What abortion ban? GOP candidates abruptly ditch long-held positions in post-Roe scramble

[marmar]

(Salon) Numerous Republican candidates who have long campaigned on restricting abortion access and perpetuated false theories about the 2020 presidential election now appear to be recalibrating their extreme views. This change comes as candidates move toward the general election in a shifting political landscape that has at least partly been reshaped by the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade — and perhaps also by the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.

The recent special-election victory by Democrat Pat Ryan in an upstate New York swing district – where Ryan campaigned on protecting abortion rights and the future of democracy, issues his Republican opponent sought to avoid — and the statewide vote in Kansas rejecting a constitutional amendment that would have permitted abortion bans, have sent Republicans scrambling to adjust their positions on reproductive rights, and sometimes other issues.

Last week, Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, a Republican supported by Trump and tech billionaire Peter Thiel, released an ad criticizing incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly's "extreme abortion policies." Masters said he supports a ban on "very late-term and partial-birth abortion" – a stance he claimed most Americans agree with. But that's a dramatic shift not just in tone but policy: Not long ago, Masters was on record as favoring a federal personhood law "that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed." He has previously called Roe v. Wade a "horrible decision" and referred to abortion as "genocide."

Masters' campaign website has also been altered. Previous language about being "100 percent pro-life" has been scrubbed from the site, according to reporting by NBC News, and replaced with softened rhetoric in support of a third-trimester federal abortion ban.

Michigan GOP congressional candidate Tom Barrett's website has undergone similar changes. Barrett, who is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin and formerly branded himself as "100% pro life — no exceptions," has erased that position from the website and retracted a statement about working "to protect life from conception." ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/08/31/what-abortion-ban-candidates-abruptly-shift-positions-in-post-roe-scramble/

[Zambero]

1. Too late

Did not the IT folks explain this? The wealth of anti-choice material amassed by these weasels is readily available. Their "take this shit off my site before someone does a screen grab" approach is 100% laughable, with no exceptions.

[Sky Jewels]

2. I hope their reversals dampen voting enthusiasm from

some on the far right.

[Historic NY]

3. Time to tag them with their own words.

[KPN]

4. Fucking GOP slugs crawling back under the detritus

from whence they came. Repulsive creatures that they are. (No offense to slugs intended — keep on trucking little fellas.)

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. Don't let the slimey bastards hide from their own history.

Roe, Roe, Roe your vote
against theocracy!
Republicans revoke your rights
and kill democracy!

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