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OK, here's a bunch of questions...
Why did the British Parliament introduce that particular bill (that had the effect of being a sanction against SA's Nationalist government) at this time? Did something exactly similar or identical happen OTL?
The question goes down two tracks, depending on what happened OTL. If this bill substantially is similar in content and timing to a bill or bills passed OTL, then insofar as British causes and effects go, it is sufficient to just point to this OTL data and leave the sifting of it to OTL post-mortems.
If on the other hand it is something that was not done OTL, I wonder what your reasoning is for it to happen in the ATL, at this time. I can't see any particular reason it would be a knock-on effect of Buckley's victory, unless the Buckley campaign included some firm promises to shake up South Africa and bring down apartheid. I don't recall that being forecast in any of your posts, nor can I see why a conservative candidate would put the issue front and center at a time foreign policy hawkishness against the Soviet bloc would be much more in line with general fashion. The only way I see it happening is if Carter brought it up in debates, and pinned Buckley to the wall with a commitment he otherwise would presumably have left quiet and low-profile.
But frankly you did not make Carter look at all good in the debates, and such a moment for the Jimmy would stand out I would think; having it in your unpublished back story would be a bit unfair. You don't have to make Carter look good if you don't want to, but if he got off a zinger like that and it shapes later events, we ought to know about it. Therefore presumably if Buckley or some underling of his decides to take on Pretoria it is on their own hook, and I don't see how it fits into the narrative of the New Right.
Mind, it could--someone in Buckley's administration could reason that if the Buckley administration gives SA a good hard shaking and the outcome is it remains a liberal, pro-western capitalist republic but apartheid is repudiated, at least to the extent Jim Crow was in the USA (that is, it ceases to be formal state policy, ceases to be a respectable position for a respectable SA leader to take, but perhaps considerable white privilege persists due to informal social forces and private business policies), then the credibility of the right in the USA is strengthened, as it would be far less plausible to attack it as a stalking horse for racism and white privilege generally, thus opening up non-white votes for conservative persuasion.
Honestly I would think that even if some of Buckley's close supporters may have thought that way they'd also think it is a risky proposition for them--aside from the risk of losing ground to Soviet influence in southern Africa should SA be incapacitated or taken over by pro-Soviet factions, it would be sure to infuriate a certain number of people who took the conservative side in the USA. We can argue over whether those numbers were large or small, but there is no doubt they shifted strongly to the Republicans in the OTL 1980 election.
And it is conceivable to me, though I am skeptical, that perhaps the reason Buckley's support is less overwhelming than Reagan's was at this point is that Buckley did not do as much work to convince the hardliners on racial issues cast out of the Democratic mainstream by LBJ's actions and subsequent Democratic platforms committed at least in principle to advancing civil rights further that he would have their back and draw a halt to the juggernaut, and maybe push it back. It could be that element, or a part of it, is what is missing from Buckley's line up of support that Reagan enjoyed more of.
So, is Buckley openly or implicitly sending messages he will do something about apartheid, and if so, does that account for the British Parliament taking this action to join the general dogpile before the opportunity to look good and make a statement about Britain's position versus racism slips past?
Now, I can see why the Tories would be split on the issue, with many of them arguing they don't support apartheid but they do protest one government using financial shenanigans to manipulate another, or perhaps more often say they value SA's strategic value and wish to approach the issue of apartheid very cautiously therefore. Perhaps a few will be openly in favor of the racist policy but I doubt they'd say so clearly even if they were.
But why is Labour split? Was it a Tory bill, so some extremists (a large percentage to be sure!) refuse to vote for anything the Tories introduce? Is Labour ambivalent on apartheid, for reasons similar to the Tory split? Are there constituencies that perceive a major economic investment in business with SA, such that working class voters might be thrown out of work and therefore jump ship politically? Or what
Obviously if the split voting results are pretty close to identical with OTL votes for very similar bills at the same time, more or less, there is no need to explain it. Though it would be interesting to hear why this bill split both of the major parties down the middle!
As it happens I did some low level clerical work involving press from South Africa in the summers of 1983 and '84, and so I have some sense of the climate in SA (among English speakers anyway) and US relations with that nation in that time frame. Now I didn't go and investigate the current events recent history at the time to bring myself up to a state of expertise, but I don't think anything close to the Nationalist Party undergoing this sort of internal coup happened in '81 or '82 OTL; the existing regime, complete with numerous Bothas, stayed the course seeking its way to "Grand Apartheid," intervening militarily all over southern Africa, and enjoying "constructive engagement" with the Reagan administration.
