This is all my opinion, of course, but I think the beauty of the Reagan revolution of 1980 was that pro life Christians formed a strategic coalition with other people who weren’t necessarily pro life, some of whom may have even been pro choice and many of whom probably didn’t even care, but who nevertheless had a certain ‘conservative’ view on economic theory. At the moment, in Europe, Christians and the Green Party (or Parties? I have no idea!) have formed a strategic alliance to oppose cloning. Isn’t that neat? So cool!

Maybe you don’t like the idea of cooperating with ‘the enemy.’ But personally, I love this. The number one reason is that the only real enemy is Satan. These people are, perhaps, people we disagree with, and, perhaps, misguided or confused people with misplaced priorities, or, perhaps, evil sinners, which would mean they have a lot in common with me, so big deal, you know. That’s what I think. So what if Christians can’t by themselves outvote abortion because some of us are pro-choice (definitely confused and misguided) and we don’t have nearly a majority? We can get together with people who agree with us economically (even though we care about pro-life more than about the economy) and people who don’t care much about pro life but with whom we may agree with regarding smaller government (such as those conservatives who have a more libertarian bent) and maybe even with people like the NRA, with whom many of us a agree and, I daresay, many of us don’t. Put all those groups together, we have a majority. The other groups will help us vote pro life (even if they don’t really care), and we’ll vote pro-small-government (some of us like that anyways) and fiscally conservative (some of us like this, too!) and maybe even go for some pro-gun-rights issues (even if you don’t go for some of the Second Amendment arguments, maybe you think that saving forty million babies over the next couple of decades is worth the risk of forty gun accidents).

So, what are Christians doing now? Check this CNN article about how the Republican Party’s official position is that it is pro-life and pro-traditional marriage, but it tolerates a certain level of dissent. (By contrast, check out this article and this article about how Democrats for Life is allowed but hardly feels welcome.)

Major speakers at the Republican National Convention are going to be guys I’ve always heard were pro-choice Republicans, Arnold Swarzaneggar (apologies if misspelled) and Rudy Guiliani. These guys are Republicans for economic reasons (as far as I know). We don’t have James Dobson or Natalie Stilwell speaking about voting pro-life at the Convention. This is a bit different from the Reagan 1980 convention, where, as I recall being told, pro-life Christians had major Convention roles. But this is just part of the strategery. People up to speed on politics know that Bush has done more for pro-life in four years than just about anyone (I think he did more than Reagan), so pro-life Christians are already in the fold. But swing voters may be attracted by Arnold and Rude Guiliani. The idea is to just quietly let the Christian pro-lifers vote for Bush (it’s a virtual certainty for most of them) and make a lot of noise to attract swing voters.

This is my opinion, but the point of all this is to say that, if you’re a pro-life Christian and you liked the Reagan coalition, you should love Bush-Cheney 2004.