I was pondering that this may be a GD, but I really don’t know if this is a thing at all.
This all has to do with replacement voters/citizens and where they will come from. New voters either were born as a US citizen and grow up to voting age or immigrated into the US and gained citizenship and eligibility to vote. The thought came to me that in general those born and raised in the US may tend to be vote red while those when gain citizenship may tend to vote blue. And by allowing abortion and allowing immigration that would tend to shift voting towards blue over a generation, and the opposite would also be true for red.
Now I know that there is real passion for both issues on their own, but politically at the heart is this just a competition for what ‘color’ our future voters are? Are we just baby making pawns for the politicians to secure the future of their party.
The opposition to abortion rights is not rooted in any kind of pragmatic political search for votes. It’s damn close to the right wing’s reason for existence (in my political opinion, at any rate).
Either the radical feminists of the late 70s / early 80s understood them almost better than they understood themselves or we have an amazing coincidental overlap between what the radical feminists said were the objectives and purposes of the patriarchy and what the loudly anti-feminist American right wing has subsequently said and done.
But nothing on the home grown voter side, though since the imported voter is more likely to vote democratic it would seem to be advantageous for red to discourage that route to voting, and since we do need replacements, a case can be made that red would favor making them here in the US.
Indeed. It’s often been pointed out that lots of recent immigrants come from countries that tend to be overall more conservative and less progressive. As well, they’re motivated to move to the US, and are more likely to be seeking that “American Dream” thing.
Yeah, if they really were trying to create new voters, they’d have programs that go beyond just “give birth”. Sure, the kid gets born, but after 18 years of seeing Republicans do everything in their power to keep them poor, uneducated and desperate, they’re suddenly going to vote Republican? Not so much.
Plus, this would just be bad strategy on the part of the GOP. It takes maybe 2 years to become a citizen of the US if you’re qualified to apply, but it takes 18 years to grow a new native-born citizen before they can vote.
I don’t think the typical Fox-viewing red-stater gives it as much thought as the OP. They are told over and over and over that immigration = bad and abortion = bad, and that’s pretty much all there is to it.
Scratching a little deeper, yeah, I suspect fear of immigrants taking over (most of which are coming from non-EU/non-Scandinavian countries, if you catch my drift). And the right has dug themselves into a deep hole with immigrant communities IMHO, which could mean a difference at the ballot box. As for abortion, perhaps conservatives have larger families than liberals and progressives (which could translate into more conservative voters in the future), but I think it’s a stretch to link that issue to future votes.
Immigrants or their children are often opposed to immigration (often does NOT mean in majority, it means “often” - nothing more and nothing less). For one, newer immigrants will be competing with them for the same jobs at lower prices. Secondly, “immigration” isn’t a universal whole. One person might come in on a work visa, work crazy hours, apply for a green card - leaving and entering the country several times to stay legal, etc. Another person might cross the border in the middle of nowhere, claim repression in their home country, get free insurance from the government, and get accepted as a citizen before the other guy. The guys who had to jump through hoops and work for a decade to get accepted tend to not be too favorable to the people who skipped the line.
Likewise, most people who come to the US are from poorer countries. We’re not being invaded by Swedes. As such, immigrants are more likely to be deeply religious, conservative, and politically backwards relative to the average American.
Immigrants aren’t really all that left-leaning. Left-leaners just generally assume that they are because they can’t imagine that people from other countries aren’t noble, enlightened, mystical peoples. No, they’re all real live humans, and often ones from places even more backwards than the US South.
It may be that immigrants tend to vote for the left more often but I think that’s more for government support and because they come from more socialist-leaning countries than the US. But a lot also go rightward because conservative and Christian views are more important to them. I’d venture to guess that the average immigrant is pretty centrist.
Opposing abortion is politically expensive for the Republican party. Since the overturn of Roe v Wade, every time abortion bans or abortion rights have been at stake, the Republicans have gotten their asses handed to them. The people who are fervently anti-abortion were already not going to vote Democratic and most of them were going to vote Republican; being loudly in favor of abortion restrictions is not a good get-out-the-vote strategy for them, whereas it does fire up their opposition like gasoline fires up a fire.
It’s part of economics, knowing where your replacement workers are coming from. And yes that’s the process, import or raise. There really is no other option. And though it is a long term endeavor, the benefits to red of stopping abortion and immigration seem to hold great promise down the line. Also not to mention that stopping immigration is a argument to also stope abortion due to the need for replacements.
Stopping abortion and immigration together are winners long term only if you believe in white replacement. That requires an increase in white babies and a decrease in dark-skinned ones, ideally to turn the country back to the days of overwhelming white superiority.
The argument that abortion affects every race equally would only work if the red states would not already making abortion as difficult as possible for poor people, leaving outs for the well-off to go to other states for abortions. The argument that immigration reduction affects every race equally would only work if the pressure to reduce immigration solely from non-white European countries hasn’t already been stated. (Trump wanted more immigration from Norway, remember.)
The White Replacement theory is one of the most sickening gobs of stinking muck to drip out of radical right brains. But many people see and hear only the anodyne surface explanations and therefore accept them and vote into power people with broader understandings of the consequences. One more reason that nobody should vote Republican at any time for any position in any place.
This is assuming that under red leadership there will be a legal way to abort in the US remaining. Didn’t some red states even try to illegalize crossing a state line to obtain an abortion in a different state? Also the ‘well offs’ is not a firm line, and can be raised to make the number of privileged abortion seekers statistically irrelevant.
The Reactionary Wacko Traitors hate abortion because they want to keep women down. They hate immigration because they want to keep brown people few (and down).
So there is a common origin to their intent, namely to keep themselves = White Men up. But the motivating thought doesn’t go nearly as deeply as the OP posits. IMO the OP states the correct conclusion, but totally the wrong motivations.
Nah, you just flout the law and get away with it, if you’re the Right Kind of Person. I mean, surely no jury would convict a good white girl who just got herself into a little trouble, right? It’s not like she’s one of those evil unAmerican liberals just trying to make a mockery of morality, after all: Those folks are the reason we need the laws against abortion.
I would say it’s all part of the cycle of abuse. Or in other words keeping women down, and keeping Americans white is a feature not a bug of banning abortion. We still need replacements to keep this party going, the oppression going and white, so abortion must be banned to preserve this.
Again who is this ‘good white girl’ I’d say is an arbitrary line which can change as political needs change and middle class may not be ‘good enough’ but the super rick are above the law.