So to clarify--is the regime spinning around and taking a more militant line because the British bill is totally ATL and the economic effects on SA are indeed severe; is the bill more or less OTL but Reagan's administration saw to it the impact was blunted, say by providing alternate sources of financing; is the Buckley admin here merely neutral and passive in the face of British action or is his team, for some reason or other, more willing than Reagan's OTL to alienate the Nationalist regime and taking action to back up the British clamp-down?
Now meanwhile we have the SCOTUS choice to consider as well. The impression one gets, if one knows nothing of the personalities involved or anyway not all of them, is that Buckley is in general more moderate than Reagan was. O'Connor OTL proved reluctant to undermine Roe v Wade and in other ways proved sympathetic to some if not all feminist issues--but OTOH was definitely still primarily a conservative, very much in the wake of Rehnquist. Her early appointment, when one did not look closely at the conservative side of the mixed package she presented, appeared to be a sign of moderation and indeed by putting the first woman on the court Reagan stole a lot of liberal wind. Nevertheless in many legal dimensions she advanced the Reagan agenda, and Reagan's next pick was Scalia.
Given that Buckley's margin of support was objectively thinner than Reagan's, and that perhaps the South African affair is blowing up because Buckley somehow telegraphed a willingness to deal with apartheid firmly and finally, the suggestions of several commentators that Buckley must appoint a justice very obviously farther to the right than Reagan did at this juncture OTL, seems a bit strange to me. It is of course my assumption, based on participation in other threads, that the author is quite a fan of right wing causes and personalities, if perhaps not "guilty" from a lefty perspective like mine of what I would call the worst aspects of that. And has quite a following of other right-wing types, as other threads I have followed sometimes do, and y'all are perhaps cheering each other on to an unreasonable degree! As for Bork, Buckley just put him into a high administrative office--does he really want to shuffle him off to the Judicial Branch so very hastily? Buckley I would guess would want to put Bork onto the Court, but in good time. Right now he's making the first appointment.
So I suppose maybe he "needs" to put in an ultraconservative to offset the pinkish tinge that being willing to face down and dismantle a white supremacist regime gives him in American conservative circles?
And yet instead of doing something really foxy like appointing a reliably conservative justice who happens to be a woman, he brings in this Brooke fellow, who, if we are to suppose the most significant exchanges of his review by the Senate committee are the ones cited, fails due to being quite frank that he would rule pro-choice in an abortion case.
The politics of abortion in the USA is not so much a third rail as a buzzsaw, spewing gore and destruction in every direction. I note all discussion by fans on the thread so far simply assumes that "pro-life," which I think is more accurately anti-choice, is the obvious result to cheer for and that Buckley ought to appoint a justice who is deemed certain to rule to restrict and largely abolish abortion in the USA. The pro-choice case ought to be considered, but it is the author's privilege and that of his fans to set it at naught in discussion if they want to. However, a realistic thread needs to at least consider that OTL, over a third of a century after Roe v Wade the high court has yet to overturn it in toto, and we've had several political cycles in which control has shifted back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans at every level. Maybe we'll see this outcome within the next 8 years, and maybe we won't--the way to bet based on track record is no, it won't be, whereas if we listen to campaign rhetoric abortion should have been largely banned decades ago. It is necessary to face the fact that whatever it means about the American people, whether it means the view that abortion is murder is simplistic and false or whether it means that we as a people are pretty sinful and violent, either way--getting abortion banned is not a slam dunk in American politics!
