For most Americans, the extremism of the social-conservative worldview has been largely confined to the realm of abstraction. The Supreme Court’s ruling striking down Roe v. Wade will make that fanaticism vividly real.
The conservative movement traditionally consisted of three main wings: foreign-policy hawks, anti-statist libertarians, and social conservatives. All three wings have developed radical ideas in the ideologically purified sanctity of their think tanks and media organs. On multiple occasions, the economic conservatives have seized the party’s agenda and led them to political disaster: in 1995, when Newt Gingrich shut down the government to try to coerce Bill Clinton into reducing taxes for the rich while cutting health care, in 2012, when Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ran on a regressive tax cut, and in 2017, when Ryan and Donald Trump tried to repeal Obamacare.