The Northern Strategy Explained

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I don't understand how the GOP executes the Northern strategy without abandoning their Southern and Interior West base, and the evangelical conservatives. I would assume there would need to be a sea change in American politics for the Northern Strategy to be effective, since it would effectively repudiate the Reagan coalition. E.g, it would shift the GOP coalition to the North, with an intent to be competitive in working class pockets of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, as well as New Jersey.

The big problem is that the Southern evangelicals and the cultural conservatives have an iron grip on the Party's nomination. They were among Trump's best supporters in the primaries. Trump pledged conservative judges, which is anathema to the Northern areas that may support Trump and a more moderate economically minded GOP but are turned off by the social issues.

This Northern strategy assumes the collapse of the GOP's evangelical core, which would assume they became powerless, which is not quite happening without a major event to convince the GOP to shift from the Reagan formula. I don't see that absent a sea change in American politics, on the order of say, the post-World War II political regime shifting to the left drastically in Europe and the Conservatives coping by adopting the strategy you outline.

Your Northern strategy, in other words, IMO, may make sense but it only makes sense in the context of the Democrats realigning the country and the GOP responding by adopting your strategy to stay viable.

I don't think you understand how much Christianity is declining in this country.  And thus the GOP will portray itself as the protector of secularism against religious immigrants.  This is basically what's happening in Europe.

I doubt that the shrinking base of Christian conservatives will allow this to happen. At the least they'll fight tooth and nail. Most Republican politicians and voters are very religious still, and many are just as religious as the immigrants they oppose. Democrats have been the relatively-secular party, but in the future (as they are now) I see them being a pluralist party, meaning that they accommodate different religions and ethnicity under their coalition. Republicans under Trump will continue down the path of being a white Christian party unless they change something.

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Being against "SJW" stuff (ie gender equality, lgbt equality, racial equality) is socially conservative. It is just a less-religious form, but don't kid yourself about the GOP becoming any more tolerant due to a decrease in religiosity.

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"Right-wingers in the Netherlands are already promoting themselves as the defenders of social liberalism."

Yeah, see, the problem is that the right-wing hates social liberalism. It's hypocritical for them to claim that they defend it. In reality, they're using xenophobia to drive a wedge between social liberals and immigrant groups who would ally with the socially liberal parties on economic issues.

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Very relevant article to this discussion:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/breaking-faith/517785/

Also here's a question: does increased secularization mean pro-life positions will become less popular? Moral opposition to abortion is predominantly (if not entirely) rooted in religious doctrines against it. There aren't any secular reasons I can think of to classify something (a pre-viable fetus) as a legal person (something which it currently isn't and hasn't been in states which have never banned abortion).