However, in 1981, it may reasonably have looked otherwise, at least to the ascendent conservative coalition. At that time, the decision had been made by the Supreme Court less than a decade before and the election cycles since Roe v Wade had not allowed a lot of time for the conservative coalition to get its ducks in a row. Indeed many politicians who had every reason to claim to be somewhere right of center and have that claim acknowledged, such as George HW Bush, had in fact come down on the pro-choice side, at least weakly and for a while. Nowadays many politicians can look back on unbroken decades of claiming to be in favor of restricting abortion severely, and the ones who take the pro-choice side have been on that side from the beginning of their careers--the line is sharply drawn in the sand in terms of identity, although what this means is that two successive conservative ascendencies have failed to deliver on the promise. But they don't stop promising to work to restrict abortion--which they have done--and to abolish it as a free choice--which they have via the restrictions approached, but never achieved in full. And the pro-choice side may give in and vote for particular restrictions but affirm that they will fight to keep the option of a choice to terminate pregnancies open to American women. And the public, though support between the camps shifts back and forth, has never demanded a final decision. I submit this is because deep down, a lot of people who will casually say they are against abortion understand at some level that actually criminalizing it could be disastrous for someone they care about--deep down, a solid majority believes in choice even if they are often afraid to say it or uncomfortable with the idea of saying it. But--in 1981, this theory, that deep down the American people support choice, was not very well tested by time. It was entirely possible, so it seemed then, that the mere ascendency of a conservative Republican wave would be enough to reveal a deep national commitment to end abortion as a choice. One reason experienced pro-choice people might not have been so frightened by the outcome of the '81 election was that abortion was not legalized in the USA on a mere whim; an extensive campaign involving millions of women and men who cared about them had been working for decades before Roe v Wade to legalize it, generally with state legislation or state referendums, which the decriminalizers and legalizers were winning. So they at least understood the deep forces that drove the pro-choice movement, and had some reason to hope that face to face with the practical and political consequences of severe abortion restrictions, politicians and even conservative judges would blink and back off. Which to an extent is exactly what they did do OTL.
But unlike Ronald Reagan, President Buckley is a Roman Catholic. By no means do all American Roman Catholics accept that papal decrees declaring that pregnancies involve an unborn child who should not be murdered and that therefore abortion must be severely restricted to cases of strict medical necessity compel them to enact such rules into US law, but it is a hallmark of conservative American Catholics that this is taken as a commandment by them, The Buckley family made much of their Catholicism, and that their conservatism was in fact an expression of proper Catholicism in their view. Buckley then perhaps should be more motivated than Reagan, a Protestant, was to ram through abortion restrictions by whatever means necessary.
Note that in the early '70s, neither opposition to abortion nor to birth control was considered particularly "Christian" by conservative Protestants or Jews; all those issues were deemed a peculiarly Popish sort of obsession. It had been the Roman Catholic Church, acting without the support of other churches in this matter, which had fired up activists who restricted older traditional avenues to legal (if shady) abortion in the USA in the period from the 1930s to the 1950s, resulting in a time when women could not get legal abortions, due to hospitals that could give them coming under the scrutiny of these Catholic zealots, while clinics that had developed to mainly provide that service had been successfully shut down by these same crusaders. All of this happened without the help of other religions, conservative or otherwise; it was this dark age, when the death rate for American women desperately seeking illegal abortions rose drastically, that triggered the movement to decriminalize and legalize abortion step by step, with the steps involving women outing themselves as having had abortions in order to normalize the image of the woman who did so. By 1981, the Catholics had made some progress selling their opposition to abortion, and to some degree birth control in general, to other allies in the conservative coalition. But the same broad alliance simply did not exist a decade before, back when politicians like GHW Bush were openly supporting Planned Parenthood. In 1981, it is a new thing, and for that reason perhaps high hopes attached to it it could achieve great and wonderful (or terrible, from another point of view) things if only unleashed, but also, some reason would exist to doubt its durability or effectiveness.
So now, given President Buckley's presumed Moral Majority political mandate as well as his personal religious injunction, as a conservative Catholic, to aim at ending abortion soon, why exactly does he appoint a fellow like Brooke, who will simply say "oh yeah, I'm pro-choice!"
I also think there is something seriously fishy about a senator applying such a blatant litmus test as that, but I suppose it has ample precedent, going back to days when the debate was free state versus slave state and the senators of each side would be keen to know how the judge would rule, in cases involving slaves back then, then civil rights, pro or con, for African Americans after the Civil War. Even if it is quite customary for senators to put prospective judges on the hot seat and demand they clarify if they are for or against their particular sacred cows, I would think it would be the mark of a first-rate jurist that they refuse to answer a broad hypothetical and insist that they will judge cases on their particular merits, not apply some broad scheme to shape justice to their political visions. That Brooke answers so very bluntly and simply might be taken from some OTL review he went through I suppose--I know nothing of this Brooke person at all actually.
But it makes me wonder, was Brooke some sort of sacrificial lamb? Could it be that Buckley had no intention of seeing him appointed, and nominated him knowing that he'd run into Senator Helms's political Bed of Procustes and be rejected for certain? The purpose would be to turn toward any moderates backing him, and conservatives who might happen to think the likes of Bork or Scalia were too extreme in this or or that position, and shrug and say "hey, I tried nominating a moderate, but through the Senate the people have spoken and they'll have none of them; I have to appoint conservatives, it is what the people want as well as need."
