"Anti-Sharia law initiatives could be in future election cycles what anti-gay marriage initiatives were before," Marc Ambinder from The Atlantic magazine once wrote. "That is, a cultural wedge issue that the [Republican Party] uses to ensure that hard-core conservatives enthusiastically flock to the polls." To illustrate this point, Ambinder noted that former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich once told conservative activists at the Value Voters Summit that, "I am opposed to any efforts to impose Sharia in the United States, and we should have a federal law that says under no circumstances in any jurisdiction in the United States will Sharia be used in any court to apply to any judgment made about American law."

XREF: Connects to historical Republican use of anti-gay marriage initiatives as cultural wedge issues to mobilize base voters.

XREF: Connects to the broader pattern of cultural wedge issues used to mobilize conservative voters, similar to anti-gay marriage ballot measures.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 602