“Oh, God no,” one prominent Republican strategist said, after members of his party suggested the victim should have carried the pregnancy to term. “Very bad,” said another. Or as one anti-abortion rights Indiana Republican strategist put it, “I’m not touching this story with a 10-foot-pole wrapped in a blanket wrapped in a whatever.”…

“These are the kind of things that are going to breathe life into the Democrats’ hopes of maintaining some sort of coalition,” said John Thomas, a Republican strategist who works on House campaigns across the country. “I don’t think this is the dominant issue as we’re going into November, but these kinds of unforced errors are lifelines for the Democrats.”…

Sean Walsh, a Republican strategist who worked in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses, said the Indiana case will not only turn off moderate Republicans but will serve as a “motivator to get younger voters to vote — who usually are spotty in casting ballots.”

“It hurts because it sets the frames [of] the GOP position as ‘extreme,’” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “This particular case may not be remembered in a few weeks but the steady drip of stories coming will have a definite cumulative impact.”