Now since the post in which Brooke is shot down, we've had another naming William French Smith. As with Brooke, the name ringed a bell or two but I didn't really recognize it. Here's Smith in the 1980s OTL, from Wikipedia:
Reading the whole article, it is not written by someone neutral toward Smith or critical of him; the tone of the whole thing is approving and congratulatory. Even so, in those words I for one see some definitely red alert signs flashing "BigBrotherFull!" Reagan's sanctimonious claim he was going to end organized crime, particularly in the context of a top cop who backs off from "hindering" big corporations (with the infamous consequences of the deregulatory and predatory 1980s) but doubles down on prosecuting drug offenses bottom up is particularly ironic to me.
However on the hot-button issue of abortion we don't see much one way or the other. I have little reason to doubt that he'd have a cavalier attitude toward the welfare of women who find themselves embarrassingly and inconveniently pregnant.
On the other hand, part of the pro-choice argument is that actually, forbidding abortion is not nearly as simple and open-and-shut as it might look from a high judicial bench. A cop mentality like his might possibly grasp the sort of can of worms the nation would be opening in laying down a comprehensive and strict ban. So just possibly, for reasons different than O'Connor and probably being stricter than her on other feminist issues, Smith might pass review as a tough hard judge who will surely toss out Roe v Wade, and might even say so in the Senate--but perhaps, when push comes to shove, and a real test case comes before him, he might realize that such a sweeping ruling would unleash havoc and punt it.
Then again his real 'cop' experience OTL began and ended with his Top Cop AG position in the first Reagan administration; before that he was in private practice and in politics, but he never pounded a beat anywhere. It could also be that in the ATL then, he is just the sort of harsh judge Buckley wants to put in place, and will issue iron rulings without consideration of whether they will rip society apart or not, just as a conservative should I guess. (You then use the force of authority to hammer down on anyone with any issues, once top-down wisdom has spoken. As long as you agree with the wisdom anyway).
My guess--he gets through confirmation without Helms grilling him on Roe or abortion in general. The goal here is to get very conservative judges appointed; considering I don't see any reason why Scalia won't be considered pretty soon for the next seat, and Bork for the one after that (after he's served many years in his current administration position), getting someone in deemed "harder" than O'Conner is an achievement, especially considering Buckley does not have the full range of assets Reagan did.
Why did the British Parliament introduce that particular bill (that had the effect of being a sanction against SA's Nationalist government) at this time? Did something exactly similar or identical happen OTL?
The question goes down two tracks, depending on what happened OTL. If this bill substantially is similar in content and timing to a bill or bills passed OTL, then insofar as British causes and effects go, it is sufficient to just point to this OTL data and leave the sifting of it to OTL post-mortems.
If on the other hand it is something that was not done OTL, I wonder what your reasoning is for it to happen in the ATL, at this time. I can't see any particular reason it would be a knock-on effect of Buckley's victory, unless the Buckley campaign included some firm promises to shake up South Africa and bring down apartheid. I don't recall that being forecast in any of your posts, nor can I see why a conservative candidate would put the issue front and center at a time foreign policy hawkishness against the Soviet bloc would be much more in line with general fashion. The only way I see it happening is if Carter brought it up in debates, and pinned Buckley to the wall with a commitment he otherwise would presumably have left quiet and low-profile.
But frankly you did not make Carter look at all good in the debates, and such a moment for the Jimmy would stand out I would think; having it in your unpublished back story would be a bit unfair. You don't have to make Carter look good if you don't want to, but if he got off a zinger like that and it shapes later events, we ought to know about it. Therefore presumably if Buckley or some underling of his decides to take on Pretoria it is on their own hook, and I don't see how it fits into the narrative of the New Right.
Mind, it could--someone in Buckley's administration could reason that if the Buckley administration gives SA a good hard shaking and the outcome is it remains a liberal, pro-western capitalist republic but apartheid is repudiated, at least to the extent Jim Crow was in the USA (that is, it ceases to be formal state policy, ceases to be a respectable position for a respectable SA leader to take, but perhaps considerable white privilege persists due to informal social forces and private business policies), then the credibility of the right in the USA is strengthened, as it would be far less plausible to attack it as a stalking horse for racism and white privilege generally, thus opening up non-white votes for conservative persuasion.
