Yahoo article notes that many young Republicans increasingly support liberal causes such as climate change reform, LGBT, criminal justice reform, a public health option, etc. - and also, dislike or disagree with Trump - but that some causes - abortion in particular - keep them in the (R) fold. Indeed, a sizable number say they would vote Democratic if it weren’t for abortion.
Then they can kindly fuck off and continue to stick with their cult of Christian nationalists. A human being’s right to bodily autonomy is non-negotiable.
If the only way to prevent more presidents like Donald Trump is for the Democratic party platform to become more parochial and less supportive of abortion, then fuck it, I’m for them becoming more parochial and less supportive of abortion.
I’m not sure that IS the only way to prevent Trumpism from continuing to spread like a cancerous growth, but I lean more towards the Democratic Party becoming a bigger tent and pandering to social conservatives somehow, if that’s what it’s going to take to stop the cancer.
If even half of young Republicans defected to the Democratic Party, the GOP would be utterly destroyed. There is no party that can survive the loss of 1/6 of its voter base like that.
As someone who lives in a deep red state and has contact with a lot of young Republicans, I’d like to make the cynical suggestion that what these people say is not necessarily what they mean. Rather, I think abortion has become a super-popular issue because it is one of the few places where Republicans in the Trump era can still plausibly claim some sort of moral high ground, and thus it becomes kind of a convenient excuse for NOT having to justify one’s beliefs on a whole range of other issues.
In other words, many of these people are not Republicans because of abortion; they are Republicans because they want to be Republicans, and saying “But baaabies!” provides an easy way to explain why you’re a Republican that doesn’t make you sound short-sighted or bigoted.
And it goes the other way, too. Any number of young Democrats may well be more comfortable with the Republican positions on the economy, defense, or whatever, but the abortion issue keeps them in the Democratic fold.
OP, is it your suggestion that the Democratic party becomes anti-abortion? Because I think they would lose more support than they would gain. There are plenty of Democrats that are personally anti-abortion, but don’t want to make it illegal. If that’s not your position, can you explain what your position is?
The Democratic platform isn’t that everyone should have abortions or that everyone should like abortions. It’s that is should be up to the individual woman to make that choice for herself, and it shouldn’t be illegal to make that choice. You can be personally anti-abortion and a Democrat.
So, please clarify how you think the Democratic party should change in order to bring in this demographic.
Trump was a pro choice Democrat for a long time but his cult forgives him for that.
If anyone ever told him there was an abortion bill on his desk he’d say “I already paid it.”
I reject the idea that Democrats would get more votes if they would only adopt Republican principles. Single issue voters are a problem for Democrats, but catering to them will not solve anything. If your single issue is being against abortion, you’re never going to vote Democratic in your life no matter what. If your single issue is gun “rights”, same thing- you’ll never vote Democratic in a million years. I think the best strategy for Democrats is to keep acting like Democrats.
The Democratic Party is already the only party that has any place for pro-life positions. There haven’t been any pro-life Republican politicians since at least 2009, and probably a lot earlier than that. The problem is getting voters to realize that.
I single out 2009 because in that year, the Senate faced the choice of passing the Affordable Care Act with or without the Stupak Amendment, which would have been the strongest anti-abortion legislation ever passed by the federal government. And out of 40 Republicans in the Senate, all 40 chose the version without the Stupak Amendment, for no other reason than that they didn’t want a Democrat to get any credit for it.
Trump’s entire position on abortion is that if one of his mistresses has an abortion, he doesn’t have to pay child support. He’s never even pretended otherwise. And yet, for some reason, people believe that he’s “the most pro-life President we’ve ever had”.
Without considerably more data (i.e. strong evidence that less pro-choice Democrats do much better with these voters), I don’t accept that these folks are honestly representing their intentions.
The headline is very misleading.
My emphasis. Tiny sample aside, these aren’t young Republicans who agree with the Democrats on everything but abortion. Per the article, these are pro-gun anti-immigration pro-life fiscally conservative Republicans who disagree with Trump on “one or more issue”. Abortion is the thing they all agreed on, but its not like that was the only issue for each person being interviewed.
That’s why it wouldn’t work. Why we shouldn’t do it has nothing to do with whether it works or not. We shouldn’t strip fundamental rights from women just so we can go beg some young Republicans to not vote for Trump.
Guys, if the Democratic Party becomes the Republican Party, it will destroy the Republican Party. It’s a full proof plan!
That’s because this is a wildly ridiculous proposition with absolutely no grounding whatsoever in fact. It’s frankly bizarre that someone with SDMB moderator standing would say something so absurd, assuming this wasn’t an account-hacking incident.
Now - I will grant that Republicans politicians, in their personal lives, very likely get abortions early and often, and encourage others to do so. They are raging hypocrites who hold no sincere positions whatsoever and will get their own abortions as often as it suits them.
I will also grant there’s a semantic debate over whether “pro-life” accurately describes “anti-abortion”, but… let’s please don’t go there
When you look at their actions over the past 10 years… supporting de facto abortion bans by putting over-burdensome restrictions on abortion clinics, by packing the courts with pro-life judges, by passing laws criminalizing abortion as feticide, all of these are actions of Republicans, all are opposed by Democrats.
Saying this, based solely off of the 2009 Stupak Amendment issue, sounds like someone saying, “The Republican Party is the only pro-LGBT party, because Republicans wanted a tougher stance against ISIS back in the day when ISIS was throwing gays off of tall buildings in Iraq.”
Hi, Velocity! What do you think the Democrats could do to bring in these young Republicans? Work to ban abortion? Would anything less than that bring in single-issue anti-abortion-rights voters? This is your thread, what is your position?
My position is that they would have to go that way to bring in pro-life/anti-abortion-rights voters, and it would lose them far more voters than they would gain.
Pro-life voters need to see that the Republican party is using them. The Republicans will keep telling them what they want to hear and keep promising to end abortions - but they have no intention of ever doing so. The continued legality of abortions is keeping a large bloc of voters in the Republican column. If abortions were actually prohibited, a lot of these pro-life voters might switch parties based on other issues.
He is appointing pro-life judges. That comes with a dollop of “getting what they want”.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t want a high coronavirus death toll, but if that’s their one issue they’ll still vote for Trump.
That doesn’t make sense.
Pro-life voter: (Wants abortion banned)
Republican Party: (Gets abortion banned)
Pro-life voter: “Great, thanks, now I’m going to consider voting for the Democrats, the only major party in America that might conceivably bring legalized abortion back.”