Reagan in 1980 was their opportunity to make serious political hay .
At the same time , the conservative heavyweight and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and ALEC , Paul Weyrich , who famously said , “ I don ’ t want everyone to vote …,” had been arguing for over a year that merging “ local control ” of schools to keep them all-white with an anti-abortion message that would preserve white dominance of America only made sense for the Republican Party and the conservative movement .
Initially , the problem was that Reagan , as California governor , had supported and signed the nation ’ s most liberal law legalizing and making abortion widely available . His vicepresidential running mate , George H . W . Bush , was an ardent and outspoken
42 x The Trial Lawyer supporter of Planned Parenthood . But Falwell , Weyrich , and others prevailed on Reagan , and when he ran for president in 1980 , he flipped positions to support a constitutional amendment to ban abortion nationwide . Bush quietly followed .
Falwell then led a movement of white evangelical preachers ( particularly those with a high TV profile ) to support Reagan , and , as Stephen P . Miller wrote for Salon in 2014 :
“ That year [ 1980 ] witnessed a conclusive pivot in modern evangelical politics — a pivot , indeed , in the image of American evangelicalism as a whole .”
Referring to Falwell as , by 1979 , a political consultant as well as a religious leader , Miller noted :
“ During the 1980 campaign , Ronald Reagan and the evangelical conservatives engaged in a very public courting ritual .”
Reagan , of course , had kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a speech about education and states ’ rights to an all-white crowd near Philadelphia , Mississippi , where three civil rights activists had been murdered just years before .
Willing to say and do whatever it took to take the White House , Reagan was the perfect vessel for a white supremacy message opposing racial integration , welfare for Black people , and