Honestly I would think that even if some of Buckley's close supporters may have thought that way they'd also think it is a risky proposition for them--aside from the risk of losing ground to Soviet influence in southern Africa should SA be incapacitated or taken over by pro-Soviet factions, it would be sure to infuriate a certain number of people who took the conservative side in the USA. We can argue over whether those numbers were large or small, but there is no doubt they shifted strongly to the Republicans in the OTL 1980 election.
And it is conceivable to me, though I am skeptical, that perhaps the reason Buckley's support is less overwhelming than Reagan's was at this point is that Buckley did not do as much work to convince the hardliners on racial issues cast out of the Democratic mainstream by LBJ's actions and subsequent Democratic platforms committed at least in principle to advancing civil rights further that he would have their back and draw a halt to the juggernaut, and maybe push it back. It could be that element, or a part of it, is what is missing from Buckley's line up of support that Reagan enjoyed more of.
So, is Buckley openly or implicitly sending messages he will do something about apartheid, and if so, does that account for the British Parliament taking this action to join the general dogpile before the opportunity to look good and make a statement about Britain's position versus racism slips past?
Now, I can see why the Tories would be split on the issue, with many of them arguing they don't support apartheid but they do protest one government using financial shenanigans to manipulate another, or perhaps more often say they value SA's strategic value and wish to approach the issue of apartheid very cautiously therefore. Perhaps a few will be openly in favor of the racist policy but I doubt they'd say so clearly even if they were.
But why is Labour split? Was it a Tory bill, so some extremists (a large percentage to be sure!) refuse to vote for anything the Tories introduce? Is Labour ambivalent on apartheid, for reasons similar to the Tory split? Are there constituencies that perceive a major economic investment in business with SA, such that working class voters might be thrown out of work and therefore jump ship politically? Or what
Obviously if the split voting results are pretty close to identical with OTL votes for very similar bills at the same time, more or less, there is no need to explain it. Though it would be interesting to hear why this bill split both of the major parties down the middle!
As it happens I did some low level clerical work involving press from South Africa in the summers of 1983 and '84, and so I have some sense of the climate in SA (among English speakers anyway) and US relations with that nation in that time frame. Now I didn't go and investigate the current events recent history at the time to bring myself up to a state of expertise, but I don't think anything close to the Nationalist Party undergoing this sort of internal coup happened in '81 or '82 OTL; the existing regime, complete with numerous Bothas, stayed the course seeking its way to "Grand Apartheid," intervening militarily all over southern Africa, and enjoying "constructive engagement" with the Reagan administration.
So to clarify--is the regime spinning around and taking a more militant line because the British bill is totally ATL and the economic effects on SA are indeed severe; is the bill more or less OTL but Reagan's administration saw to it the impact was blunted, say by providing alternate sources of financing; is the Buckley admin here merely neutral and passive in the face of British action or is his team, for some reason or other, more willing than Reagan's OTL to alienate the Nationalist regime and taking action to back up the British clamp-down?
Now meanwhile we have the SCOTUS choice to consider as well. The impression one gets, if one knows nothing of the personalities involved or anyway not all of them, is that Buckley is in general more moderate than Reagan was. O'Connor OTL proved reluctant to undermine Roe v Wade and in other ways proved sympathetic to some if not all feminist issues--but OTOH was definitely still primarily a conservative, very much in the wake of Rehnquist. Her early appointment, when one did not look closely at the conservative side of the mixed package she presented, appeared to be a sign of moderation and indeed by putting the first woman on the court Reagan stole a lot of liberal wind. Nevertheless in many legal dimensions she advanced the Reagan agenda, and Reagan's next pick was Scalia.
Given that Buckley's margin of support was objectively thinner than Reagan's, and that perhaps the South African affair is blowing up because Buckley somehow telegraphed a willingness to deal with apartheid firmly and finally, the suggestions of several commentators that Buckley must appoint a justice very obviously farther to the right than Reagan did at this juncture OTL, seems a bit strange to me. It is of course my assumption, based on participation in other threads, that the author is quite a fan of right wing causes and personalities, if perhaps not "guilty" from a lefty perspective like mine of what I would call the worst aspects of that. And has quite a following of other right-wing types, as other threads I have followed sometimes do, and y'all are perhaps cheering each other on to an unreasonable degree! As for Bork, Buckley just put him into a high administrative office--does he really want to shuffle him off to the Judicial Branch so very hastily? Buckley I would guess would want to put Bork onto the Court, but in good time. Right now he's making the first appointment.
