Do Republicans have a case of BDE, otherwise known as Big Divorce Energy? According to my Magic 8 Ball, signs point to yes.
I may be attuned to this because I’m at the age now where some of my friends are starting to get divorced. This tends to happen around the time their children head off to college, which means mom and dad were (in all likelihood) staying together for the children.
A similar BDE dynamic may be at work in the Republican Party, where a marriage of convenience—that began roughly around 1973—held together for the sake of the (in this case, unborn) children.
ADVERTISEMENT
The recent election in Kansas has made it conventional wisdom to say that the Dobbs decision—which overturned Roe v. Wade, helps Democrats at the ballot box. The interesting thing about the Kansas election, though, was that it demonstrated how many Republicans were voting pro-choice. Now, it would be a mistake to make too much of this, but this past Tuesday’s elections suggest that this trend is worth your attention.
Consider this recent analysis from former GOP Rep. Nan Hayworth: “Dobbs is the right Constitutional decision but is not our friend in NY.”
The reason?
“In addition to making Democratic voters more motivated and more loyal, Dobbs is making key Republican voters less motivated and less loyal,” writes Josh Barro. He goes on to note that Trump’s surprising success in 2016 partly hinged on attracting working-class white voters who were not religious and who were turned off by the traditional conservative message.
“Bill Clinton did well with these voters at a time when Republicans were seen as moralizing scolds who wanted to take away your Medicare,” Barro continues. “Trump won them over by emphasizing opposition to immigration, abandoning unpopular Republican economic planks on Social Security and Medicare, and defending their ‘traditional’ values against a snobby elite without projecting a religiously conservative moral worldview.”
Is it a coincidence that Pat Buchanan and Rick Santorum—both devout Catholics who emphasized social conservative values along with their culture war populism—failed to win, while Trump prevailed? While some people might celebrate their defeat, as Ross Douthat warned back in 2016, “If you dislike the religious right, wait till you meet the post-religious right.” Sadly, we have since seen what that looks like. It’s pretty ugly.
Leave it to the thrice-married Trump to leave us for a younger coalition. But this new relationship was probably inevitable. As America becomes more secular and our culture becomes more coarse (see Twitter and reality TV), it has been mathematically necessary to incorporate this amoral majority into the family.
The problem is that Dobbs—which is a sop to the old Reagan and Bush-era conservative base—is problematic for the new batch of right-wingers that Trump (the vulgarian that he is) brought into the fold.
Consider the reaction of Barstool Sports bro Dave Portnoy, who would presumably like to continue trolling the woke left—and railing against COVID-19 lockdowns—while also enjoying consequence-free casual sex. “We are literally going backwards in time! It makes no sense how anybody thinks it’s their right to tell a woman what to do with her body,” one of the MAGA right’s new heroes said in a profane rant.
And for good measure, NBC News reported on Friday that the campaign of Arizona’s MAGA senatorial candidate, Blake Masters, quietly altered the abortion policy section of the campaign's website—removing the top line "I'm 100% pro-life."
It takes two to tango, and this divorce may be mutually consensual. Aside from the irreligious right being irritated, devout pro-lifers have now been given permission to declare “mission accomplished” and tune out.
It’s ironic that victory often pacifies the masses, but it does.
Just ask Winston Churchill, who after winning World War II was promptly turned out as prime minister of Great Britain. You could also ask President George H. W. Bush who, on the heels of peacefully winding down the Cold War (not to mention kicking butt in Operation Desert Storm), was promptly defeated. I’m not comparing Trump to Churchill or “41,” but I am saying that the public is fickle and sometimes winning is losing.
Now, if you’re a Republican who thinks that losing even a small percentage of pro-life conservatives would be electorally devastating, you’d be right. Consider how Trump won the 2016 election (albeit, losing the popular vote) in the first place.
By blocking confirmation hearings for President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland (selected to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in March 2016), until after the presidential election, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave conservatives who weren’t sold on Trump a compelling reason to show up in November. For conservatives dedicated to overturning Roe, that “compelling reason” is now gone.
From a legal and moral perspective, I’m on the side of saying that overturning Roe was worth it. But Republicans on the ballot this November might have good reason to disagree.
Republicans may be on the verge of being served. The great divorce may be upon us.
