Eleanor Clift Quotes
If there is a ground zero in the cultural wars, it is Missouri, a state where pro-life groups are strong and well organized and their agenda dominates local politics.
Clift, Eleanor. "Show Me the Center." Newsweek, 27 Oct. 2006.
This quotation is very surprising to most people who are not familiar with the history of the struggle regarding abortion in America. In the early days of the family planning movement and when abortion rights were first advocated in America, the proponents were almost all Republicans. At the time, the Republican Party consisted of economic conservatives and social liberals—“Rockefeller Republicans they would later be called. At the same time the Democratic Party was aligned very differently. The Southern Conservatives and fundamentalist Protestants of the Bible Belt were all Democrats. Most Roman Catholics were Democrats. Intellectuals at the time tended to side with the Democrats on economic issues and with the Republicans on social issues. In the 1960s the Republicans went after the racist resentment in the South over the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Southern Democrats of the Solid South switched to the Republican Party, and many liberal republicans, reacting to their party now being the party of the the anti equality racists, became Republicans. The Southern Democrats then pushed out the moderate Republicans who were the social liberals.
Eleanor Clift is an American political reporter, television pundit, and author. She is a contributor to MSNBC and blogger for The Daily Beast. She is best known as a regular panelist on the The McLaughlin Group. Clift is a board member at the IWMF (International Women's Media Foundation).
