Make Dems pro-life and GOP pro-choice

I don't think this is ASB, as the Dems are traditionally for the weak and who is weaker than preborn babies, while GOP is supposedly anti-minorities and minorities might have more abortions. There are pro-life Dems and pro-choice GOP (heck, Terry Randle is a Dem) so this makes it at least a little plausible.
Try to keep all other party platforms the same.
Disclosure: I am pro-life.
EDIT: OK, I checked and TR was a GOP, then a Dem, then an Ind., but still, party doesnt automatically determine position on this issue.
 
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Carter was actually considered the pro-life candidate in 1980. Have him win or lose to a pro-choice opponent, and the Democrats will probably make an explicit attempt to appeal to evangelical Christians in the 1980s. It actually wouldn't be that difficult, as Democratic principles on welfare could be justified by the Bible, and the more socially conservative Reagan Democrats would remain in the party.
 
Carter was actually considered the pro-life candidate in 1980. Have him win or lose to a pro-choice opponent, and the Democrats will probably make an explicit attempt to appeal to evangelical Christians in the 1980s.

Evangelical Christians are already organized as a right-wing political force by the 1980s. You'll need a POD considerably earlier than that to get the result the OP seeks; something before Engel v. Vitale (1962) at a minimum.
 
Easy! Just change the definitions.


Supporting a womans right to make decisions about her own body and her own life, shortened to "pro-life".


Stressing the importance of making he correct choice (i.e. having the baby), shortened to "pro-choice".
 
Actually, pretty likely if you bsaically eliminated Roe-v-Wade

Prior to Roe v Wade, the New Deal and Square Deal Democratic party was much more attractive to ethnic Catholics (Irish, Italian, Hispanic, Central European, etc) than the WASP-ish business-oriented Republican Party. Also, in the 1970's, the anti-war trend of the Democratic party was much in line with increasingly pacifist Catholic doctrine regarding the Vietnam War.

Before the "culture wars" united traditional Catholics with Protestant fundamentalists over the whole issue of gender, protestant fundamentalists were generally drawn to the Republican Party - although in many ways they weren't nearly as political as they are now.

Abortion was not seen as a major hot-button cultural issue prior to Roe-v-Wade. Only traditional Catholics (and maybe highly orthodox Jews?) were strongly opposed to abortion in general principle, while many WASP-ish religious conservatives saw it as a non-issue. The nation was gradually evolving, State by State, to liberalize abortion laws. It was the perception that Rowe-v-Wade sidestepped the legislative process that really infuriated other conservatives and drove Traditional Catholics to the Republican Party with its States-Rights emphasis.

Seeing a good marriage of convenience, right wing protestant fundies who just a generation before considered all Catholics as agents of the Anti-Christ and good candidates for a lynch mob, forgot this and forged an alliance than ultimately shifted what might otherwise have led to a Democratic party that would be conservative on a lot of the social issues (excepting the black civil rights movement), and a Republican Party that might have taken a more libertarian, states-rights, perspective on a lot of social issues, including gender attitudes.
 
I think Zoomar's completely wrong on this one; Democrats were already perceived in the 1960s as the party that "took God out of school and replaced him with [African Americans]." Homeschooling was already well underway as an underground movement among evangelical Christians, and Democrats are perceived to be on the wrong side of all of their hot-button issues -- school prayer, miscegenation, integration, school busing, pornography and obscenity, sexual liberation, women's equality, homosexuality, evolution, and so on.

Evangelical Christians aren't going to vote as a bloc for a party that's pro-life but also pro-pornography, pro-school busing, pro-evolution, and so on. Because the Democratic Party isn't going to be able to line up with what evangelical Christians consider to be the "right" side of those issues, there's really no practical political advantage for Democrats to try and hoist the pro-life banner after 1962 at the VERY latest.

If the Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party becomes ascendant in the 1950s AND you butterfly away the career of Lyndon Johnson -- which isn't that hard if you've read Caro's The Path to Power -- then maybe you could have a Democratic Party in the 1960s that's perceived as culturally conservative and thus potentially attractive to evangelical Christians.

In that universe, I could (maybe) envision Richard Nixon employing a bizarro-world reversal of TTL's "Southern Strategy" in 1968; say, by pivoting to the left and employing a "bi-coastal strategy" to turn New England, Oregon, Washington, California, and Hawaii into *Republican strongholds by emphasizing the *Republican Party's commitment to individual liberty.

Maybe. But like I said, you'd have to massively wrench the Democratic Party to the cultural right in the 1950s, which probably means a POD during the 1940s. Just butterflying away Roe v. Wade won't cut it (although it will probably reduce Republican grass-roots activism in the South in the 1980s).
 
