The GOP and The Evangelicals

I’ve been thinking about evangelicals today. I find it odd how an entire community can be moved to vote for two issues: constitutional amendments that ban abortion and gay marriage. Reagan was the first person to rally this voter base, get them to the polls, and have them cast their votes for conservative Republicans that want to overturn Roe v. Wade. George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush managed to follow in Reagan’s footsteps and put a strong-hold on the Midwest and South that only Bill Clinton was able to break and, admittedly, Perot was a big factor, pulling fiscal-minded Republicans to him in several key states.

Regardless, we’re talking 20-out-of-28 years of Republicans in the White House thanks largely to the evangelical vote. Being that people can be easily motivated to fight against something and it’s harder to get them to fight to preserve something, I ask myself why the Republicans would ever overturn Roe v. Wade. Why would they stack the deck and give the Evangelicals what they want if the Evangelicals keep voting for them to give them what they want? Let’s look at our current Supreme Court justices:

John Paul Stevens appointed by Gerald Ford
Antonin Gregory Scalia appointed by Reagan
Anthonu McLeod Kennedy appointed by Reagan
David Hackett Souter appointed by G.H.W. Bush
Clarence Thoma appointed by G.H.W. Bush
Ruth Bader Ginsburg appointed by Bill Clinton
Stephen Gerald Breyer appointed by Bill Clinton
John Glover Roberts, Jr. appointed by G.W. Bush
Samual Anthony Alito appointed by G.W. Bush

We currently have six Justices that were appointed by vocal opponents of abortion. Gerald Ford appointed one sitting Justice but he didn’t really have an agenda to overturn Roe v. Wade, he thought it was a state issue. The Great Baby-Killer William Jefferson Clinton only appointed two Supreme Court Justices. I have to think that if the Republicans were really motivated to overturn Roe v. Wade we’d have six people sitting on the bench willing to hear the appropriate cases and get the job done. But it hasn’t happened yet, and the Republicans are still saying that they need to win this election in order to appoint the Justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Huh?

It’s just another example of an entire community being strung along and lied to so that they can be manipulated to vote a certain way. The Democrats do it too, don’t get me wrong, but we really don’t have any ace up our sleeve like the abortion issue. What a cash cow Reagan stumbled upon when he put that one into the national arena.

Maybe my assessment is incorrect and, if so, I’d love to hear from folks that have some of the information that I’m lacking. Is Roe v. Wade really being threatened this year?

Fun Fact Of The Day: As governor of California, Ronald Reagan signed a bill legalizing abortion in 1967. He claims to have had a crisis of faith after signing the bill, but doesn’t it make more sense that he found a way to keep the GOP in power? Looking at the Supreme Court appointments over the past 28 years, I’d say the latter is true.

Labels: editorial, politics, religion

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