Plan to sink Trump will 'sink all of' his GOP opponents too: former lawmaker
One of the lesser-discussed reasons Iowa Republicans may have just forced through a draconian six-week abortion ban is as a means of boosting non-Trump Republican presidential candidates in the state, who are now free to support or at least walk a fine line on the issue, compared to Trump, who previously attacked six-week bans as too harsh. It comes as Trump blows off the evangelical Family Leader event in Iowa, which his major competitors are attending.
But that strategy might have the exact opposite of its intended effect, said former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) on MSNBC Wednesday: rather than hurting Trump, it might hurt every Republican who declined to distance themselves from what Iowa Republican leaders are doing.
"I think it's notable that Donald Trump, who is so far sort of the only person who has raised a red flag around the abortion issue being perhaps terrible for Republicans in an election is not gonna be at this solemn summit," said anchor Alex Wagner. "Ron DeSantis is the lucky guy, along with Nikki Haley, who gets to be in the afternoon session when this is signed. Which, coupled with his attitudes on abortion and bodily autonomy, gives rise to the latest reporting on Ron DeSantis. Even Rupert Murdoch has his doubts about Ron DeSantis ... [and] has privately told people he would like to see Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia enter the race. I get why this DeSantis campaign is not ringing true for a lot of Republicans, including Rupert Murdoch, but the question is, do you think it's just delusional for them to believe that anybody but Trump is going to be the nominee, or is the garage door not yet down on that?"
"I think this is one of the big problems they have," said McCaskill. "They all know that if they can beat Trump in Iowa, it shakes the premise that he is unbeatable. In Iowa, the vast majority of the Republican voters that participated in their caucuses are white evangelical voters that are in line with the six-week abortion ban. So this has become a litmus test for all those candidates whose only hope for getting a win in the primary is to win in Iowa."
That, McCaskill continued, is why "it is interesting that Trump is not showing up."
Trump, she noted, "had a hard time there. He didn't win in '16 and frankly had to run around the state with Jerry Falwell to try to draw more conservative evangelical support even in 2020, to do better than he had in the past. I think it's one of those things they're hoping this issue will sink Trump in Iowa and they'll have a chance. But the irony is, they're going to sink all of them, because women are not going to forgive this. Women aren't going to forget."
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