Politics: The Catholic Vote
Norquist, Grover G.
I " , i r o l roll I Ill 14~1 by Grover G. iNorquist The Catholic Vote Active Catholics are more likely than ever to vote GOP. ~ n 196o John F. Kenned 3' won 83 percent of the Catholic vote...
...By 1996, inactive Catholics backed Clinton by 56-33 while the religiously active went for Dole by 4744...
...Where Reagan attracted Catholic voters by appealing to their ethnicity, Bush is speaking to their religious faith...
...Increasingly, political leaders are seeing the Catholic vote as a key to zooo...
...The second group is made up of "Social Renewal Catholics," who reject the social-justice agenda, affirm an absolute standard of morality, believe the government is exacerbating the decline in individual morality, and see popular culture as undermining the character of our youth...
...As it happens, Catholics for a Free Choice first called for the Vatican's expulsion at a press conference at the U.S...
...According to the survey, 13 percent of Catholics attend Mass more than four times a month, z 9 percent attend four times a month, 38 percent one to three times a month, and 2o percent not at all...
...There's its sheer size--of44 million registered Catholic voters, an estimated 30 million will vote on Novenlber 7 (assunling normal turnout...
...Bush and the Republican House have condemned this effort...
...Only zo percent said it was doing more to help...
...Since beginning his travels in June 1999, Bush has always set up meetings with Catholic leaders in cities he visited...
...Ronald Reagan carried 50 percent of the Catholic vote in 198o while winning 51 percent of the total vote...
...The latter vastly outnumber the former...
...Once he does, he quickly learns that the former are more numerous than the latter...
...More important, practicing Catholics tend to be conservative on moral issues...
...Nixon, ho~ ever, was re-elected in 1972 with 61 percent of the Catholic vote, the first time it tracked with the national average in a presidential election...
...Crisis then asked Catholic political thinkers William McGurn, Robert Novak, and Steve Wagnet to comment on the findings...
...If a "dependable Democrat" today is someone who voted Democratic in i996 and 1998 and intends to vote forA1 Gore, and a "reliable Republican" someone who voted Republican in those )ears and is committed to George W. Bush, then the Catholic vote comes down to zl percent Dependable Democrats, z 3 percent Reliable Republicans, 39 percent swing voters, and 18 percent not voting...
...Then there's its location...
...Republicans proved blind to Catholic anticipation that after zoo years there might finally be a Catholic chaplain, and the Democrats, who up to that point had shown little interest in the liberal Catholic candidate, began to demagogue the issue...
...69 percent of inactive Catholics...
...28 in Florida...
...seventy-one percent said a good thing and only 9 percent thought it bad...
...Karl Rove, chief strategist for the Bush campaign, invited Hudson and twenty leading Catholics to meetings in September 1999 and May 2000...
...If the election were held today, George Bush would win by 45 to 27 percent among all Catholics, with 29 percent undecided...
...When asked, "Sonic people want the government to do more to help people like them...
...Fifty percent replied they'd like government to help people like them, a surprisingly low figure given the question's odd phrasing...
...Hastert, Majority Leader Dick Armey, and Minority Leader Dick Gephardt would then make the final decision...
...Already 50o liberal groups have joined the See Change movement that's calling On the United Nations to expel the Vatican as an observer member because of its views on abortion and birth control...
...Clinton won 41 percent of Catholics in 1992...
...Original survey data can be found at www.QEV.com...
...In 1984 he was re-elected with 54 percent of the Catholic vote and 59 percent of the national vote...
...PostWatergate, 57 percent of Catholics voted for Jimmy Carter, who was e]ected with only 51 percent of the vote...
...mission organized by Clinton administration appointees...
...To date Gore (like Clinton) has refused to oppose i t - t o o many of his feminist and environmentalist allies want the Vatican expelled...
...Today that number is 34 percent, and z 3 percent of Catholics now consider themsehes Republican...
...two-thirds of all Catholics opted for courage to stand up for what is right...
...Civil Rights--the Catholic anti-defamation league--says, "Any candidate for public office who seeks the Catholic vote must distinguish between practicing and nonpracticing Catholics...
...Forty percent say they're conservative, 21 percent liberal, and 36 percent moderate...
...The American Spectator ' October 20oo 65...
...Since 196o there's been a decline in the number of Catholics aho call themselves Democrats and an increase in those who identiR, with Republicans and ideoGROVER G. NORQUIST is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...While Democrats have become the party of racial quotas, by 67-21 percent surveyed Catholics opposed preferences for "blacks, women and other minorities...
...The Democrats' desire to drNe a wedge between religiously active Catholics and the GOP was also evident in their use of the Congressional Chaplain affair...
...When asked, "Is the federal government in Washington doing more to help or more to hurt the moral climate in the country today...
...The first group is comprised of "Social Justice Catholics," who support activist government, support multiculturalism, self-identify as liberal, and are critical of America's efforts on behalf of the poor and minorities...
...Hudson sent the Crisis survey data to all the presidential candidates...
...In 196o, 87 percent of religiously active Catholics backed Kennedy vs...
