In which case, Rudy who?

I am not as hostile to the Republican Party as one might expect: in the period that shaped the current American party system, there was a score draw between the Democrats (Civil Rights) and the Republicans (opposition to the Vietnam War). With America's primaries, caucuses, and so forth, it strikes me as obvious that one should register as a Republican in a staunchly Republican state or district.

However, at the recent midterms, and at long last, naturally and historically Democratic interests, which have for so long been strung along by the party of Wall Street and its utterly unbridled consumer-capitalism (which cannot function without abortion, among many other nasty things), have woken up to the fact that that party would actually cease to exist if it ever did limit abortion, which is why it will never do so.

For to do so would be the kill the goose that lays the Republican Party’s electoral golden egg. Huge numbers of people who were Democrats at least until 1968, or in many cases until as late as 1980, and who ought still to be so in socio-economic terms, would simply declare "Mission Accomplished" and go home to the Democratic Party.

To prevent this from happening, Republican leaders have to pretend to oppose abortion while doing absolutely nothing contrary to the pro-abortion views of Barbara Bush, of Laura Bush, probably of George Bush the Elder, and certainly of several enormous donors to Republican funds. American readers might be interested to learn that, within minutes of the result of the last American Presidential Elections, officers of the London Chapter of Republicans Abroad, as such, had taken to the British airwaves to dismiss as "scare-mongering" the suggestion that there might now be any change to America’s abortion law.

The recent Congressional results suggest that the orthodox Catholics and white Evangelical Protestants are now about as taken in by this as the latter’s black brethren have always been, i.e., not at all. They have worked out that the abortion law is going to stay exactly the same under either party, or, to put it another way, that there is at least no less chance of changing it through the Democrats as through the Republicans. Furthermore, they might also have realised that the strong influence of the black churches among the Democrats might well make it easier to do this, and to pursue other objectives in the field of family values, through that party rather than through its rival. Certainly, the Alliance for Marriage would seem to suggest this, as well as having the decidedly anti-capitalist edge that anyone familiar with Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism knows any truly pro-family movement to need.

Like the Labour Parties in Britain, Ireland and the Old Commonwealth, the American Democratic Party was much more left-wing (in American terms, "populist") economically when it was much more conservative socially and based in churches (not least, Catholic churches), and indeed precisely for that reason. Parties that chase after decadent social libertinism rapidly end up at decadent economic libertinism, as surely as vice versa (on which, just look at what has become the British Conservative Party). Again, this is axiomatic to anyone who has ever read Chesterton, Belloc, or any Pope since Leo XIII.

The different structure of American parties, compared to British ones, has made possible the return of the Democratic Party to its economically populist, socially conservative, and thus doubly patriotic, Christian roots, utterly inimical to neoconservatism on all four points. Or rather, as it were, the return of those roots to that party. A presidential candidacy in that vein would not only be good for America, but would also light touchpapers across Europe, Canada and the Antipodes. So half of the Democrats should be down on their knees begging Senator Jim Webb to run, and the other half should be out finding him an economically left-wing, socially conservative, anti-war running mate and potential successor who is either a churchgoing African-American or an orthodox Catholic (easy), and preferably both (also perfectly feasible).

In which case, Rudy who?