Evidently, Republicans don’t feel competent enough to make a case against infanticide. Why else would the GOP pull its 20-week abortion limit bill?

Polls change. Polls don’t make you right. I know. But today is the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. And while the media continues to treat every Obama non-starter and crowd-pleaser as genuine policy idea, the 20-week abortion ban was predictably framed as another divisive play by zealous conservatives. Controversial. Republican leadership helpfully confirmed this perception by abandoning the only bill their party has come up with in years that widely supported.

[…][T]he most mystifying aspect of the GOP’s retreat on the 20-week ban is that the 20-week ban is not new. Most of these same Republicans voted on the same legislation before the midterm elections, including some of the same representatives that reportedly withdrew their support for the bill. Nearly every GOP candidate running in the midterms publicly backed the idea, even in high-profile races where Democrats made abortion the central issue of their campaign.

Yet, at the same time, Obama continues to support unrestricted abortion on demand for any reason at any time by anyone. There is no one to moderate his position. No one to make him veto a bill. No one to ask him about it. The president has no compunctions about supporting infanticide…

[…]This is about politics. Tragically incompetent politics. Even though a veto was imminent, you have to wonder: If the party representing the pro-life position, a party with a sizable historic majority, can’t pull together a vote on an issue as unambiguous and risk-free as this one, what are the chances if it coming to a consensus and offering compelling arguments on issues like health care or tax reform? Very little, I imagine.

Before anyone goes crazy and starts to talk about not voting for Republican candidates in general elections, I want to point out that the vast majority of Republicans in the House would have voted for this bill. The opposition to the vote was led by a few Republican women – women who were known to be moderates.

The Federalist reports on that, too:

Two of the representatives who caused the biggest stink about the bill were Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina and Jackie Walorski of Indiana. Last week, Ellmers said she didn’t think it was a good idea to vote on the legislation so early in the session (an argument that makes no sense, but let’s put that aside). Yesterday the women pulled their sponsorship of the bill over what they said were concerns over the rape reporting requirement. And yet here are both women speaking in favor of this exact same legislation two years ago…

Renee Ellmers, from North Carolina:

Jackie Walorski, from Indiana:

The rest of the article discusses what a blunder this was for the GOP.

But their conclusion is important:

Newsflash to the geniuses in her policy shop: there are few issues the Republicans can have with as much support, much less as much passionate support. If you’re cowering in fear on popular stuff, what are you going to do when the going gets tough?

What are they going to do on Keystone XL? What are they going to do on Obamacare? Are they going to fight the tough battles when they retreat on the easy ones?

So what’s the answer? I think that the answer is that the grassroots have to do the following:

1. Never give money to Republican groups, but only to individual candidates who have pro-life achievements.
2. Find out who the candidates are in the primaries and vote for the most conservative one. You can always vote for the moderate Republican in the general election, should it come to that.
3. Call your elected representatives in Washington and let them know how you feel about these moderate Republican women.

It’s generally not a good idea to vote for a third party or a Democrat in an election, that would be worse than voting for a moderate… except in the case of these two ring leaders. I think we can send a message to the GOP by voting for a third party or voting Democrat just for these two. That way, the rest of them will learn not to do what they did. I don’t recommend doing this for trivial things, but for a ban on abortions after 20 weeks? I think some retaliation is in order, for the ring leaders. Ellmers is garbage anyway, and needs to go. Her betrayal is a surprise to no one.

Ellmers won her primary

Of course, we should first try to defeat these RINOs in the Republican primaries, where the Republican candidate for the general election is selected.

Ellmers won her last primary because her opponent had no money:

According to his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission, Roche had raised only $23,000 through the middle of April, less than three weeks before election day. Ellmers, meanwhile, had raised nearly $1 million over the election cycle and had $424,000 in cash on hand.

In other words, Ellmers had over 18 times as much cash on hand as Roche had raised over the course of the entire race.

Ellmers has also had the backing of the GOP establishment in North Carolina and well-funded national pro-amnesty organizations ranging from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg via his political advocacy shop FWD.us to ImmigrationWorksUSA, a business group pushing amnesty.

[…]Tea Party Patriots, which is led by national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin, has already faced some criticism for where its resources have been focused. Ingraham hosted Martin on her program last week, and asked why she hasn’t spent any of the $2 million Tea Party Patriots spent on polling, fundraising and consulting fees on candidates like Roche or House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary challenger Dave Brat.

“If you could knock off Cantor and you can knock off Ellmers, that sends shockwaves through the establishment that you seem so committed to upending, and yet you haven’t done the research?” Ingraham pressed Martin. “It’s a little late in the game to be doing the research. What’s the hold up?”

But Martin’s group is hardly the only one where this issue–which is not necessarily because of nefarious motives, but more likely because of political inexperience and a pack mentality in the conservative political action committee world where one group goes into a race all others follow–has arisen. Because of actions from various conservative groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), Madison Project, FreedomWorks and more–which are focused on races like Matt Bevin’s unlikely-to-succeed challenge to Mitch McConnell or Milton Wolf’s lagging bid against Pat Roberts–candidates like Roche either go unnoticed, underfunded or ignored.

We actually did knock off Cantor – this actually works. But it works better when pro-lifers start to think about all the issues, not just abortion, and start to primary candidates who are liberal on any issue, not just on abortion.