How Trump Ran Over the Anti-Abortion Movement (Rolling Stone)

[Lodestar]

Trump voters have effectively sidelined one of the Republican Party's most loyal and potent constituencies

On his way to the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump ran over the anti-choice movement. Never in the post-Reagan era has a Republican presidential candidate exhibiting such flippant disregard for the movement's priorities even come close to becoming the party's standard-bearer.

Trump voters have effectively sidelined one of the Republican Party's most loyal and potent constituencies. In state after state, Trump voters do not appear to care about an issue that has driven religious conservatives to the polls and Republican presidents and legislators to cater to their demands.

The 2016 cycle was supposed to be the anti-choice movement's moment. The Supreme Court, in its first major abortion case in decades, will decide whether a controversial Texas law that could close the vast majority of the state's abortion clinics is constitutional. Even if Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia hadn't died suddenly at the peak of the primary, conservatives were poised to make judicial nominations a core loyalty test for the GOP hopefuls. But instead of elevating these issues to the forefront, Trump voters showed just how much they have pushed them to the bottom of their laundry list.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-trump-ran-over-the-anti-abortion-movement-20160303#ixzz41tXsgVen
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