So I suppose maybe he "needs" to put in an ultraconservative to offset the pinkish tinge that being willing to face down and dismantle a white supremacist regime gives him in American conservative circles?
And yet instead of doing something really foxy like appointing a reliably conservative justice who happens to be a woman, he brings in this Brooke fellow, who, if we are to suppose the most significant exchanges of his review by the Senate committee are the ones cited, fails due to being quite frank that he would rule pro-choice in an abortion case.
The politics of abortion in the USA is not so much a third rail as a buzzsaw, spewing gore and destruction in every direction. I note all discussion by fans on the thread so far simply assumes that "pro-life," which I think is more accurately anti-choice, is the obvious result to cheer for and that Buckley ought to appoint a justice who is deemed certain to rule to restrict and largely abolish abortion in the USA. The pro-choice case ought to be considered, but it is the author's privilege and that of his fans to set it at naught in discussion if they want to. However, a realistic thread needs to at least consider that OTL, over a third of a century after Roe v Wade the high court has yet to overturn it in toto, and we've had several political cycles in which control has shifted back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans at every level. Maybe we'll see this outcome within the next 8 years, and maybe we won't--the way to bet based on track record is no, it won't be, whereas if we listen to campaign rhetoric abortion should have been largely banned decades ago. It is necessary to face the fact that whatever it means about the American people, whether it means the view that abortion is murder is simplistic and false or whether it means that we as a people are pretty sinful and violent, either way--getting abortion banned is not a slam dunk in American politics!
However, in 1981, it may reasonably have looked otherwise, at least to the ascendent conservative coalition. At that time, the decision had been made by the Supreme Court less than a decade before and the election cycles since Roe v Wade had not allowed a lot of time for the conservative coalition to get its ducks in a row. Indeed many politicians who had every reason to claim to be somewhere right of center and have that claim acknowledged, such as George HW Bush, had in fact come down on the pro-choice side, at least weakly and for a while. Nowadays many politicians can look back on unbroken decades of claiming to be in favor of restricting abortion severely, and the ones who take the pro-choice side have been on that side from the beginning of their careers--the line is sharply drawn in the sand in terms of identity, although what this means is that two successive conservative ascendencies have failed to deliver on the promise. But they don't stop promising to work to restrict abortion--which they have done--and to abolish it as a free choice--which they have via the restrictions approached, but never achieved in full. And the pro-choice side may give in and vote for particular restrictions but affirm that they will fight to keep the option of a choice to terminate pregnancies open to American women. And the public, though support between the camps shifts back and forth, has never demanded a final decision. I submit this is because deep down, a lot of people who will casually say they are against abortion understand at some level that actually criminalizing it could be disastrous for someone they care about--deep down, a solid majority believes in choice even if they are often afraid to say it or uncomfortable with the idea of saying it. But--in 1981, this theory, that deep down the American people support choice, was not very well tested by time. It was entirely possible, so it seemed then, that the mere ascendency of a conservative Republican wave would be enough to reveal a deep national commitment to end abortion as a choice. One reason experienced pro-choice people might not have been so frightened by the outcome of the '81 election was that abortion was not legalized in the USA on a mere whim; an extensive campaign involving millions of women and men who cared about them had been working for decades before Roe v Wade to legalize it, generally with state legislation or state referendums, which the decriminalizers and legalizers were winning. So they at least understood the deep forces that drove the pro-choice movement, and had some reason to hope that face to face with the practical and political consequences of severe abortion restrictions, politicians and even conservative judges would blink and back off. Which to an extent is exactly what they did do OTL.
But unlike Ronald Reagan, President Buckley is a Roman Catholic. By no means do all American Roman Catholics accept that papal decrees declaring that pregnancies involve an unborn child who should not be murdered and that therefore abortion must be severely restricted to cases of strict medical necessity compel them to enact such rules into US law, but it is a hallmark of conservative American Catholics that this is taken as a commandment by them, The Buckley family made much of their Catholicism, and that their conservatism was in fact an expression of proper Catholicism in their view. Buckley then perhaps should be more motivated than Reagan, a Protestant, was to ram through abortion restrictions by whatever means necessary.
