It’s all about power. Look for a future thread on Reagan’s role in the efforts to block universal healthcare, before he got into politics.
Repub operative Paul Weyrich had spent years trying to activate white Evangelical voters using issues such as school prayer and pornography, with little success. The federal intervention into Christian schools finally galvanized the Evangelical base, but racial segregation was a tough sell. /5
The manufacture of abortion as a wedge issue was triggered by the IRS crackdown on racially segregated private schools. Several segregated “religious” schools had lost tax-exempt status. They had to pay corporate taxes, and donations from wealthy white patrons were no longer tax-deductible. /4
When Roe was overturned, Repubs delivered the victory they had manipulated their donors into demanding for 50 years, but they also lost their key wedge issue. Now, an internal civil war is waging over how to backtrack without furious backlash from the single-issue interest groups they created. /end
Here’s the thread I did a couple of months ago on “segregation academies.” I hope to continue this series of threads with other related topics.
bsky.app/profile/bamb...
Strategists such as Weyrich and the architects of the Religious Right field-tested several other social and political issues looking for a topic that could generate “righteous fury” and cross over from Southern Evangelicals to Northern Catholics. They failed to ignite a national movement. /6
The issue soon took on a life of its own. People in the pews didn’t undergo a complex theological shift. They were simply told that their faith was under attack by a corrupt, secular government. Pastors framed politics not as a debate over policy, but as a cosmic war between good and evil. /8
In 1973, W.A. Criswell, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born … that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.” /3
When the anti-abortion movement — led almost exclusively by Catholics — scored unexpected victories in the 1978 midterm elections, Weyrich and his allies saw its potential. It shifted the narrative to the moral high ground and allowed them to rebrand their strategy as “Family Values.” /7
