A Strategy of Confusion
On the verge of a landmark victory by judicial fiat, the Republican Party is being strangely quiet.
As my colleague David Graham has written, Republican Party leaders and conservative intellectuals haven’t been trumpeting the Supreme Court’s decision to allow a Texas ban on abortions to go forward, which for women in the state has all but nullified the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed the right to an abortion. Instead, in a show of formidable message discipline, they’ve been downplaying it. High-ranking Republican politicians have avoided commenting, or described the Court’s decision in technical terms. Conservative intellectuals and media figures, meanwhile, have sought to cast the decision as a procedural matter of minor significance.
The Texas law bans abortion around six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant. It promises
