The jubilation on the Right about the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade prompted me to write a column on March 23, 2022 titled “Pro-Life Leaders Aren’t Ready to Win,” pointing out the vast disparity in leadership between far Left pro-abortion forces and the pro-life forces, which disparity led directly to less resources on our side against the well-organized and well-funded pro-abortion Left.
And the leak of the draft Dobbs opinion that was exposed on May 2, 2022 only gave pro-abortion forces more time to organize and inflame their supporters, while most conservative leaders spent their time celebrating and congratulating themselves for a victory that was by no means won.
My article, written six weeks before the May 2nd Supreme Court leak, was intended to alert pro-life leaders about some hard political (and leadership) realities they seemed not ready or willing to accept.
A motivation for me writing the article was to sound an alarm that the pro-abortion leaders, strategy, marketing, communication, and fundraising skills were far superior to those in the pro-life movement. And because of that I felt that if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade the pro-life leaders would lose badly in a public relations fight against the pro-abortion leaders, which would result in major election losses.
Unfortunately I was correct, and a lot of good people lost on November 8th because the pro-life cause does not have the leadership to compete and win against the pro-abortion leaders.
Pro-abortion nonprofits raise about 1,000% more money from about 1,000% more donors year in and year out to kill babies than pro-life leaders do to save babies. Most pro-life leaders lack the bold, risk-taking, entrepreneurial spirit, strategic thinking/planning skills of the pro-abortion leaders.
Here's an example of brilliant strategic thinking and planning by pro-abortion leaders who developed a tune the voters could whistle. “A woman’s right to choose is on the ballot.” They then made sure most all Democrat candidates made the tune a major part of their campaign speeches, TV and radio ads, so that when the voters went to vote, that tune was in their head.
What was the pro-life leaders tune? Crickets.
Here’s what I said back in March, and it will continue to apply to the challenges we face between now and the 2024 election:
March 23, 2022
Conservatives surveying today’s political battlefield seem convinced that victory is in their hands and that all they have to do is keep doing what they’ve been doing for the past thirty years, and a big victory in the 2022 midterms will be handed to them on a silver platter.
This kind of overconfidence has been the bane of conservatives and Republicans for as long as I’ve been involved in politics, now over 60-years. My good friend Morton Blackwell calls it succumbing to the Sir Galahad theory of politics – we will win because we are self-evidently right.
However, as the Bible tells us in 1 Samuel 4:2-11, the overconfidence of the Israelites, brought on by having the Ark of the Covenant in their camp before a great battle with the Philistines, was their undoing. When the Ark arrived, the Israelites raised a great shout and the Philistines hearing it resolved to fight all that much harder, or as the Bible says:
Be strong and quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been to you: quit yourselves like men, and fight. And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man into his tent: and there was a very great slaughter…
We conservatives are about to face such a situation come the end of this year’s term of the Supreme Court, when, if court watchers are correct, the Supreme Court will overrule or severely limit the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion a constitutional right.
No doubt there will be a great shout raised in the conservative and pro-life camp, but it will also without doubt cause our political enemies to resolve themselves to fight with a ferocity never before seen in American politics.
And we conservatives are not ready for that coming onslaught.
When Donald Trump was elected President in November 2016, Planned Parenthood had 400,000 supporters—12 months later they had 1,600,000. In addition to Planned Parenthood, there are many other Leftwing groups promoting abortion until birth and beyond, which results in killing of over 1,000,000 babies a year, including:
Guttmacher Institute 2019 Income -- $24,255,758
NARAL Pro-Choice America 2019 Income -- $12,400,056
National Network of Abortion Funds 2020 Income -- $20,343,642 (National and 27 affiliates)
Center for Reproductive Rights 2020 Income -- $38,755,766
Plus, many other groups
In 2020, 188 pro-abortion groups had income of $3.4 billion.
No need to wonder why Planned Parenthood and their allies are continuing to win the public relations battle.
The Left also has dozens of billionaires who routinely spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on Leftwing politics, causes, and projects, but there is not one conservative major donor who comes close to being a Mark Zuckerberg, who contributed $417 million in 2020 to dozens of liberal organizations to increase the Democrat vote. In addition to Zuckerberg, Democrats have many others including George Soros, Jeff Bezos, McKenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos’ former wife), Warren Buffett, Mike Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, and Bill Gates.
Quite frankly the problem is not at the grassroots level; it’s complacency and the “prevent defense” mentality among the leaders of the Republican establishment, and the lack of a risk-taking, entrepreneurial spirit on the part of those who run conservative organizations.
Too many conservative leaders are comfortable running an organization with 10,000-20,000-40,000 mostly high-dollar donors and they don’t want the risk, extra work, and stress that comes with major growth and then running a massive grassroots-based organization.
When the size of a nonprofit organization goes from 10,000 donors to 200,000, the leader’s income does not increase 20-fold, but their responsibilities, pressure, and workload goes way up.
Grassroots conservatives are worried, frustrated, and angry. They fear for America’s future and want and need leadership—but it’s in short supply these days.
According to a report by Hayden Ludwig at the Capital Research Center, “Between 2000 and 2018, the [Susan Thompson] Buffett Foundation poured an incredible $4 billion into left-wing groups that lobby for abortion-on-demand policies and public funding of birth control.”
Bold, high-energy, entrepreneurial leadership is what will be needed to turn today’s favorable political outlook into victory. The Left will have billions of dollars at their disposal and will be energized like nothing we’ve seen before should Roe be overturned. And, like the Biblical Philistines, our opponents realize that this is not just another election, they are fighting for their political lives – and they have no intention of losing. Time is short, but it’s not too late for bold, high-energy, entrepreneurial conservative leaders to come to the fore and get our movement ready to win.
Dobbs decision
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Roe v. Wade
Conservative justices
2022 elections
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Brett Kavanaugh