Note that in the early '70s, neither opposition to abortion nor to birth control was considered particularly "Christian" by conservative Protestants or Jews; all those issues were deemed a peculiarly Popish sort of obsession. It had been the Roman Catholic Church, acting without the support of other churches in this matter, which had fired up activists who restricted older traditional avenues to legal (if shady) abortion in the USA in the period from the 1930s to the 1950s, resulting in a time when women could not get legal abortions, due to hospitals that could give them coming under the scrutiny of these Catholic zealots, while clinics that had developed to mainly provide that service had been successfully shut down by these same crusaders. All of this happened without the help of other religions, conservative or otherwise; it was this dark age, when the death rate for American women desperately seeking illegal abortions rose drastically, that triggered the movement to decriminalize and legalize abortion step by step, with the steps involving women outing themselves as having had abortions in order to normalize the image of the woman who did so. By 1981, the Catholics had made some progress selling their opposition to abortion, and to some degree birth control in general, to other allies in the conservative coalition. But the same broad alliance simply did not exist a decade before, back when politicians like GHW Bush were openly supporting Planned Parenthood. In 1981, it is a new thing, and for that reason perhaps high hopes attached to it it could achieve great and wonderful (or terrible, from another point of view) things if only unleashed, but also, some reason would exist to doubt its durability or effectiveness.
So now, given President Buckley's presumed Moral Majority political mandate as well as his personal religious injunction, as a conservative Catholic, to aim at ending abortion soon, why exactly does he appoint a fellow like Brooke, who will simply say "oh yeah, I'm pro-choice!"
I also think there is something seriously fishy about a senator applying such a blatant litmus test as that, but I suppose it has ample precedent, going back to days when the debate was free state versus slave state and the senators of each side would be keen to know how the judge would rule, in cases involving slaves back then, then civil rights, pro or con, for African Americans after the Civil War. Even if it is quite customary for senators to put prospective judges on the hot seat and demand they clarify if they are for or against their particular sacred cows, I would think it would be the mark of a first-rate jurist that they refuse to answer a broad hypothetical and insist that they will judge cases on their particular merits, not apply some broad scheme to shape justice to their political visions. That Brooke answers so very bluntly and simply might be taken from some OTL review he went through I suppose--I know nothing of this Brooke person at all actually.
But it makes me wonder, was Brooke some sort of sacrificial lamb? Could it be that Buckley had no intention of seeing him appointed, and nominated him knowing that he'd run into Senator Helms's political Bed of Procustes and be rejected for certain? The purpose would be to turn toward any moderates backing him, and conservatives who might happen to think the likes of Bork or Scalia were too extreme in this or or that position, and shrug and say "hey, I tried nominating a moderate, but through the Senate the people have spoken and they'll have none of them; I have to appoint conservatives, it is what the people want as well as need."
Now since the post in which Brooke is shot down, we've had another naming William French Smith. As with Brooke, the name ringed a bell or two but I didn't really recognize it. Here's Smith in the 1980s OTL, from Wikipedia:
Reading the whole article, it is not written by someone neutral toward Smith or critical of him; the tone of the whole thing is approving and congratulatory. Even so, in those words I for one see some definitely red alert signs flashing "BigBrotherFull!" Reagan's sanctimonious claim he was going to end organized crime, particularly in the context of a top cop who backs off from "hindering" big corporations (with the infamous consequences of the deregulatory and predatory 1980s) but doubles down on prosecuting drug offenses bottom up is particularly ironic to me.
However on the hot-button issue of abortion we don't see much one way or the other. I have little reason to doubt that he'd have a cavalier attitude toward the welfare of women who find themselves embarrassingly and inconveniently pregnant.
On the other hand, part of the pro-choice argument is that actually, forbidding abortion is not nearly as simple and open-and-shut as it might look from a high judicial bench. A cop mentality like his might possibly grasp the sort of can of worms the nation would be opening in laying down a comprehensive and strict ban. So just possibly, for reasons different than O'Connor and probably being stricter than her on other feminist issues, Smith might pass review as a tough hard judge who will surely toss out Roe v Wade, and might even say so in the Senate--but perhaps, when push comes to shove, and a real test case comes before him, he might realize that such a sweeping ruling would unleash havoc and punt it.
Then again his real 'cop' experience OTL began and ended with his Top Cop AG position in the first Reagan administration; before that he was in private practice and in politics, but he never pounded a beat anywhere. It could also be that in the ATL then, he is just the sort of harsh judge Buckley wants to put in place, and will issue iron rulings without consideration of whether they will rip society apart or not, just as a conservative should I guess. (You then use the force of authority to hammer down on anyone with any issues, once top-down wisdom has spoken. As long as you agree with the wisdom anyway).
