Time to abort opposition to abortion?

Reflecting on the 2012 presidential election, Half Sigma writes:

Republicans are on the losing side of the abortion issue. It doesn’t matter that Romney, personally, didn’t make abortion a big issue. Everyone knows that Republicans are against abortion, and he selected a staunchly anti-abortion Vice Presidential nominee in Paul Ryan. That the Republican Party has morons like Richard Mourdock who think that the demon-spawn of rapists are a “gift from God” only makes things that much worse.

The Edison exit polls, paid for and reported on by the major media, didn't query voters on abortion at the state level, but Reuters has the information. The following shows the public split on the legality of abortion in the nine tightest swing states as well as in Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania--mostly white, moderate places that it is imperative for the GOP to convert to red to maintain electoral viability in the face of demographic trends (read Hispanic immigration and fecundity) coloring states like Colorado, Arizona, Florida, Nevada (which has probably already crossed the rubicon)--and eventually even strongholds like Texas--blue. The "legal" column is comprised of those saying abortion should be legal in "most" or "all" cases; the "illegal" column of those responding it should be illegal in "most" or "all" instances. The "unsure" contingents are ignored:

State	Legal %	Illegal %
Nevada	69.3	30.7
New Hampshire	67.6	32.4
Colorado	62.3	37.7
Florida	62.3	37.7
Pennsylvania	60.9	39.1
Virginia	60.3	39.7
Ohio	56.9	43.1
Minnesota	56.7	43.3
Michigan	56.1	43.9
Wisconsin	55.1	44.9
Iowa	53.7	46.3
North Carolina	53.4	46.6

In all twelve of the states under consideration, the pro-choice position is held by a majority of the electorate. And in places like Virginia and Colorado--just a decade ago seemingly reliably Republican--there exists pro-choice 'super majorities'. If the GOP isn't able to enlist the states with old America demography--Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania--in a hurry, it's conceivable to me that I'll never see another Republican president in my lifetime. The above strikes me as reasonable evidence that the part of the official 2012 Republican National Committee platform that reads as follows makes this crucial task even more difficult to accomplish:

We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.

HS thinks dropping the pro-life platform (along with a determination to hold the line on tax rates for high earners) from the national ticket is the way to get there. The I'm-no-political-strategist disclaimer assumed, the GOP should take a 10th amendment states' rights tact on abortion. It'll retain the pro-lifers (because hey, at least the federal government won't be against us*) without turning off SWPL whites, who don't do much aborting of their own but who like to think they'd be able to if the need ever arose. Taking a page from Gary Johnson's playbook, it could even be pitched as being the ultimate 'pro-choice', position. Onward, liberty!

* In states like Mississippi (37.8% legal, 62.2% illegal), abortion could be outlawed entirely, although there'd undoubtedly be some rhetorical adroitness required to deal with the charge that to get to a states' rights spot on abortion, Roe v Wade would have to be revisited.

Unsustainable sustainability?

In a post contemplating the dynamics of a paradigmatic political shift from contemporary left vs. right to localist vs. globalist, Steve Sailer remarks that the buzz phrase "sustainable", while favored by crunchy hipsters more than those identifying as politically conservative, reflects a deeply conservative impulse. An article in Slate illustrates awareness of this shifting, and it's probably less inchoate than it feels:

As I look across Europe I don't know what to call the wave of discontent, as most of the parties on the outlying right or left have more in common with one another right now than they do with anyone in the center. Generally speaking they are anti-European, anti-globalization, and anti-immigration. Their leaders, in the words of a French friend, want to "withdraw from the world." They don't like their multiethnic capital cities or their open borders, and they don't care for multinational companies or multilateral institutions.

I won't try to add anything more to that other than to say that I've bounced between labeling myself as an "empirical paleoconservative" and a "localist" for several years now, and that it is the federalist aspects of libertarianism that appeal most to me.

The primary reason I bring this all up, though, is because of a perceived drop off in the use of terms like "sustainable". I remember hearing it and other phrases like it, such as "green policies" and "environmentalism", more when I was in high school and in college than I do now. Maybe it's a shift in personal environment (heh), and the economic malaise probably has something to do with it as well, as it's no secret that relatively abstract concerns like those dealing with the state of the physical environment are the first ones pushed to the back burner when money starts getting tight.

Using Google's Ngram viewer, the frequency of "sustainable", "green policies", and "environmentalism", respectively, in English language books published from 1950 through 2008:

The last few recessional years aren't included as 2008 is the most recent year for which there are data, so the decline happened before we collectively realized that we were considerably poorer than we thought we were. The dips aren't quite nosedives and might just be decadal blips in what turns out to be a long-run cycle towards growing environmental emphasis at the societal level. The previous focus on global warming (red) that has since morphed into the more all encompassing climate change (blue) hasn't abated, for instance:

 
 Over the long-long run, demographics may relegate such faggy concerns to history's dustbin.