...In response, more than 4,000 conservative groups have been organized by Austen Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, the leading Catholic non-governmental organization at the U.N., to oppose expulsion...
...and 33 in Louisiana...
...In 198o, religiously active Catholics proved for the first time more Republican than the national average...
...Which of these views is closer to your own...
...3z percent in Pennsylvania...
...But when asked if "the Catholic Church goes too far in its defense of traditional moral standards or does it not go far enough or does it get it about right...
...Among inactive Catholics, Dependable Democrats outpoll Reliable Republicans 2z to x8 percent...
...only 35 percent the social-justice view...
...The Democrats should worry that when asked, "If you had to choose, would you say America is more in need of tolerance for values other than our own, or more in need of courage to stand up for what we know is right...
...In 1968 Hubert Humphrey received 57 percent of the Catholic vote in losing to Richard Nixon...
...As Robert Novak noted, "Inactive Catholics are an amorphous blob, undetectable from the rest of the electorate and certainly not classifiable as a voting bloc to be courted...
...Sixty-four percent of Catholics called themselves Democrats in 196o , but by 1996 only 41 percent did...
...forty percent said they want goveminent to leave them alone...
...Among religiously active Catholics, Reliable Republicans outnumber Dependable Democrats 30 to 19 percent...
...Religiously active Catholics, on the other hand, are a more cohesive demographic group...
...S teve Wagner, the president of QEV Analytics who conducted the survey for Crisis, detects two distinct types of American Catholics...
...If Dole had won 53 percent of the Catholic vote in 1996 instead of the 38 he received, he'd be president today...
...Separating the 42 percent of "active Catholics" from the 58 percent of "nonactive Catholics" puts the political leanings of Roman Catholics in sharper focus...
...Hastert defused the potential crisis by unilaterally selecting Father Daniel P. Coughlin on the recommendation of Cardinal George of Chicago...
...Only one campaign responded...
...In 1998 and 1999 Crisis magazine, a Catholic journal, commissioned a survey of American Catholics to determine if there is a Catholic vote and, if so, what issues move Catholic voters...
...47 in New Jersey...
...Asked if they take "to heart" or "resent" Pope John Paul II's statements on moral issues, 62 percent said they take them to heart and only 13 percent resented being told what to do...
...Four years later Ly~ldon Johnson won 79 percent of Catholic voters in his landslide over Barry Goldwater...
...After Bush spoke at Bob Jones University and anti-Catholic positions on its Website became an issue, the great reservoir of good feeling he'd built up among Catholic leaders who felt they knew his heart helped Bush overcome the crisis...
...27 in California...
...The survey found that 75 percent of all Catholics believe "there is a crisis of declining individual morality in the country today...
...Asked if they believe that "according to 64 O c t o b e r 2 o o o ' The American Spectator the social teachings of the Catholic church is private property a good thing or a bad thing...
...The names of two Protestants and one Catholic were forwarded by the con> mission to Hastert without preference...
...eighteen percent responded too far, 24 percent not far enough, and 52 percent about right...
...n 196o John F. Kenned 3' won 83 percent of the Catholic vote while defeating Richard Nixon by fewer than nS,ooo votes...
...In the survey, 6z percent supported social renewal...
...This is heartening to Reaganites eager for the migration of Catholics into the Republican camp to continue...
...Bill Donohue, founder and chairman of the Catholic League for Religious and Democrats may rue the day they decided to tar the GOP as anti-Catholic...
...Bush personally put the issue to rest when he decided to write a letter of apology to his friend the late Cardinal O'Connor of New York because he felt he had let him down...
...Speaker Denny Hastert, in a naive burst of bipartisanship, set up a bipartisan commission to recommend three possible chaplains for Congress...
...in 1996 he took 53 percent of the Catholic vote while winning only 49 percent of the total vote...
...Others want the government to just leave them alone...
...Crisis Publisher Deal Hudson argues that if Bush and his "compassionate conservative" agenda continue to open the door to Catholics, this second wave of active Catholics-who aren't simply wandering away from the Democratic Party--would render the modern Democratic Party no longer competitive in national elections...
...Deal Hudson, the publisher of Crisis, points out that Bush's message of"compassionate conservatism" speaks directly to the religiously active Catholic...
...Feminists and the abortion lobby have worked hard to convince Americans that the Pope and the Vatican are out of sync with the vast majority of American Catholics, and that secular non-active groups such as "Catholics for a Free Choice" are more in line with their thinking...
...But there's more good news...
...37 in Wisconsin...
...Among religiously active Catholics who attend mass weekly, Bush is ahead 49-24 percent...
...Democrats may rue the day they decided to tar the GOP as anti-Catholic because it's a charge more likely to stick to them and their friends on the left...
...Both Bush and Gore are targeting swing states that have significant Catholic ntmlbers: 30 percent in Michigan and Ohio...
...The Democrats know they have a Catholic problem...
...logical consenatives...
...fully 6o percent said the government is doing more to hurt...
Vol. 33 • October 2000 • No. 8