My guess--he gets through confirmation without Helms grilling him on Roe or abortion in general. The goal here is to get very conservative judges appointed; considering I don't see any reason why Scalia won't be considered pretty soon for the next seat, and Bork for the one after that (after he's served many years in his current administration position), getting someone in deemed "harder" than O'Conner is an achievement, especially considering Buckley does not have the full range of assets Reagan did.
I agree with Shevek. He died in 1990, so he won't be on the Court for that long.
First off, Buckley's views OTL are not changed,. However, 50 Senate seats are still Democrat, so he had to nominate someone acceptable to them and to moderate Republicans. He hoped that by putting Brooke on the Court, the next seat could be filled by someone more in line with his views.
The British bill passed because it wasn't expected to have a large effect-people could still trade with South Africa, including investment-only put some pressure, not cause such a large financial crisis. Buckley's team opposed it, but when Hartzenberg took an anti-Western stance ahead of the election they were not sure on how to act. The Umtata crisis only increased tension, and so the Administration invited Pik Botha to find a solution, then he asked for asylum. This pretty much ended hopes of conciliation.
The British bill passed because it wasn't expected to have a large effect-people could still trade with South Africa, including investment-only put some pressure, not cause such a large financial crisis. Buckley's team opposed it, but when Hartzenberg took an anti-Western stance ahead of the election they were not sure on how to act. The Umtata crisis only increased tension, and so the Administration invited Pik Botha to find a solution, then he asked for asylum. This pretty much ended hopes of conciliation.
Minimal deviation from OTL then. That does not mean that dramatic things unknown to OTL might not happen shortly, as a snowballing of the ATL deviations we have already seen. But I can stop imagining Buckley is a devious super genius anyway? He's just a paler version of Reagan apparently.
In my opinion, no. You are the author, responsible for this work. It presumably has an integrity for you it can't have for anyone else; you know backstory stuff not worth publishing or that you may wish to reveal to more dramatic effect later. You have an idea where your President Buckley's head is at, and also of the general situation he faces--how it is identical or very close to OTL in some ways, and seriously divergent in others, most of which you would never have opportunity to tell us.
An invitation to submit suggestions of names to consider and arguments for this, that or three other contenders to win is something else.
Chapter Eighty Six
"Today, President Buckley will sign into law the Tax Relief and Balance Act."
-Walter Cronkite (1981)
"The President's approval rating fell a good seven points during the Supreme Court confirmation, but now it's back up a good six points-forty nine percent."
-Peter Jenning (1981)
-Walter Cronkite (1981)
"The President's approval rating fell a good seven points during the Supreme Court confirmation, but now it's back up a good six points-forty nine percent."
-Peter Jenning (1981)
Chapter Eighty Seven
"Mr President, what is your opinion on these guerilla wars going on right now in all these Communist countries?"
"Nicaragua, Afghanistan, you mean?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I support these movements fighting for liberation."
"Do you intend to arm them, or something like that?"
"My priority is the national interest, and again-I do support those people, but I'm still examining these options."
-James Buckley and Tom Brokaw (1981)
"Kirkpatrick supported the Contra movement, but Buckley worried over a lot of these drug connections a lot of those guerilla leaders had. Afghanistan, there was less division. But when it came to Nicaragua, the President-then-did not want to step in a clear direction."
-Alexander Haig (1990)
"Nicaragua, Afghanistan, you mean?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I support these movements fighting for liberation."
"Do you intend to arm them, or something like that?"
"My priority is the national interest, and again-I do support those people, but I'm still examining these options."
-James Buckley and Tom Brokaw (1981)
"Kirkpatrick supported the Contra movement, but Buckley worried over a lot of these drug connections a lot of those guerilla leaders had. Afghanistan, there was less division. But when it came to Nicaragua, the President-then-did not want to step in a clear direction."
-Alexander Haig (1990)
Chapter Eighty Eight
"A new report released by the Department of Defense puts the current amount of US Army servicemen stationed in Europe at 277,859, the highest since June, 1962."
-John Chancellor (1981)
"Analysts in and out of the Pentagon conclude that President Buckley is emphasizing conventional warfare over nuclear warfare, with nuclear arms buildup going at a much slower rate than previously expected."
-Tom Brokaw (1981)
-John Chancellor (1981)
"Analysts in and out of the Pentagon conclude that President Buckley is emphasizing conventional warfare over nuclear warfare, with nuclear arms buildup going at a much slower rate than previously expected."
-Tom Brokaw (1981)