Pro-Life Charlie Sykes Warns Republicans They’re Going too Far on Abortion: ‘Wildly Out of Step with the Mainstream Electorate’

Conservative commentator Charlie Sykes admonished Republicans for adopting “extreme” anti-abortion positions ahead of November’s midterm elections.

On Monday’s Hallie Jackson Reports on MSNBC, guest host Katy Tur host cited new polling that shows 49% of Americans say they would be more likely to vote for candidates who support legal access to abortion. Meanwhile, 27% say they’d support candidates who seek to restrict access. Twenty-two percent say the issue would have no impact.

The survey dropped less than a week after voters in Kansas roundly rejected a measure that would have stripped language from the state constitution that grants a right to abortion.

Sykes, who is pro-life, accused Republicans of pushing “extreme” bills designed to restrict abortion access, including in Indiana, which recently passed a near-total ban on abortion:

As you drill down into what people say about abortion, there are a lot of ambiguities about when they believe abortion should be legal. But there is a consensus that there ought to be at least some legal abortion in a first trimester.

And so what you’re seeing in Kansas is not only is this mobilizing Democrats and dividing Republicans, it also revealed that there are swing voters. There are people who are looking at these extreme pieces of legislation being passed in places like Oklahoma and Texas and now Indiana, and saying, “You know, I really don’t want that world. I am willing to take a position – even if I am pro-life – that doesn’t open the door to these kinds of things.”

He went on to state that one of the key political questions on the abortion issue would be which party will be able to paint the other as staking out extreme positions.

“One of the big questions I had is, which party would be able to define the other party as extreme on this issue?” he continued. “And the Republicans around the country are basically saying, ‘Hold my beer. Look at the bills that we are willing to pass.'”

Sykes speculated that if ever given the opportunity, voters in Indiana would produce results similar to the Kansas referendum:

You saw this in Kansas where that was not even close. And my guess is that if you had a similar referendum in the state of Indiana, you would get roughly similar results – even though that is a red state – because this is very much out of step.

Now, I think that one of the things you’re seeing is the pro-life movement has been pushing this issue for 50 years and it is intellectually consistent to say that if you think it’s murdering a baby, that you can’t have it to conception, but that is wildly out of step with the mainstream electorate. And there are these swing voters, particularly in the suburban areas, who I think are going to be very, very turned off by this.

“Republican primary voters are demanding the purest possible position on abortion,” he concluded, predicting this will hobble some GOP nominees in the general election.

Watch above via MSNBC.

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