The Blue Horizon

The paleocons are unable to disguise their scorn at the entire Republican Presidential field, parts of which may be illiterate in two languages, but all of which is illiterate.

One of their key voluntary agencies, In Defense of Christians, booed off Ted Cruz for his Know-Nothing threat to intensify the Islamist genocide in the Middle East.

They are beside themselves with gleeful contempt on Twitter and elsewhere whenever any Republican aspirant to the White House tries to use a big word. 

Whereas they are really rather keen, and increasingly so, on Jim Webb.

The Democratic Party moved way out to the Left, causing Southern whites, Cold War hawks, and pro-life Catholics to become Republicans. The rest is history. Isn't it? Er, no, actually, it isn't.

Southern white Democrats were by no means all segregationists and white supremacists, and those who were, as such, had no particular reason to become Republicans in or after the 1960s.

It had never bothered them much before, and the Democrats had had a Civil Rights plank since as long ago as 1948, when Strom Thurmond had run against Truman as a Dixiecrat for precisely that reason.

Nevertheless, a higher proportion of Congressional Republicans than of Congressional Democrats had supported the Civil Rights Act, and anyone who voted for Nixon on the wrong side of the race issue must have been very naive indeed.

In accordance with his record, Nixon in office vigorously pursued desegregation.

That section of opinion might have fallen out of the Democratic Party. But it has never been given the slightest cause to fall into the Republican Party.

Say what you like about the Republicans, but they have never made the tiniest effort to permit the return of Jim Crow, instead providing two black Secretaries of State, which is two more than the Democrats have ever managed.

For good, old-fashioned race-baiting, see instead Bobby Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and both of the Clintons well into the present century. Watch out for some more of it between now and November 2016.

There was no reason for diehard Cold Warriors to vote for Nixon rather than Humphrey, little reason for them to vote for Nixon rather than even McGovern (especially once he had balanced his ticket), and none whatever for them to vote for Ford rather than Carter.

In the last case, quite the reverse, in fact; the same was true of those whose hawkishness was fiscal.

And there was, so to speak, no conceivable reason for pro-lifers, as such, to become Republicans rather than Democrats in or since the 1970s.

Look at the judges who handed down Roe v. Wade.

Harry Blackmun, the ruling's author, had been appointed by Nixon. Warren E. Burger by Nixon. William O. Douglas by Roosevelt. William J. Brennan by Eisenhower. Potter Stewart by Eisenhower. Thurgood Marshall by Johnson. And Lewis Powell by Nixon.

Even take out the two Democratic nominees, and that still gives a Republican majority in favour of what was in fact the overturning of the laws of all 50 states.

In stark contrast, one of the dissenting judges, Byron White, had been appointed by a Democrat, Kennedy, while the other, William Rehnquist, had been appointed by a Republican, Nixon.

No one found that remotely odd at the time. No one who had bothered to pay attention would find it remotely odd from the perspective of the present day.

Nixon, by Executive Order, first legalised abortion at the federal taxpayer's expense. Whereas it was Carter who signed into law the Hyde Amendment banning it, which, although Henry Hyde himself was a very conservative Republican, had been passed by a Congress both Houses of which had been under Democratic control at the time.

That Amendment has never failed to receive its necessary annual renewal by both Houses.

In 1976, Ellen McCormack, a strongly pro-life Democrat, became the first woman Presidential candidate ever to qualify for matching federal funding and for Secret Service protection. If there is not one already, and I should be delighted to hear of it if there were, then someone needs to write a full biography of Ellen McCormack.

(Someone also needs to do a "Whatever happened to each of them and to what each of them stood for?" study of the eight candidates whose names were placed in nomination for Vice President at the 1972 Democratic Convention.)

Both of McGovern's running mates were pro-life. Whereas Nelson Rockefeller legalised abortion in New York. Ronald Reagan, who to this day retains a totally undeserved pro-life reputation, legalised abortion in California.

Reagan, like Bush the Younger after him, proved to be worse than useless when it came to appointing pro-lifers to the Supreme Court, not even trying to do so on two of the three occasions when the opportunity presented itself to him.

Thus, in 1993, when Planned Parenthood sued the staunchly pro-life Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, whose son is now a staunchly pro-life Democratic Senator for that state and made his case without difficulty from the platform of the 2008 Convention, over that state's very moderate legal restrictions on abortion, Planned Parenthood's case was upheld by a court every member of which had been appointed by a Republican President, including three by Reagan, apart from Byron White, who had dissented in 1973 and who was still dissenting 20 years later.

Eight Republicans out of nine judges. A third of the court appointed by Reagan. And before that court, Planned Parenthood beat Bob Casey, the Democrat who sought to uphold democracy in Pennsylvania. Of course. All round: of course.

RomneyCare provided and provides for state taxpayer-funded abortion from which, through Bain Capital, Romney continues to derive an income.

But ObamaCare repeats and strengthens the 1977, Democratic-enacted ban on federal taxpayer-funded abortion. It does so thanks to the efforts of Bart Stupak, a Democrat.

Or consider Joe Biden.

He was already a United States Senator before the judgement in Roe v. Wade.

During 36 years in the Senate, he voted to overturn that judgement by means of an amendment to the Constitution, he voted year on year to renew the Hyde Amendment banning federal funding of abortion, he voted against rape and incest exceptions until Hyde himself was forced to accept them rather than see that renewal vetoed by Bill Clinton (meaning that Biden has never actually cast a vote in favour of them), he voted to ban partial-birth abortion, he voted to overturn both of Clinton's vetoes of that ban, and he voted to recognise as legally protected persons those infants who survived abortion.

That is Biden's record, still unchanged in terms of votes cast.

But there is something beyond all of this.

The Democrats were not wiped out in the South by the Civil Rights Act or by anything else. The Democrats were not wiped out in Middle America by Reagan's rhetorical Cold War hardness, which bore no resemblance to his actions in office in his second term, or by anything else. The Democrats, as the very fact of the Caseys 20 years ago and today illustrates, were not wiped out in the Northern Catholic citadels by abortion or by anything else.

The Democratic Party controlled the House continuously from 1955 to 1995. It controlled the Senate for most of that period, and it has done so for much of the period since. It has won the Presidency on four of the six occasions since Reagan retired, and the popular vote on five of them.

Nixon Democrats, Reagan Democrats and, insofar as they existed, Bush Democrats were still Democrats, and they still are.

There has never ceased to be a natural Democratic majority, and Southern white populists, who have adjusted perfectly well to the racially inclusive polity that many of them always foresaw and which some of them actively pioneered, have never ceased to be part of it, indeed a key part of it.

The same is true, and if anything even truer, of Northern urban and now ex-urban Catholics.

Alas, those Cold War hawks who were Democrats also mostly remained in the fold all the way through the Clinton years, doing immense damage to the party, to America and to the world along the way.

They transferred to the GOP under Bush, and every step must be taken to ensure that they never come back in the guise in which they now present themselves, with their beating of the drum of war against all and sundry.

Just as the economic views of the paleoconservative movement that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union have no conceivable audience in the Republican Party but every hope of such among the Democrats, so the same is also true of the foreign policy views, and with both of the cultural views: the uncompromisingly pro-life, pro-family and patriotic case against global capitalism and its wars.

Those views, articulated or otherwise these days, define an indispensable section of a potentially permanent majority.

On my knees, I beg the Democratic Party not to nominate Hillary Clinton.