-and-neck race against Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic incumbent — has also dialed back his well-known views… Despite referring to Roe v. Wade as a “joke” and saying it was “sad” that Nevada is not an anti-abortion state. 

The 19th News: Republican midterm candidates are trying to rewrite their history on abortion. Here’s what that means.
By Shefali Luthra
August 30, 2022

  • Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, who is trailing incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in recent polling, removed language from his website indicating support for a “federal personhood law” that would treat abortion as murder.
  • The shifting campaign language reflects a broader problem for Republicans in close contests, said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute. Total abortion bans are incredibly unpopular. Polling data analyzed by the institute found that, even in states enforcing near-total abortion bans, the majority of people oppose prohibiting all abortions.
  • “Fetal personhood” laws — which Masters previously endorsed — could be used to charge a pregnant person who seeks an abortion with murder. Laws protecting life “from conception” would not only ban abortions, but could also threaten access to medical care for people with ectopic pregnancies as well as those who miscarry, since miscarriages are treated with the same pills as are used for medication abortions.  Both forms of legislation could make the future of in vitro fertilization uncertain.

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