OPINION:
The Wall Street Journal took a moment Wednesday to give its opinion on the election results in Wisconsin, where an unappealing progressive, Janet Protasiewicz, who had repeatedly announced her distaste for the rule of law, won the election to become the seventh — and decisive — vote on the state’s Supreme Court.
The Journal placed the defeat directly at the feet of pro-life Republicans and huffed that the Republicans better get their message straight on abortion or there would be similar electoral beatings in the offing.
That is certainly one way to look at the Wisconsin election results. Here’s another: The Republican candidate, Dan Kelly, was outspent by about 7 to 1 in an election that shattered records for spending on what used to be nonpartisan judicial elections.
Here’s another way to think about it: A largely diffident Republican candidate who had literally already lost an election for this very same job not three years earlier to another collectivist (Jill Karofsky) ran a low-intensity campaign. In fact, Judge Kelly, who was appointed by then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2016, has never won any sort of election. He lost in 2020 and now in 2023 by 10 and 12 points, respectively. It turns out — and stop me if you’ve heard this before — that candidate quality matters.
Yet another way to look at it: In the very same election, the Republicans won a state Senate seat that gives them supermajority control over both houses of the Wisconsin Legislature. That would suggest that we are far from the bottom falling out for the Republicans in Wisconsin.
Or you could meditate on the fact that Sen. Ron Johnson, less than five months ago, managed to win reelection in Wisconsin — with an identical electorate. He received more than 500,000 more votes than Mr. Kelly. Compare that with Ms. Protasiewicz’s vote total, which was only about 300,000 less than Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022.
Those numbers suggest that the problem may have been partially related to turnout, which would be an indictment of the Wisconsin Republican Party.
Or you could think about instances in which Republicans moderated or muddied their message on life and lost anyway. In the recent Senate race in Pennsylvania, such a loss was to a candidate who may have been non compos mentis on Election Day.
In short, lots of things go into electoral defeats, just like lots of things go into electoral victories. Before jumping to any more conclusions, the team over at the Journal may want to work a campaign or two. Maybe they will learn something.
While we are waiting for that, it would probably be good if the pro-life movement and their allies and cognates start to think more holistically about the problem facing us. There is, unfortunately, a lot of demand for abortion. Restraining the channels of supply is a necessary but probably insufficient approach. At some point, we are going to need to create a society in which abortion is the least attractive option.
Fortunately, we have a case study in social marginalization in the United States: smoking. As recently as 1965, smoking was common pretty much everywhere and at all times. Steady downward pressure from the public health community coupled with modest doses of legal discouragements (age and sales restrictions, taxes) and funding for cessation programs and alternatives have reduced the smoking rate to less than 15% of adults.
Of course, no analogy is perfect or precise. The pro-life community and its arguments, however, would be stronger if it addressed both the demand and supply side of this problem. We also need to recruit and support better candidates.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, co-hosts “The Unregulated Podcast.” He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.
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