Election night 2023 was a GOP disaster, and Fox News is pissed—killing off Youngkin’s candidacy before it existed and telling Republicans to set aside their abortion fixation.

A year after promising viewers a “red tsunami” in the 2022 midterms, only to be left with egg on their faces after the GOP drastically underperformed, Fox News was once again wondering what went wrong after Democrats romped to victory in statewide elections on Tuesday night.

Despite recent polls showing President Joe Biden deeply underwater with voters and even losing to Donald Trump in several battleground states, the Democratic incumbent governor easily won victory over his MAGA-endorsed opponent in deep-red Kentucky. And over in Ohio, a state Trump won by eight points in 2020, voters overwhelmingly passed an amendment ensuring access to abortion care in the state’s constitution.

The continued drag that undoing Roe v. Wade has had on the GOP was especially apparent in Virginia, where Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin had promised to implement a 15-week abortion ban if the GOP was able to gain unified control over the state’s General Assembly. Instead, not only were Youngkin’s hopes of a Republican sweep dashed, but the Democrats now control both chambers.

  • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
    7·
    8 months ago

    Pretend to care just enough about social issues, but don’t do anything too controversial, all the while enacting legislation that disproportionately assists the 1%. They had a good thing going.

    Yeah, overturning Roe was the dog that caught the car. Now that they don’t have their main boogeyman drum (women everywhere aborting all the babies all of the time won’t someone think of the children!) to bang on they’ve got nothing. Savvy grifters like Turtle Interrupted never wanted to actually succeed in passing that kind of extremist legislation, but now the GOP balance has shifted too far down the scale of “pretending to be crazy in order to steal money vs being actually crazy”.