What They’re Saying: Masters Is Trying To “Etch A Sketch” His Position By “Lying About How He Really Feels”

Arizona Republic: “Project Makeover, the Blake Masters edition, continues.”
Yahoo! News: Masters “said support for abortion rights had become ‘demonic’ and likened the procedure to ‘religious sacrifice.’”
MSNBC: “Taken together, it seems Masters is running less of a campaign and more of a con.”

A wave of news coverage is highlighting how Blake Masters is trying to “Etch A Sketch” his anti-choice position by “scrubbing his website’s policy page of tough abortion restrictions.”

See for yourself:

MSNBC – All In With Chris Hayes (WATCH): AZ GOP Candidate Scrubs Anti-Abortion Page From Website

Chris Hayes:

• [Masters] repeatedly billed himself as ‘unapologetically pro-life.’ He pushed for a so-called ‘personhood law,’ a federal law which would give the same legal rights as adult humans to fertilized eggs.

• Masters has suddenly… changed his tune on abortion rights, scrubbing his website’s policy page of tough abortion restrictions.

• The reason he’s trying to pivot right now seems pretty clear: the vast majority of voters support abortion rights. And Blake Masters wants them to elect him to the U.S. Senate by, well, lying about how he really feels.

Arizona Republic (Opinion): The Blake Masters abortion makeover continues as he quietly scrubs his website

• Project Makeover, the Blake Masters edition, continues – this time with a good old-fashioned scrub of his abortion views on his campaign website.

• What a difference a few weeks makes. That, and the need to scramble if he’s going to win over the moderate Republican women and independent voters who will decide this Arizona’s Senate race.

• On Thursday, NBC reported Masters went for an outright makeover, scrubbing his website clean of the hard-line abortion policies that were his hallmark when he was pitching himself to the Republican primary voters.

• Funny, that’s not what he was saying in January, when he chided his Republican opponents who wouldn’t back a national abortion ban.

• And, oh yeah, that he is now perfectly fine with a recently passed A law that will allow abortion up to 15 weeks, should it take effect next month.

• Because, what, Masters has seen the error of his ways? Or because he’s seen the polls?

MSNBC: GOP’s Masters takes steps to hide his abortion views from voters

• In Arizona, Senate hopeful Blake Masters is currently trying to shake the Etch A Sketch. The problem is, the far-right Republican and first-time candidate doesn’t appear to be good at it.

• The first sign of trouble came earlier this month when Masters tried to back away from his own comments about privatizing Social Security. It was, of course, far too late: It was as recently as June when the Arizonan publicly argued, “We need fresh and innovative thinking, maybe we should privatize Social Security. Get the government out of it.” For the Senate candidate to try to argue two months later that he no longer agreed with himself was absurd.

• This week, however, Masters made matters considerably worse.

• Just 24 hours ago, the Republican’s website told the public he’s “100% pro-life.” That’s now gone. Similarly, Masters’ campaign site boasted about his support for a so-called “personhood” measure — “ideally,” the candidate said, this would come in the form of “a Constitutional amendment” — that would extend the same legal rights to fetuses that are provided for people. Now, that language has been deleted, too.

• Democrats have been running a series of ads of late that simply quote Masters sharing his own ideas. Early last week, for example, the Democratic Senatorial Committee launched this spot quoting the Arizonan not only endorsing overturning Roe v. Wade, but also endorsing a national abortion ban, describing the medical procedure as “demonic.”

• This is the same Republican who, during his Senate campaign, likened abortion to genocide and said he’d oppose any judicial nominee who agrees with the Griswold v. Connecticut precedent that prevented states from blocking access to contraception.

• Taken together, it seems Masters is running less of a campaign and more of a con.

HuffPost: Trump-Backed Blake Masters Does Slimy Flip-Flop On Abortion After Winning Primary

• According to NBC News, one of the deletions was a section supporting “a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”

• Laws that establish “fetal personhood,” pushed by anti-abortion advocates, seek to extend the rights of people to a fetus or embryo before viability. If enacted, they would class abortions as murder and end most of the exceptions for abortion.

Yahoo! News: Arizona Senate candidate Masters tries to back away from abortion position

• Struggling in polls, Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters is trying to purge his previous record of total opposition to legal abortion.

• Masters himself has proposed extreme restrictions on abortion, including a federal law criminalizing the procedure as murder and banning some forms of contraception.

• Following the leak in May of a draft opinion showing the Supreme Court was set to overturn Roe v. Wade, Masters said he didn’t think leaving abortion policy to the states went far enough.

• [Masters] said support for abortion rights had become “demonic” and likened the procedure to “religious sacrifice.”

MSNBC – Morning Joe (WATCH): AZ GOP Senate Nominee Scrubs Website Of Extreme Abortion Views

Marc Caputo:

• Right after [we] called the campaign for Blake Masters, suddenly the website changed.

• It’s a good example as we pointed out… that abortion is problematic currently for Republicans.

• Masters’ reaction, his etch-a-sketching so-to-speak of his policy positions on abortion, and the polling certainly show this is turning out to be problematic.

NYMag: Blake Masters Huge, Sneaky Flip-Flop on Abortion

• Before the flip-flop, Masters supported a “a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.” This position, proof of his “100% pro-life” stance, was a universally understood indicator that he was willing to ban 100 percent of abortions from the moment of conception in all 50 states, regardless of what lawmakers or voters in any of those states wanted to do.

• That he also said “the right to life is guaranteed in our founding documents” confirms that he shared the “personhood movement” commitment to the belief that the Declaration of Independence’s citation of the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” meant zygotes are total human beings just like you and me.

• We know he will have no compunctions about flip-flopping right back.

Jezebel: Arizona Senate Candidate Blake Masters Wants You to Forget His Anti-Abortion Beliefs

• Masters doesn’t need to look into a crystal ball to see that being anti-abortion is a political liability in the upcoming midterms. But I would bet my credit card debt that it doesn’t mean his personal views have changed.

See Also: DSCC Statement On NBC News Report That Blake Masters “Scrubbed His Website’s Policy Page Of Tough Abortion Restrictions”

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