I remember reading someone attributing the end (or at least drastic decline) of Protestant-Catholic strife to the legalization of abortion. Catholics and Protestants joined forces in the pro-life movement and, upon actually getting to know one another, stopped being prejudiced.

Andrew T, do you have any sources for the Religious Right hating on the Democrats that early?

The Moral Majority was not founded until 1979:

http://books.google.com/books?id=-k...gU#v=onepage&q=moral majority founded&f=false

Page 3 in that book depicts the Religious Right breaking with Jimmy Carter, so it's not like they were pro-GOP until then.
 
Andrew T, do you have any sources for the Religious Right hating on the Democrats that early?

Sure. I think it's pretty well-established in the literature that the Supreme Court desegregation decisions directly led to the rise of evangelical homeschooling:

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED404423&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED404423

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00131720608984571

http://works.bepress.com/kimberly_yuracko/1/

http://jbs.sagepub.com/content/39/6/905.short

To be clear: the Catholic-Protestant reconciliation is an interesting question, but it's beyond the scope of my argument here. I'm claiming that a) evangelical Christians are pro-life activists; and b) that there's no way that Democrats can be on the "right" side of the social issues of concern to evangelical Christians simply by butterflying away Roe v. Wade.

The Moral Majority was not founded until 1979

Nixon's "Southern Strategy" was 1968. I'd argue that both of these are lagging, not leading, indicators.

Page 3 in that book depicts the Religious Right breaking with Jimmy Carter, so it's not like they were pro-GOP until then.

Again, I think you're burying the lede here. It's significant that the Religious Right broke with Jimmy Carter because Carter was a bona fide, evangelical Christian; in other words, he literally was "one of them" -- and they voted for the other guy, anyway.

My argument is that if you're that well-established as a political force by 1980, the underlying conditions were already set in place long before the results.

You cannot have the 1960s as we know them without the Democratic Party being viewed as the party of (at least in part) social liberalism.
 
Even during the late 1950s, the RR was Republican. Look at the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade. Guest speaker is former actor and GE spokesperson Ronald Reagan.
 

pnyckqx

Banned
I don't think this is ASB, as the Dems are traditionally for the weak and who is weaker than preborn babies, while GOP is supposedly anti-minorities and minorities might have more abortions. There are pro-life Dems and pro-choice GOP (heck, Terry Randle is a Dem) so this makes it at least a little plausible.
Try to keep all other party platforms the same.
Disclosure: I am pro-life.
EDIT: OK, I checked and TR was a GOP, then a Dem, then an Ind., but still, party doesnt automatically determine position on this issue.
In my home state, the Democrats are majority pro life. They're also heavily pro gun. It is the GOP, particularly the national committee people who are heavily invested in the pro choice movement.

You'll find that pro choice is probably the majority report of the old line Republicans.
 
In my home state, the Democrats are majority pro life. They're also heavily pro gun. It is the GOP, particularly the national committee people who are heavily invested in the pro choice movement.

You'll find that pro choice is probably the majority report of the old line Republicans.

Pennsylvania?

State party ID can be idiosyncratic -- although that's changing and moving towards homogeneity (thanks, I would argue, to Fox News, but that's another thread). But the point remains: there's simply no way to make the Democratic Party the national pro-life party and the Republicans the national pro-choice party without going back 60-70 years for your POD.
 
Maybe if Robert F Kennedy survives and becomes president? He was progressive and liberal in most areas, but also a devout Catholic, so most likely not friendly toward the idea of abortion. In return, a Republican, perhaps even Reagan, paints himself as a pro-feminist libertarian who supports a woman's right to choose.

This actually happens in the published book "A Disturbance
of Fate" about an RFK presidency.
 

d32123

Banned
I think the key would be to have the conservative Southern wing of the Democratic Party win out during the civil rights movement. Have a Republican (maybe Nixon) sign in the Civil Rights Act and you could see the Democratic Party remain dominated by Southern politicians in the long run and become the more right-wing party on social and economic issues.
 
There are pro-life Dems and pro-choice GOP (heck, Terry Randle is a Dem)
<SNIP>
EDIT: OK, I checked and TR was a GOP, then a Dem, then an Ind., but still, party doesnt automatically determine position on this issue.

Just so you know, the sole reason Randall Terry 'became' a Democrat was to run against Pres. Obama and try to draw attention to himself. He is not, and never has been, a Democrat. At least in this poster's not so humble opinion. ;)

A much better example would be someone like Bob Casey (both Sr. and Jr.) of Pennsylvania. They are (or was in the case of Bob Casey, Sr. who passed away in 2000) committed Democrats who nonetheless were right to life.
 
