Roe and the Republican ascendancy

Writing in Q & O, Dale Franks asks a very interesting question: would the successful overturning of Roe v. Wade be the end of the Republican ascendancy? The thesis of the argument is, "Once Roe disappears, the GOP loses the lever they've had for the last thirty years to manipulate an increasingly important constituency, the Religious Right."

I disagree with Mr. Franks' thesis on a number of points. First off, "Roe is the settled law of the land," as Justice Roberts so eloquently put it. Except in presidental races, Roe does not bring out a substantial number of voters because there is no risk that a gubernatorial race will have a significant impact on abortion policy. In fact, a great many more of these elections would become highly relevant to those with strong abortion morals. The Religious Right would have to hit every election hard to contain the spread of permissive abortion laws, every time. That means they would already be at the polls on election day, and could easily throw the lever for Brownback for President while they vote for their local guarantor of abortion stringence.

This would no doubt lead to a dilution of the organs of those who are stringently anti-abortion in the national political debate. Again, however, the fact that Roe is settled has led to a lack of cohesion on the part of these groups. The Moral Majority is no more, and there is no currently comparable group.

I believe it would be a wash, nationally. What it would do is remove abortion as an issue, which would generally relieve some of the tendentiousness and avarice in the partisan politics in Washington.

...at least until Congress attempted to re-regulate abortion, probably under some perverted view of the Commerce Clause.