Opinion | Trump is borrowing an old GOP tactic on abortion -- with one key difference

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

65% : Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush's campaign manager, often stated publicly that anti-abortion positions were unpopular and stressed that the GOP was a "big tent" that could accommodate those with a range of positions on reproductive rights.
52% : Trump's obfuscation has angered anti-abortion leaders with reason -- it suggests that he has taken their voters for granted.
51% : But look closer, and it is clear that Trump is doing something different.
50% : And as mentioned earlier, Trump himself has used the language of "reproductive rights," suggesting that he, too, wants to build a big tent.
48% : And Trump has embraced talk of reproductive rights while reiterating how happy he is that the Supreme Court overturned the biggest safeguard to those rights.
43% : The Truth Social post immediately drew the ire of anti-abortion leaders and the mockery of commentators supportive of abortion rights, who noted that in an interview the day before, Trump had also repeated his now familiar (and false) line that all Americans wanted Roe v. Wade overturned.
36% : Trump is not the first Republican to try to walk a fine line on abortion.
33% : With Trump, it's far less clear that this is the case.
30% : And more tellingly, in 1989, the Supreme Court had issued a major decision openly criticizing Roe.This election season, Trump has borrowed from strategies that the GOP once used to undercut Democrats' advantage on abortion.
30% : And recently, when stating that he would not enforce the Comstock Act, a nineteenth-century obscenity law some conservatives would love used to ban abortion, Trump made clear that the specifics had yet to be worked out, and that his commitment not to enforce the law, such as it was, applied only "generally."The upshot, it seems, is that Trump wants both anti-abortion voters and supporters of abortion rights to vote for him without offering either one much of anything.
29% : Trump has said that he supports the Supreme Court's recent ruling preserving access to the abortion pill mifepristone yet also suggested that he was open to prohibiting mifepristone access.
28% : After all, Trump never defined what he meant by "reproductive rights," and has claimed baselessly that Americans never wanted a right to abortion in the first place.
28% : This confusion is par for the course with Trump.
25% : Trump is trying to have it both ways.
18% : Clearly, Trump and many in the GOP are aware that the reversal of Roe remains unpopular.
17% : Like his predecessors, Trump and other Republicans have spotlighted abortions later in pregnancy, presuming them to be more unpopular.

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