Laura Kalman says that in the rise of the right, culture and economics have always gone hand in hand.
To Ronald Reagan‘s delight, Jimmy Carter got caught in the crossfire. In the 1980 election, according to Courtwright, feminists upset by Carter’s tepid support for abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment “cut off their party’s nose to spite its nominee’s face” and deserted the Democrats. At the same time, Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell brought into the GOP his own followers, who were equally disenchanted with Carter, the fellow evangelical whom many had embraced in 1976. From then on, moral conservatives stuck with the Republicans — for all the good it did them.
