'Trump owes them': Disgruntled conservative urges activists to 'start a fight' inside GOP

Conservative National Review analyst Ramesh Ponnuru urged fellow right-wing activists to push back hard on a key, controversial nominee for President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet in an article for The Washington Post published on Tuesday.

Specifically, Ponnuru demanded that the GOP "start a fight" over Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — not because he is an avowed conspiracy theorist against vaccination, water fluoridation and 5G cell phone service who rejects the expertise of broad swathes of the scientific and medical communities, but because he's a former lifelong Democrat who is out of step with the GOP's views against abortion rights.

"During Kennedy’s presidential campaign, he took an extreme pro-choice position on abortion but sometimes wobbled," wrote Ponnuru. "In August 2023, he said he would sign a federal abortion ban at some point after 12 weeks of pregnancy, but then he walked this back hours later, releasing a statement that it is 'always a woman’s right to choose.'

"In May this year, when asked if abortion should be allowed to end a pregnancy 'even if it’s full-term,' the candidate responded yes. His campaign then affirmed his opposition to restrictions on late-term abortions" — something which, Ponnuru noted, even large portions of Americans who support restoring Roe v. Wade poll as being uncomfortable with.

ALSO READ: Agenda 47: Alarm sounded about Trump’s dystopian plans for his second term

However, the writer lamented, anti-abortion groups have gotten so walloped at the ballot box since the Supreme Court invalidated abortion rights, losing referenda in deep red states and receiving an endless stream of bad press as abortion bans kill women, that they've largely kept their mouths shut about their concerns with RFK. Even Trump himself only managed to win the election in part by promising a softer line on abortion to voters.

And yet, he argued, the backlash is less severe than Republicans are making it out to be, with gender polarization trends stalling and tons of anti-abortion GOP lawmakers getting re-elected comfortably. "The sidelining of pro-lifers in the Republican Party is sure to continue, however, if they tacitly consent to it. That’s what acquiescing to Kennedy’s confirmation would amount to."

It's time for these activists to stop being afraid of Trump, he concluded, and remember he owes his victory to them.

"The president-elect might reasonably feel that he owes Kennedy for dropping his own presidential bid to endorse him," Ponnuru wrote. "If so, Trump should have decided to make Kennedy nutrition czar. It’s up to pro-lifers to point out that Trump owes them, too."