You'd have to start before Truman, since he was aggressive, at the time, pushing some civil rights legislation and that led to the beginning cracks of the Solid South.

Maybe Truman refuses to run and the conservative Democrats are successful in getting John H. Bankhead II on the ticket with FDR. Bankhead was from Alabama and was a staunch opponent of civil rights. Bankhead ascends to the presidency after Roosevelt's death and runs a far more conservative administration domestically than Truman.

This allows the Solid South to continue supporting the Democrats in '48, as Truman lost Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. I think Bankhead wins 'em all rather easily, though might not do nearly as well in the west as Truman. Either way, even if Bankhead loses, it radically changes the dynamics of the next four years. If Dewey wins, he certainly would have been more progressive on civil rights than Bankhead and that would have only continued to alienate the southern faction of the U.S. from the Republican Party.

In four years, with a depleted economy, and a dragging war, Dewey probably loses. So, do the Democrats continue with Adlai Stevenson or do they try to shore up their southern base by nominating Estes Kefauver or Richard Russell, Jr.? It'd be tricky, because northern liberals would certainly still hold a great deal of influence at the convention. In fact, in reality, Richard Russell, who gained early traction, was opposed by liberals from the north because of support of segregation.

But maybe, after Bankhead's run four years prior, the liberals in the party are squeezed out, and or support the more liberal Dewey. Either way, in this scenario, let's say the Democrats do the unthinkable and nominate Russell. If he goes on to win the presidency, the entire dynamic of the U.S. shifts. Not only do you lack a pro-civil rights president at the infancy of the movement (Eisenhower, in reality, was far more progressive here than Russell would be), you'd have quickly alienated a great deal of blacks who were brought into the party during the Roosevelt administration.

At that point, you can pretty much alter whatever from this point forward. Would Russell win reelection? If the economy is booming, it's possible, even if he's starting to really get blow back for his support of segregation. If he does win reelection, that sets up an interesting election in 1960. Whereas in the OL, Kennedy ran, in this TL, he probably wouldn't be viable with a growing coalition of support in the south for the party.

At that point, the Republicans, who had already made gains in the south by this time (Kennedy struggled in the south) would probably lean more toward the liberal north east for their support. Who knows who they put up to run against the Democrat (and who the Democrats would run...maybe Harry Byrd?), but either way, the Moderate Republican probably wins and becomes president in the 1960s.

At this point, Moderate Republican pushes through a more progressive civil rights agenda with the help of liberal Democrats in the north and at the opposition of conservative Democrats in the south. This only helps widen the gap between Republicans & Democrats in the south and sooner or later, a great deal of the liberal Democrats gravitate over toward the socially and economically progressive Republicans.

In '64, the Moderate Republican wins reelection, continues supporting civil rights, while the Democrats struggle to field a candidate acceptable to the entire party, especially the south, which finds itself politically pinched because of some of its regressive views.

Eventually, though, in '68, the Democrats run a conservative whose rhetoric isn't nearly as sharp on race relations. Possibly George Smathers runs, who was an opponent of civil rights, but did vote for the Voting Right Act (which would have probably been pushed by Moderate Republican instead of LBJ). This makes him acceptable to the southern Democrats and moderate Democrats alike and he goes on to win the presidency.

Whomever the Republicans ran carries a great deal of the black vote, does extremely well in the northeast, but loses the entire south and pockets of the Midwest. The Democrats have built a solid firewall through Missouri on down to Texas and from Oklahoma through to the Atlantic Ocean.

From there, you've got the foundation for a very conservative, populist party that is dominated by southern evangelicals and other religious folks who would almost certainly oppose abortion. By the 80s, the Democrats are seen as the conservative party and the Republicans the more moderate-liberal party - both domestically and internationally.

Even so, the Democrats are good at keeping with FDR's populist message and still keep a good deal of his economic rhetoric. The party is seen as that of mostly working class, white men and southern. The Republicans are a party of white women, liberal elites, intellectuals, blacks and middle class folk. Their region of dominance is the northeast.

Pat Robertson, in this reality, is a Democrat. So was Jerry Falwell.
 
Also, with a little more historical immigration from Catholic Europe in the 19th century leading to a more Catholic dominated Democrat party in the 20th century might be helpful.
With Catholic Democrats becoming regular nominees for President of the Democrats in this scenario, their pro-life stance becomes the default position of most Dems.
 
Could opposition to abortion be linked to support for more Social Welfare and support for it be linked to crude social darwinism?
 
Could opposition to abortion be linked to support for more Social Welfare and support for it be linked to crude social darwinism?

In this ATL, where would actual pro-choicers -- you know, people who think abortion should be 'safe, legal, and rare', which is the majority opinion in this country IOTL -- go?
 
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