While the GOP largely focused on the three-pronged message of combatting rising inflation, crime, and the flow of migrants over the southern border, exit polls showed that abortion was a top priority for voters at the ballot box.

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel has attributed some of the party’s losses to candidates ignoring the issue.

“It was probably a bigger factor than a lot of people thought,” McDaniel said in an interview earlier this month with radio talk show host John Catsimatidis. “We’ve got to get conversant on that.”

“We can’t just do an ostrich method and pretend that it doesn’t exist when Democrats are spending $30 million on that message.”

[The GOP made two mistakes on abortion after Dobbs. First, too many Republicans started pushing maximalist bans and the federal and state level in its immediate aftermath, even though polls clearly showed the public favoring a middle-moderate approach similar to Europe’s. Then Republicans stopped talking about it altogether when election polling showed a backlash. They’d better get coherent and consistent for the next cycle. — Ed]