Why Are the Right Such Sore Winners?

I want to take a moment and share a few observations about the GOP reaction to the leaked draft opinion of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade (with the obvious caveat that scope of the decision could still change before it becomes public next month).

I’d like to be very clear up front: The reaction to this opinion and the political jockeying is a second-order story compared to the actual, dire consequences for real people once states begin to criminalize abortion (and this is, in fact, the reason why the right is obsessing over it). And yet this reaction is important to understand as a tool in the broader right-wing culture war. What we’ve seen over the last day or so is a tried-and-true example of their sore-winners complex.

It is absolutely no secret that ending has been the right’s political project for decades. As the writer Lyz Lenz , “It’s always been the plan.