Republicans have lost yet another crucial abortion vote, this time deep in the heart of MAGA country, and Steve Bannon is worried. So worried, in fact, that he invited a priest representing a grassroots anti-abortion group onto his podcast in order to rant about how badly “pro-life” groups are fumbling the ball after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade reversal.
This week, Ohio — a GOP-controlled state that voted Trump in 2016 and 2020 — shot down a Republican-backed measure known as Issue 1 that would have made it more difficult to pass future amendments to the state constitution. In November, an amendment safeguarding abortion rights in the state is up for a vote. Pundits viewed Issue 1 as a temperature gauge for where voters stood on the abortion debate with Republicans hoping they could politically game the system and prevent abortion from becoming a constitutionally protected right. The fact that it failed has stoked fear in GOP analysts — like Bannon — who are starting to realize a majority of Americans support pro-choice policies, and Trump’s former henchman said as much to a priest who guested on his podcast this week.
“I’m telling you that if [the anti-abortion movement] doesn’t get organized, and I mean organized quickly, there’s a lot of voices in the donor community and others saying, ‘Hey, you know, what are we doing here? Because these guys are a drag right now when we can’t afford it,’” Bannon told Frank Pavone, a Catholic priest and the director of an anti-abortion group known as Priests for Life. “You’ve had three in a row where that case hasn’t been made or is not resonant, and these are not close. In modern American politics, these are blowouts.”
Bannon ended by suggesting Republicans put anti-abortion activism on the backburner now that Roe v. Wade was reversed to focus on issues Trump’s MAGA base cares about.
(Via Newsweek)