The 2016 election of Donald Trump was instructive on many levels. For one, it gave voice to the millions of people who spent years in obscurity, feeling marginalized or forgotten by the Obama administration — even many who voted for Obama. The Trump phenomenon either widened or fundamentally shifted the Big Tent of the Republican Party.
Second, the election reminded the suits of Washington that Americans care about abortion.
In fact, the most Googled policy term in relation to Hillary Clinton’s name on Election Day was abortion. Without a doubt, Trump’s stellar third debate performance exposing Clinton’s barbaric position on late-term abortion served to shift the margin of voters who were straddling the fence in his favor.
Since Inauguration Day, we have observed a clear dichotomy between the president and Congress in how pro-life values have been honored in Washington. From Trump we have seen consistent, decisive, and unflinching pro-life action. In just a few months, Trump has reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, appointed a pro-life originalist to the Supreme Court, repealed the abortifacient HHS mandate of Obamacare, and appointed countless pro-life stalwarts to key positions in his administration.
Congress, on the other hand, has sent a vastly different message on its pro-life values in the same span of time. July’s cataclysmic failed Obamacare repeal vote in the Senate is emblematic of the posture elected officials outside the White House have taken toward pro-life values and their very own constituents. In short, they campaigned on a pro-life platform they evidently had no intention of adhering to when called on to take a decisive stand for life. It’s a horrifying, yet sobering, reality to face that our party has an ideological purity problem.
I hardly believe I’m saying this, but the GOP needs to look to its Democratic Party counterpart for the solution.
Democrats do not yield when it comes to abortion.
They as elected officials, in much greater numbers than Republicans, are univocal with their platform when it comes to abortion. They want it, and their party platform demands it to be taxpayer-funded and unrestricted until birth; they want Planned Parenthood enshrined as a healthcare deity; and they want the common-sense Hyde Amendment repealed.
A Democrat who doesn’t proclaim these draconian principles loud and proud can expect to be lambasted by party peers and Democratic supporters.
Just look at the response Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., received last week from his comments, which seemed to try to water-down the Democratic Party’s loyalty to the abortion industry. At the end of the day, Democrats always fall in line on abortion, and their staunch pro-abortion identity keeps them relevant to the well-lined pockets of Big Abortion’s PACs — especially when their piggy banks are low. Just ask Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ralph Northam.
While the blame of the Senate’s defeat of both the Obamacare repeal and the repeal and replace measures can’t be placed on the pro-life movement, I do have to say that the pro-life movement — the grassroots, not the leaders posing for photographs at the White House — are increasingly frustrated that what we are promised and what we receive are always dramatically different. If Republican leadership in Congress made defunding the nation’s largest abortion vendor a priority, it would happen. They would find a way. I’m sure of it.
For decades, the GOP has touted that it’s a “big tent” when it comes to accepting members who don’t see eye to eye on various social issues. The consultant class are convinced that “big tents” will help us win elections in districts otherwise inclined to vote Democratic.
However, these victories are usually pretty small as it’s not long before the “moderate” Republican betrays the platform of the party. They’re good for a few votes here or there, but seem to hurt us right when it counts. (Anyone else experience deja vu when watching Sen. John McCain put his thumb down and the movie “Gladiator” when Caesar does the same?) So all the GOP is left with is a group of Senators with an “R” beside their name that can’t stick together, an abortion vendor that’s been recommended for federal criminal charges, and a growing base of pro-life voters, especially young pro-life voters, who are vowing never to vote Republican again.
As millennials continue taking the fore and determining the trajectory of the country, the Big Tent GOP will have to get simpatico with pro-life millennial values or relinquish its stronghold on them.
Kristan Hawkins (@KristanHawkins) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is president of Students for Life of America.
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