Reagan has betrayed his most ardent allies

That sound you hear, beneath the loud reveling at the president’s precedent-shattering nomination of a woman t.o the Supreme Court, is the cracking apart or Ronald Reagan’s Great Coalition. The White House boys have just made the most basic mistake you can make in politics: They have compromised the vital interests of the president’s most ardent followers, t.o score brownie points with their political enemies. A frivolous campaign promise has been kept, and a solemn written commitment violated. Political adultery. Eighteen months ago, in the Iowa caucuses, the Right-t.o-Life movement saved Ronald Reagan from a carefully prepared ambush by his now-vice president – a defeat which could have made Ronald Reagan a footnote in the hist.ory books. A month later, in New Hampshire, the Right to Lifers provided a significant share of that ast.onishing margin of vict.ory which gave candidate Reagan irresistible momentum through the early, conclusive primaries. In return, the movement asked Mr. Reagan for a surprisingly small return. Only that Reagan support their Human Life Amendment and its progeny; that his Supreme Court nominees – be they black, white, yellow, brown, red, male or female – share the president’s internalized belief that the unborn child has the God-given right t.o live. As politics goes, this was a simple, inexpensive bargain. The candidate would get the volunteer labors of thousands, the allegiance of millions, in return for remaining true t.o his stated convictions.