In the week
before the assassination attempt, a fierce controversy began to arise within
conservative ranks over some radical changes to the Republican Party platform made
at Trump’s insistence, and apparently rammed
through without allowing potential critics sufficient time to study them or
deliberate. The changes involved gutting
the platform of the staunchly pro-life position that has in some form or other
been in it for almost fifty years, and also removing the platform’s statement
of support for the traditional understanding of marriage. The platform no longer affirms the fundamental
right to life of all innocent human beings.
Instead, it opposes only late term abortions, while leaving it to the
states to determine whether there should be any further restrictions, and explicitly
endorses IVF (which typically involves the destruction of embryos).
In short, the
platform now essentially reflects a soft pro-choice position rather than a
clear anti-abortion position. As Robert P.
George has noted,
the platform has in this respect become what liberal Republicans like Arlen
Specter had long but heretofore unsuccessfully tried to make it. That would be alarming enough by itself, but
it is made more so when seen in light of other recent moves by once pro-life Republicans
in the direction of watering down their opposition to abortion. For example, Senator J.D. Vance, apparently
the frontrunner for the position of Trump’s running mate, has said that he
supports access to the abortion pill mifepristone, which is said to be
responsible for half of the abortions in the U.S. Senator Ted Cruz supports
IVF, despite the destruction of embryos that it entails. Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake has
denounced a ban on abortion she once supported, and at
one point even appeared to adopt Bill Clinton’s rhetoric to the effect that
abortion should “safe, legal, and rare.”
Trump
himself now not only favors keeping abortion legal in cases involving rape,
incest, and danger to the mother’s life, but declines to say much more, other
than that the matter should be left to the states. He no longer treats the abortion issue as
fundamentally about protecting the rights of innocent human beings, but instead
as a merely procedural question concerning which level of government should
make policy on the matter. Nor do most observers
seriously believe that abortion (much less the defense of traditional marriage)
are issues that Trump is personally much concerned about, given his notorious
personal life and the pro-choice and otherwise socially liberal views he
expressed for decades before running for president in 2016. The most plausible reading of Trump’s record
is that he was willing to further the agenda of social conservatives when doing
so was in his political interests, but has no inclination to do so any longer now
that their support has been secured and their views have become a political
liability.
Some social
conservatives have defended the change to the platform precisely on these
political grounds, arguing that they cannot accomplish anything unless the
candidates who are least hostile to them first win elections. They note that a federal ban on abortion is
highly unpopular and has no chance of occurring in the foreseeable future, so
that for Trump to push for such a ban would be politically suicidal. But the problem with this argument is that
Trump does not need radically to change the platform in order to win the
election. For one thing, even his
bitterest opponents have for some time judged that he is likely to win the
election anyway, despite the unpopularity of the GOP’s traditional stance on
abortion. For another thing, he could let
the existing platform stand while basically ignoring it. Or he could have merely softened the platform,
preserving the general principle of defending the rights of the unborn while
leaving it vague how or when this would be done at the federal level.
In short, it
is one thing to refrain from advancing
a certain position, and quite another positively
to abandon that position. The most
that Trump would need to do for political purposes is the former, but the
change to the platform goes beyond this and does the latter. If this change stands, the long-term
consequences for social conservatives could be disastrous. Outside the churches, social conservatism has
no significant institutional support beyond the Republican Party. The universities, corporations, and most of the
mass media are extremely hostile to it.
And those media outlets that are less hostile (such as Fox News)
tolerate social conservatives largely because of their political influence
within the GOP.
Some social conservatives
have suggested that while the change to the platform is bad, it can be reversed
after Trump is elected. This is
delusional. Obviously, the change has
been made because Trump judges that, politically, the best course of action is
to appease those who are hostile to social conservatism and gamble that social
conservatives themselves will vote for him anyway. If he wins – and especially if he wins without significant pushback from social conservatives
on the platform change – then this will be taken to be a vindication of the
judgment in question. There will be no incentive
to restore the socially conservative elements of the platform, and every
incentive not to do so.
The result
will be that the national GOP will be far less likely in the future to advance
the agenda of social conservatives, or even to pay lip service to it. Opposition to abortion and resistance to other
socially liberal policies will become primarily a matter of local rather than
national politics, and social conservatives will be pushed further into the cultural
margins. They will gradually lose the
remaining institutional support they have outside the churches (even as the
churches themselves are becoming ever less friendly to them). And their ability to fight against the moral
and cultural rot accelerating all around us, and to protect themselves from
those who would erode their freedom to practice and promote their religious
convictions, will thereby be massively reduced.
In short, for social conservatives to roll over and accept Trump’s radical change to the Republican platform would be to seek near-term electoral victory at the cost of long-term political suicide. Robert P. George, Ryan Anderson, Albert Mohler, and other socially conservative leaders have called on the delegates at this week’s Republican National Convention to vote down the revised platform and recommit to the party’s traditional pro-life position. It is imperative that all social conservatives join in this effort in whatever way they are able.