Readers who follow me on X (Twitter) will know of the
intense debate occurring there over the last week between social conservatives
critical of Trump’s gutting of the GOP platform and those defending it. A pair of bracing, must-read articles at First
Things and National
Review recount how pro-lifers were brazenly shut out of the platform
process. For social conservatives to
acquiesce out of partisan loyalty would be to commit assisted political
suicide. Today I posted the following,
which elaborates on considerations I raised in an
earlier article:
A brief memo
to social conservatives worried that criticism of the GOP will cost it votes,
and who claim that the critics are politically naïve:
First, yes,
criticism could cost the party votes. That’s precisely the point. The party could
lose votes IF, in the months remaining before the election, it does not try seriously
to meet the concerns of social conservatives. In particular, the GOP must be
made to see that it cannot take their votes for granted. And the party must do
something to make up for the appalling injustice that was done to social
conservatives during the platform process, as recounted in the First Things article linked to.
Second, it
is not the critics, but those who urge their fellow social conservatives to
keep their mouths shut, who are politically naïve. The only thing politicians
can be relied on to respond to is the prospect of losing votes or losing money.
If the GOP fears that it might lose the votes or financial contributions of a
critical mass of social conservatives, it will have to take their concerns
seriously. If, instead, social conservatives acquiesce to what has happened
rather than fighting back, the party will have no incentive to try to address
their concerns in the future – and every incentive not to do so, given the
unpopularity of social conservatism in the culture at large.
The stakes
are high, and that is precisely why social conservatives must raise the alarm
NOW, while they might still influence the direction of the party, not in some
fantasy post-election future. The actual political reality is that if the GOP
wins, having thrown social conservatives under the bus without any pushback
from them, the party will draw the lesson that it no longer needs to worry
about them or their concerns.