John Roberts 'marginalized' Alito and Thomas — and sparked a 'civil war': analyst

According to one longtime Washington, D.C., insider, Chief Justice John Roberts' maneuvering to "corral" a 7-2 majority to stay a lower court decision to ban a widely-used abortion drug has created a "civil war" within the Republican Party, and Republicans now must reach some type of consensus on how to deal with the abortion issue that will be front and center in the 2024 election.

Writing for the Daily Beast, Eleanor Clift claimed Roberts staved off a "disaster" for Republicans similar to the one that occurred after Justice Samuel Alito's controversial Dobbs opinion, but created new problems for the GOP, which is now grappling with reaching a consensus on how to move forward on the hot-button issue.

According to the columnist, Roberts "managed to regain some control over the Court’s far-right faction, marginalizing Clarence Thomas and an angry Samuel Alito, who wrote the Dobbs decision that overturned nearly a half-century of legal protection for abortion."

However, she added, "the damage done by the Roberts court can’t easily be undone" and now Republicans have their work cut out for them.

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Now that GOP lawmakers have been told by pollsters in no uncertain terms that abortion appears front and center in voters' minds, Clift claims that they are looking for an out before the 2024 election season kicks into gear.

"The solution?" she wrote. "Don’t talk about it, and if pressed, stress states’ rights, then pivot to other cultural issues like parental rights, crime and wokeness, in whatever order works best. In other words, there’s no plan."

"A party that ran multiple elections over multiple decades with extraordinary unanimity on abortion is now floundering to seek consensus," she added.

According to GOP pollster Whit Ayres, "It’s difficult for me to give advice because I think they should be consistent, and keep government out of it. The Republican base wants to restrict abortion, and they (the candidates) don’t want anybody to outmaneuver them on the right. But there shouldn’t be a national ruling.”

Jim Kessler of Third Way, a national think tank that "champions modern center-left ideas", contributed, "This is a horror movie with lots of sequels. In 2024, we will have the first presidential election where the president’s position could make a visceral difference in a woman’s life. We’re seeing tremors out there."