The day after Labor Day traditionally marks the beginning of the general election season. Republicans have spent nearly a decade going full One America News—ceding party control to wingnuts like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Anna Paulina Luna; jettisoning anyone who doesn’t toe the Trumpy line, like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Jeff Flake; and electing as House Speaker “MAGA” Mike Johnson, whose main qualification for the job was spearheading a legal brief that sought to overturn the 2020 election. Now, the GOP is doing a last-minute pivot, trying to appeal to voters who don’t have a “MAGA123” license plate.
Case in point: Last week, Donald Trump, who has openly bragged about gutting reproductive rights, laid out plans to defend IVF if elected. Keep in mind that Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have codified the right to access IVF when Democrat Tammy Duckworth brought it to the floor in June. Those Republicans include the very normal, not-at-all-weird JD Vance, along with every other member of his party, except the two (relatively) sane ones: Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. State-level Republicans have also followed suit; for example, Alabama’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos were actually children (yes, eight-celled children), forcing IVF clinics to halt their services. While this stance might sound crazy, it is completely in line with that of the Heritage Foundation, the think tank that published Project 2025, which has long subscribed to the concept of “fetal personhood” and has argued that IVF should be regulated.
All in all, the GOP has brought nothing but danger to IVF. And yet Trump is attempting to triangulate on the issue, saying in an interview with NBC News last week that his administration would be “paying for that treatment. We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.” It’s no surprise he’d say this, considering IVF is massively popular: Roughly 42% of Americans have used fertility treatments or know someone who has, as the Pew Research Center reported in September 2023, while a CBS News–YouGov poll released earlier this year found that 86% of Americans think IVF should be legal. That’s a lot of voters. But here’s the thing: In the first Trump administration, the former president tried to repeal Obamacare, the federally funded health care program that was saved by Republican senator John McCain in 2017 when he broke rank with his party. So is this to say that Trump is now in support of some form of public health care?
Trump is not the only one attempting a less radical rebrand. Consider JD Vance’s stance on the federal child tax credit, which temporarily increased to $3,600 under Joe Biden’s 2021 pandemic-era rescue plan. “I’d love to see a child tax credit that’s $5,000 per child,” Vance told Face the Nation in August. The child poverty rate reached a historic low the year the higher tax credit was in effect, so bravo to Vance for supporting it now! But the inconvenient truth is that, just days before appearing on Face the Nation, Vance skipped a vote on a bill that would have again expanded the child tax credit; it failed in the Senate 48-44. So, when Vance says he’d “love” to see a bigger child tax credit, he has a lot of explaining to do.
It’s impossible to pin down the exact reason why people like Trump and Vance are pivoting to more centrist policies, but if I had to hazard a wild guess, it’s the same reason Trump disavowed Project 2025: The GOP’s actual policies are deeply unpopular. No one wants tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, exonerations of Trump and the January 6 rioters, or what many economists predict would be highly inflationary tariffs. Now the former president is suddenly trying to neutralize his terrible platform with gauzy centrist policies. But make no mistake: If he gets in office, Trump will almost surely abandon his bid for moderation and make his dystopian vision a reality, from erecting mass deportation camps for migrants to installing a federal bureaucracy full of loyalists.
Popular will and the GOP have about as much chemistry as Trump and his teleprompter, largely because the former president’s stunts touch every part of the GOP. In the House, which Republicans are desperately trying to hold onto, you have so-called centrist congressmen like Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro, Anthony D’Esposito, and Brandon Williams—all of whom backed Mike Johnson as Speaker, and voted to impeach both Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas. How can these congressmen advertise themselves as “sensible” moderates when they vote with Marjorie Taylor Green, jacketless Jim Jordan, and the rest of the QAnon crazies practically 99% of the time? Hard to say. But one thing’s for sure: By embracing the craziest element of their base, they are ultimately going to have to answer for it—if journalists bother asking.