Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon is concerned that the Republican Party just had a disastrous week. Amazingly, in his listing of things that went wrong, he failed to mention that the January 6 committee will soon be perusing several years of Alex Jones’ emails and texts. He forgot about the Republicans’ decision to oppose a bill that helps veterans who have been exposed to toxins only to fold under pressure and pass it. A top concern for Continetti is that the Democrats got their shit together to pass a budget reconciliation bill. In the process, they tricked the Republicans into supporting a semiconductor bill that they should have held hostage.

Senate leader Mitch McConnell pledged that Republicans would block the $280 billion Chips and Science Act of 2022 for as long as Democrats tried to reach agreement among themselves on a big-spending reconciliation bill. Republicans mistakenly assumed that Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia was opposed to reconciliation because of inflation.

This badly misdiagnoses the problem. The Republicans’ chances in November will not hinge on passage of the Chips and Science Act.

But it gets worse.

For Continetti, the failure to change the Kansas Constitution to allow for severe abortion restrictions is the biggest disaster of all, but he’s taking some strange lessons from it. He begins with what is probably an accurate prediction:

Kansas was a defeat for the pro-life movement. It also scared Republican strategists, whose eyes bugged out at the huge Democratic turnout in the middle of the summer. The GOP consultant class was leery of abortion politics to begin with. Now it is all but guaranteed to steer its clients away from a debate over the issue.

On June 24, the day the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs decision overruling Roe v. Wade, the FiveThirtyEight congressional ballot preference average showed a 2.3 percent Republican advantage. Today, that advantage stands at 0.1 percent, and several recent polls show the Democrats with leads as big as six or seven points. The vote in Kansas was the first chance to test how the issue might change assumptions about the midterms. Continetti argues, separately, that “Republicans are enthusiastic, Democrats less so,” about voting, but acknowledges that pro-choice turnout in Kansas was unexpectedly strong.

He also makes another important point.

Voters do not like this economy. They blame President Biden for inflation and supply shortages. The president’s job approval rating is 39 percent in the FiveThirtyEight average of polls…

…[but] the [Republican] party’s Senate candidates are weak, it has no economic message beyond lamenting inflation…

I’d go further and say that most Republican economic ideas are actually unpopular, which is the main reason why they don’t collect them all up and create an economic message. But, the thing is, when the president is polling in the thirties and people hate the economy, you can win simply by attacking the president and the economy. You don’t need to actually provide alternative ideas.

This is why, for example, the FiveThirtyEight forecast for the Senate shows Republican J.D. Vance with a 77 percent chance of winning despite trailing Democrat Tim Ryan in the last five released polls, (including by 11 points in the most recent one from SurveyMonkey). The fundamentals just look too strong for the GOP to be projecting statewide Democratic wins in places where Trump won in 2020.

But it turns out that overturning Roe v. Wade was a big deal, and it didn’t help the Republicans’ chances of having a good midterm elections result.

Now, Continetti believes the Republicans can neutralize this problem by going back to an old strategy.

“Without an answer to the left’s attack, Republicans in extremely winnable races will lose—and badly,” warned social conservative leader Frank Cannon, who urged Republicans to get behind laws banning abortions after the fetus has a heartbeat and after it is capable of feeling pain.

This recommendation is about re-framing the issue of reproductive freedom by using catch phrases that poll well, like “partial-birth”, “fetal pain,” or “fetal heartbeat.” But that is all kind of irrelevant now that the issue is access to reproductive health care without government interference. Promoting more restrictions is unpopular even in states like Kansas, so making these kind of proposals is just going to further alarm people and cause them to get off their asses to organize against you.

Ironically, the best way to actually succeed in passing these abortion restrictions is to talk about the economy. The GOP can win on that issue and then do what they intended to on abortion all along. They’re not going to convince people these changes are good with clever phrasing, but that doesn’t mean they can succeed in making the changes. They just need majorities and the willingness to lose those majorities when the public is repelled by their legislative and judicial product.

The Democrats would hold the Senate if the elections were held today, and if things continue to move in their direction, they might actually hold the House. Abortion is the number one reason why.