For starters, this is a pretty good article, although I'm ASSUMING (based on the content) this is from an evangelical (possibly Catholic) perspective. It also is assuming a conservative Baby Boomer home that raised conservative Gen-X kids. The main problem with this is that it assumes that most of the support for the GOP since 1980 is based upon evangelicals. While it's correct to say that the vast majority of evangelicals have voted Republican, it is NOT correct to say 'most of the GOP support comes from evangelicals.' The 'religious right' voters are sort of like the black vote with the Democrats in this sense: they're not only pretty much monolithic but......even though they're not anywhere close to the clout that is pretended, the GOP CANNOT win without them at the national level. They're as much an albatross as an asset.
If blacks (using them only as an example) want to see things change, their votes actually have to be up for grabs (Tony Brown has been saying this for years). The same is true with both evangelicals AND labor unions. At one time, the Teamsters was sort of the Republican counter to the AFL-CIO. Once ANY group casts its lot with one party exclusively, they lose ALL real power...because the group they support takes them for granted (and falls back on the old "but we both know you're not going to vote for the other guy") and the party they oppose wins election after election without them and thus has no incentive to do anything for them.
You'll note that the Hispanic vote is nowhere near as monolithic as these other groups. Within a decade of becoming one-party voters, they will lose pretty much all real political clout (they have it right now because they've show they WILL vote either way).
But getting away from that, let's talk about the abortion issue here or - more precisely - the politics of the issue.
I'm assuming a literal read of #4 here because if you just take abortion as a SYMBOL of what the GOP has spent so much time doing - say one thing before the election and then do something different afterwards - then the argument presented here is done well. Of course, if it was a metaphor then there are better issues to make that argument such as the lack of balanced budgets the moment GW Bush took office.
But again, the politics of the abortion issue are nowhere like the press portrays. If I'm to believe what I've watched on the TV news for the last forty years, 99% of the public favors abortion and will vote out any politician who is pro-life. The evidence shows otherwise. Basically - and these numbers have not really budged since Roe v Wade in 1973 - about 58% of the country (give or take 1-2 points in each poll - that's an average) favors legalized abortion while at the same time 53% consider it murder (this means there's a small group of people who both think it's murder AND want it legal). But there are two other things here: 1) abortion NEVER shows up in any poll as a decisive issue for a Presidential candidate; 2) the one-issue voters that focus solely on abortion are as likely to be pro-choice as pro-life. In other words, they cancel out each other's vote and render it meaningless.
Name me one single election where the sole decisive factor was what the candidate's position on abortion was.
Time's up. It's NEVER decided (or even come close to deciding) a Presidential election (since abortion became a political issue - primarily in the 1984 election - we've had eight elections and the pro-life candidate won five out of the eight races). [Note: before any of you start citing this or that, YES, abortion was bandied about in both the 1972 and 1976 elections in very vague terms, but if you got back and look at the positions of the candidates, you'd be utterly shocked at who thought what about that issue]. If 'right to an abortion' was as important to the country as a whole as the TV pretends (mostly because they can show emotional fights and it's easy to cover), that would be 8-0 for the pro-choice candidate.
However - the arguments put forth here about who precisely bears responsibility are legitimate. Reagan held strong pro-life views and in the 1980 platform promised to appoint judges who would 'honor the sanctity of life.' This was throwing a bone to the religious right, but do you remember what he did? He appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the bench, a woman who as a state senator had already demonstrated pro-choice views. And then GHW Bush appointed that monstrosity, David Souter.
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And there's another thing here and my labor union Democrat buddy (who hates Hillary but is voting for her anyway because he hates Republicans more - yes, he actually believes that every Republican on the planet wants to seize his bank account and force him to live without anything) here in Texas made this point over a year ago: our generation's knowledge of Donald Trump is that he was the guy who imploded the USFL, our spring football league. And then a few years later, he had a highly publicized affair with Marla Maples. And the next year, banks were having to loan him money to keep themselves afloat. (One does not need my memory to have this shorthand view of Trump - they just needed to have paid minimal attention to the news in college). I actually have a copy of the June 12, 1990 CBS Evening News with Dan Rather on DVD (I taped it on the ole VHS off of the ole antenna reception) and Rather does a story on Trump. One thing it said - oh my goodness - was that Trump was going to have to cut back his spending from $550,000 per day to $450,000 per day in order to survive, the poor guy.
What's missing from this but also funny is this...the Baby Boomer parent who told us how important character was and on that basis condemned Nixon (and many voted for Carter) and then Clinton....but now tell us to vote for Trump. Their bipartisan condemnation became partisan compromise.
Getting grief from fellow students and some teachers for suggesting that some of the Bible is not literal is why I am empathetic toward's Jon's view of religion (even though I still consider myself a believer).
