As we’re slowly moving into the 2024 election cycle, people are still reflecting on the red trickle of 2022 and what lessons – if any – we should have learned from that. This weekend, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel jumped into the debate with what may turn out to be some ill-advised guidance for GOP candidates who are trying to build an actual red wave. On Fox News Sunday, she said that GOP candidates will have to “tackle the issue of abortion head-on,” claiming that it was GOP silence on the subject that cost the party many seats and probably the Senate majority. She also chided Republican candidates described as believing they could “just talk about the economy.” I find myself wondering if she actually watched the last election. (NBC News)

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said Sunday that Republicans running in the 2024 presidential election cycle must tackle the issue of abortion access “head-on,” noting that many GOP candidates did not in the 2022 midterm election.

“Abortion was a big issue in key states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and so the guidance we’re going to give to our candidates is, you to have to address this head-on,” McDaniel said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” referencing the midterms in which Republicans fell short of winning a majority in the Senate.

“The Democrats spent 360 million on this, and many of our candidates across the board refused to talk about it, thinking, ‘Oh we can just talk about the economy and ignore this big issue,’ and they can’t,” she said.

With all due respect to Ms. McDaniel, who I think has been doing a good job as the chairwoman, I couldn’t disagree more. This is something we discussed here recently. The Democrats are working overtime to try to make every marginal race in the country all about abortion and there’s a reason for that. It has become a winning issue for them and they know it. That proved to be the case in the midterms and some special elections that followed, particularly in Wisconsin.

Conservatives almost uniformly across the board lobbied for decades to do away with Roe and make some headway on the issue. And then, last spring, it happened with the Dobbs decision. As icing on the cake, it wasn’t done legislatively by the Republican Party. Conservatives should have been able to breathe a sigh of relief, chalk one up in the W column, and let the Supreme Court take the “blame” for it. But they’re somehow not managing to pull that off. How much does it take before some people can take “yes” for an answer?

We’ve seen this movie before. There has been a national shift in opinions on the abortion issue. It’s not a complete reversal by any means, but it was clearly enough to have a significant impact in swing states and districts. The Democrats still overreach drastically when they demand legal abortions up to the time of birth. That’s a fringe opinion at best. But total bans on abortion starting in the first month of pregnancy are now favored by a minority, though it’s a much larger minority than those favoring no limitations at all.

I will agree with McDaniel that conservative candidates next year can not “just talk about the economy.” There’s a lot more than that to engage the voters on. We have multiple crises plaguing the nation right now ranging from crime to an energy crisis and an illegal migrant invasion. People are well aware of all of this and these daunting problems were brought on by an administration with an approval level barely higher than an STD.

Whether you’re talking about the White House or the Senate majority, the 2024 elections should be close to a cakewalk. But we said the same thing in 2022 you all saw what happened. If GOP candidates engage on all of those crises they will have a winning message. But if you allow the Democrats to pin all of the Republicans’ ears back and convince voters that their opponents are planning to implement a federal ban on abortions at six weeks, they will find enough people willing to put up with the garbage conditions around the country and pull a lever for the Democrats again. The issue can’t be avoided entirely, but candidates should be able to say that they remain “opposed to late-term abortions” and then move on to the more pressing issues at hand.