Answer: Not entirely, but neither was Donald Trump entirely wrong about the abortion issue in the midterms. Trump’s desperation to avoid blame for recruiting bad candidates for winnable Senate races led him into a frontal attack this weekend on a loyal constituency that he once assiduously courted — evangelicals and pro-life activists.

After getting asked about accepting responsibility for the Great Red Ripple by a reporter from Semafor, Trump posted this on Truth Social:

It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms. I was 233-20! It was the “abortion issue,” poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters. Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the US Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again. Plus, Mitch stupid $’s!

Let’s start off with his midterm defense rather than his offensive against the pro-lifers. Did Trump recruit 252 candidates in the midterms? No, of course not. Almost all of these endorsements took place after their nomination. The issue for Republicans was in the candidates Trump recruited for their commitment to his “stop the steal” agenda — Blake Masters, Kari Lake, Mehmet Oz, Don Bolduc, Adam Laxalt, and Herschel Walker mainly for his celebrity status in Georgia. All of them lost winnable elections, and any two of these five Senate races would have given the GOP a majority today. There seems little doubt that this slate of candidates had a turnout effect on the other side and may have cost Republicans close House races as well.

As for abortion, pro-lifers have ferociously rebutted Trump’s pass-the-buck attempts. One of the best and most concise of these essays came from my friend Ben Domenech, who eloquently parries Trump and rips him for disloyalty to his own voter base:

First, not one single candidate Trump endorsed who lost backed his fictional “no exceptions even in the case of rape incest or life of the mother.” While a handful of pro-life Republicans take issue with rape and incest exceptions — under the argument that punishing an innocent child for the vile nature of its creation is no corrective — literally no one Trump endorsed oppose abortion in cases where the mother’s life is at stake. Arguably the most pro-life candidate he endorsed was Tudor Dixon in Michigan, who still backed such an exception. …

Trump betraying the pro-life cause on Dobbs has been telegraphed for a long time. His early reaction to the decision was reportedly one of skepticism, worrying about what its ramifications would be for the GOP. Where Mike Pence has praised Dobbs as the singular achievement of the Trump presidency, the former president didn’t even mention it in his announcement speech at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s decision to run to the right on the pro-life issue was likely the reason he won the nomination in 2016, thanks to a list of judges he released to quell fears among pro-life conservatives. Rather than claiming the Dobbs decision as the biggest win of his presidency and leaning into goodwill from the pro-life community, Trump now seems to be blaming them for his failed 2022 endorsements.

I don’t disagree with Ben on any of these points. And to his credit, Ben does acknowledge that abortion played a bigger role in the midterms than Republicans predicted.

However, Republicans need to learn a lesson from their post-Dobbs fumbling, and to that extent Trump makes a good point. Let’s recap why abortion became the #2 issue in this election, as exit polls and the Heritage study Ben cites found later. In the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision — and really after the leak a few weeks earlier — members of both parties scrambled to advance maximalist positions on abortion. Chuck Schumer tried passing a radical abortion bill that would have imposed not a restoration of Roe but federalized abortion on demand to the moment of birth in all 50 states without any conscience protections for providers. It flopped miserably, but Schumer fine-tuned the messaging afterward to use in the midterms.

Republicans went to their own maximalist positions too, against the advice of many who urged them to wait on policy while the electorate and the states digested Dobbs. GOP officials, especially in the Senate, proposed all-out bans on abortion at the federal and state levels despite polling that shows the American public is more centrist on this issue. That backfired, as summer polling showed, and the GOP pulled back the reins — but made the mistake of ending its discussion of the issue, for the most part. That left Democrats in the lead for pushing their narrative, which they did effectively.

That’s the failure to which Trump referred in this passage:

It was the “abortion issue,” poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.

Was that the deciding factor in the midterms? I’d say no, and that Trump and his relentless focus on re-litigating the 2020 election had more to do with it, especially in losing those winnable Senate elections. However, the months-long fumble of this issue by the GOP played a very significant role in the midterm outcome, as voters made clear to exit pollsters and even Heritage found. Had Trump stopped at that statement, he might have avoided some of the backlash from his previously loyal pro-life constituency, but Trump has never been particularly disciplined about his messaging.

A significant amount of Trump’s claims are nonsensical blame-throwing, but not all of it is. Republicans had better take all of the proper lessons from these midterms or be doomed to repeat their mistakes all over again. They can start by finding better leadership with a proven track record, especially one who undoubtedly swept the field in these midterms by wisely engaging on all issues. That is how one focuses on the present and future rather than the past. And we all know who fits that bill.