Is social conservatism now considered a “luxury belief”? This is not a facile question, even though there are good reasons for thinking that it has already been answered affirmatively.
First, some definitions are in order. When I say “luxury belief” I mean the sort of thing that only naïve persons, who are insulated from the consequences of their opinions, could possibly espouse. By “social conservatism” I mean traditional, religiously inflected social conservatism as opposed to the litany of inchoate cultural grievances that are now frequently mistaken for it. More specifically I mean opposition to abortion. Almost every other issue that once animated social conservatives is about as relevant to contemporary American politics as Jacobitism. This has been true for many years. From virtually the moment Obergefell v. Hodges was decided, I cannot recall hearing anything that resembled meaningful opposition to same-sex marriage from any national politician. Indeed, long before 2015 the issue was regarded in mainstream conservative circles as faintly embarrassing. Cannabis and sports gambling are both legal in a majority of states—neither with noticeable resistance from Republican voters.
Some of the older issues now seem quaint. Who could possibly imagine Donald Trump’s speaking out in favor of prayer in public schools or insisting that evolution be taught alongside the theological account of creation given in the Book of Genesis, both live debates during the administration of his most immediate Republican predecessor? The idea is ludicrous; one could more easily imagine him entertaining arguments against heliocentrism. When was the last time you heard the phrase “embryonic stem cell research”? What about I.V.F., the subject of a recent symposium in these pages, which Trump now says he would make available to all Americans free of charge? Can anyone under the age of seventy mention violent video games or misogynistic rap lyrics with a straight face?
With the possible exception of the transgender debate (which in this country has been almost totally subsumed into arguments about women’s sports) the anti-abortion cause is now the sole raison d’être of traditional social conservatism. Its prospects are bleak to say the least. As J. D. Vance ruefully acknowledged during his debate with Tim Walz, the results of ballot initiatives and referendums in states from Kansas to Ohio have shown opponents of abortion what they ought already to have known: their fellow citizens largely do not agree with them.
This includes their fellow citizen Donald Trump. Long before he announced his opposition to a federal abortion ban, it was clear that the former president’s views on abortion were at best equivocal, if not abjectly cynical. Before Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, all this could be conveniently elided by both sides. Now he flirts with open support for the proposed pro-abortion amendment to the Florida constitution. His allies ensured that that unambiguously anti-abortion language that had appeared in every R.N.C. platform from 1984 until 2020 was removed. Now the pro-life movement faces a position it has not been in since the 1970s: it has no obvious political home. At least two generations of voters for whom abortion was the single most important issue—if not the only one—now face a choice between two candidates who are unwilling to pursue what they see as the great moral cause of our age.
What does all of this mean? From the perspective of the Trump campaign, the answer is “Nothing.” There is no better offer on the table from Democrats. If you decide to sit out the election entirely, on the grounds that you are unwilling to vote for what is in effect a pro-choice ticket, you are saying that you are resigned to the possibility of a Harris presidency. If one accepts the apocalyptic vision now being heralded by the Trump campaign—American Carnage 3.0—there is simply no choice but to hold your nose. Whatever the resulting compromises and indignities, the stakes are simply too high. Forget legal abortion. A Harris-Walz administration would bring about some combination of the Great Depression and World War III. Hordes of dog-stealing goose-poaching immigrants would buy every last McMansion in the state of Ohio. Public schools would resemble rather than teach Lord of the Flies. Federal hate speech legislation would make it a crime to say “Merry Christmas.” The judiciary would be of no avail; six hundred new justices would swiftly be appointed to the Supreme Court. On this view, high-minded social conservatives can literally go to hell.
Another view inclines toward pragmatism. Go ahead and stay home in November, even if you live in a swing state. Typical midterm voting patterns suggest that a Harris administration will eventually face G.O.P. majorities in both the House and the Senate. This would circumscribe Harris’s ambitions within the limits of what she could accomplish by executive fiat. More important still, it would send an unmistakable message that social conservatives are a small—in terms of sheer numbers—but all-important part of the Republican coalition, in the same way that supporters of Israel are for Democrats. Without them (the argument goes) you will not be able to control Congress. You may not like us, but we’re stuck together. Here, what looks like defeatism is in fact sober, transactional politics of precisely the sort that Trump himself favored during his first term, when he rewarded social conservatives for their more or less unflagging support by appointing the justices who overturned Roe. While it is difficult to say exactly what concessions might be wrung out of a recalcitrant G.O.P., it would certainly be better than the status quo.
One might be tempted to suggest that these two approaches, however broadly described, more or less exhaust the political possibilities available to traditional social conservatives. But there is, I think, a third one, one that increasingly seems to me far more realistic than either. This is the not exactly remote prospect that, whether they vote or not, social conservatives are—or will soon be—so marginal that they are no longer of any importance to either of our major political parties. They will be neither martyrs nor savvy junior partners in the new post-Trump center-right coalition, but something like the English Catholic recusants during the eighteenth century, who were excluded from public life—Parliament, the universities, the professions—but otherwise largely allowed to go about their business (the occasional anti-Papist riot notwithstanding). Even laws against their owning property were frequently not enforced or else skirted by relaxed lease agreements, such as the one that allowed Pope to have his grotto at Twickenham.
Recusancy was not, all things considered, such a bad deal under the circumstances. Nor was it permanent or all-pervading. Some prominent recusant families, having weighed their religious commitments alongside their perceived civic obligations and their very real economic prospects, outwardly conformed to the state religion. Others waited and dreamed of better days, which did in fact come.
To bypass the Elizabethan reign of terror and proceed directly to political insignificance strikes me as the less unattractive of two bad outcomes, and more more realistic than a return to the days when “The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed” claimed the position on the American right now occupied by Hulk Hogan, weed, and non-E.V. pick-up trucks.
