That a reply tweet got so much reaction is funny and, I guess, revealing.

So, yes, the constitutional coup began in the 60s, but it was Roe that began the ideological realignment of the parties & mobilized Evangelicals into politics. https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1307471178018230272

This is why ThEy WeRe EiSeNhOwEr ApPoInTeEs is so ignorant. Yes, from the 50s to the 70s onwards there were lots of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. ....What changed?

People very seriously owning me for thinking Roe v Wade is not a conservative decision. We really live in the most moronic timeline.

Like, it is historically uncontroversial that from the 60s onwards, there was a concerted push by the left to use the Court to get policy wins. Nobody talks about the Warren Court’s rightward turn. It was the left that politicized the Court.

And no, Dred Scott and Lochner aren’t the same thing. We know of them *because they’re exceptions* to the rule. The face-off between FDR & the Court lasted a few years. It’s now been *fifty years* that ~half the country loathes the Court. That’s new.

And talking about who was a Republican or a Democrat is, again, such a massive self-own. It is, again, historically uncontroversial that the parties were then ideologically heterogeneous, as was the American small-r republican tradition.

When policy wins are about legislation, you create a coalition of legislators around a particular bill. When they’re about getting your guy on the court, it’s about electing the guys with the right letter next to their name.

The great exodus of conservatives to the GOP and of liberals to the Democrats starts with Roe. It just does. And then everything else flows from that.

To go back to my original point, @matthewstoller’s excellent book bemoans the extinction of the populist pro-working class Democrat. Why did he go extinct? Because his constituents started voting Team Red because judges.

And his Blue colleagues embraced individual liberationism and sought allies who had an interest in unmooring the individual from traditional structures—i.e., corporations. Hence, neoliberalism.

Is that the whole story? Nothing is ever the whole story, but it’s a pretty freaking big part of the story. And while the conclusion might taste bitter to some, all of the points of the historical argument are really, really well attested historically. Gimme a break.

So much of left-wing discourse boils down to "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?" Why are conservatives ~politicizing~ OUR Court?

Now, the reason my dashed-off reply tweet proved so triggering to so many is that it places opposition to the Court in the 70s and not 60s. In a rational discussion with sane people, it would be totally fair to point out that RW opposition to the Court *begins* in the 60s.

And it does, because that’s when the judicial coup begins. My point was that Roe is when the ideological sorting begins & when changing the Court becomes a *top* issue for conservatives. And again, rational people can argue the details.

But the reason why the LOLs have to come is that if conservative opposition to the Court begins in the 60s then that means that it was because of ~~~civil rights~~~. And then it means that if conservatives don’t like the Court, it’s because they’re raaaaaaacist.

Because everything is always everywhere about race, conservatism is fully explained by just being the KKK, and the only way we know how to have discourse is to call our adversaries barbarians.