America Chooses Life

More Americans now describe themselves as pro-life than as pro-choice, for the first time since the question started to be asked by pollsters. Watch out for the dropping of that question, so that the answer cannot be given. But for now, savour this moment.

Savour this moment. And savour its context: the beginning of at least the forty-year dominance of the historic party of Catholics, white Evangelicals and the black church, to which the first two are returning in droves, having seen through the party that courted them by pretending to oppose abortion but which did absolutely nothing about it while oppressing the poor and waging wars that pointlessly harvested the young men of the Catholic, the white Evangelical and the black churches.

These are the people thanks to whom Barack Obama is President Obama. The people who reaffirmed traditional marriage in California and Florida, and who declined to liberalise gambling in Ohio or Missouri, on the same day that they voted for him, in all but California’s case decisively.

There is no realistic doubt that he won Missouri. And he certainly cannot win in 2012 unless he carries there, Ohio, Florida, and indeed California, centre of moral and social conservatism that it clearly is, as Arnold “Yes We Cannabis” Schwarzenegger should bear in mind. The Freedom of Choice Act is “not a high priority”. The Employee Free Choice Act is. The Pregnant Women Support Act, a Democratic initiative as such things always are, should be. And President Obama’s Commencement Address at Notre Dame has as good as said that it will be.

Democratic America still needs a proper Republican Party, not least to make the case for a strong defence capability used sparingly because used strictly for its proper, defensive purpose. But there is no sign of the re-emergence of any such party, partly because the old broadly or very conservative lay base of the old mainline Protestant churches is in such decline. So registered Republicans are down to a mere fifth of the electorate.

And America, which never had an avowedly pro-life majority under the Republicans, now has an avowedly pro-life majority under the Democrats.