"When we play together, we are more than white and Black"
From my song "Come Across the Tracks," inspired by the true story of 2 future E Street Band members coming together in de facto segregated Asbury Park in the mid-60s. 🎸🎷
#BruceSpringsteen #AsburyParkNJ #EStreetBand #RacialIntegration
How #RonaldReagan Helped #Abortion Take Over the# Republican Agenda
By Jonathan Bartho / Made by History
April 12, 2024 9:00 AM EDT
"Even as late as the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s #GOP prioritized cutting taxes, reducing the size of government, and winning the Cold War, devoting little energy to fighting cultural battles. But despite this lack of enthusiasm, Reagan was instrumental in empowering a cultural and social #conservatism with roots in the #WhiteSouth. This cultural conservatism now dominates the Republican Party and drives the war against abortion rights in 2024.
"Historically, the GOP was the more liberal party on abortion — especially given the #DemocraticParty’s strong appeal to Catholics across the North. That began to change in the early 1970s, as various states loosened their abortion restrictions. At the national level, a Republican shift on abortion first became evident during Reagan’s dramatic 1976 primary challenge against President Gerald Ford.
"After losing the first five presidential primaries, #NorthCarolina became a must win for Reagan. He entrusted his campaign in the Tar Heel State to the North Carolina Congressional Club — the political machine of Senator Jesse Helms. A former Democrat, Helms had only joined the GOP six years earlier. He and his lieutenants devised a campaign centered on social and cultural issues, and Reagan stunned the incumbent president by six points.
"The victory rescued Reagan's campaign, and demonstrated his popularity with southern conservative voters, donors, and strategists — many, like Helms, recently converted Democrats — who relished Reagan’s anti-statist rhetoric and despised Ford as an establishment moderate. As his campaign struggled to break through in the North, it was southern support that propelled Reagan all the way to the party convention in Kansas City. His Southern success gave Reagan’s backers significant influence as the GOP met to select a nominee and draft a platform.
"At a pre-convention meeting, Helms and his allies formulated a range of right-wing policy positions that they wanted to force into the GOP platform. Alongside opposition to #GunControl and school busing to achieve #RacialIntegration, these southern Republicans demanded that their new party explicitly oppose #LegalAbortion. Reagan, though far more focused on economic issues and foreign policy, owed so much of his success to Helms and his political machine that he reluctantly green-lighted their platform challenges."
Read more:
https://time.com/6966056/republican-abortion-arizona-reagan/
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/DlRqW
#AbortionRights #ProChoice #AntiAbortion #History #USHistory #WomensRightsAreHumanRights #RoeVsWade #WomensRights #KlannedKarenhood
Jason Didner
DoomsdaysCW