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Will Catholic Reactionaries, Lured Away by GOP, Return to Dems?

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Media Transparency - Sep 23, 2007http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=212

Neocon Catholic leaders, nurtured by GOP and
Conservative Philanthropy, on their heels

Catholic voters migrated back to the Democrats in the 2006 midterm
elections. Was it a temporary move or are they heading home for the
long term?

by Bill Berkowitz

In the 2004 presidential election cycle, Catholics, whose vote was
considered open to both parties, were carefully courted by the
Republicans. GOP organizers -- accompanied by their neoconservative
Catholic brethren -- brought the "traditional family values" mantra to
the table, highlighting supposed agreement between Catholics and
conservative evangelical Christians on two major issues -- abortion and
same-sex marriage.

In the actual election, Republican George W. Bush wound up receiving 52
percent of the Catholic vote, up from 47 percent in 2000, to John
Kerry's 47 percent.

In 2006, however, Catholics, who compose a 67 million-person slice of
the electorate, favored Democrats by 55 percent to 45 percent,
according to National Election Pool exit polls. Jeff Diamant of
Religion News Service reported that "Catholic voting patterns varied by
state, but the overall shift helped Democrats in several big states
like Pennsylvania and Ohio, according to John Green, a senior fellow at
Washington's Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life."

"For much of the 20th century, American Catholics were loyal Democrats,
but in recent elections their voting patterns have been largely
indistinguishable from the general population," Diamant pointed out.
"And for the last quarter-century, conservative Catholics and white
evangelicals have increasingly voted Republican, making opposition to
abortion and same-sex marriage their top political issues."

GOP builds Catholic leaders and institutions

Prior to the 2006 election, the GOP's multi-year organizing effort to
woo Catholic voters paid off in part because, working hand-in-glove
with conservative philanthropy, it sought out, found and funded a
number of Catholic neoconservatives who would essentially become
spokespersons for the Republican Party.

Michael Novak, a neoconservative author and philosopher who currently
holds the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and
Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, Ralph McInerny, a
University of Notre Dame Professor of medieval studies, Richard
Neuhaus, the publisher of First Things (website), Deal Hudson, a
Bush/Cheney liaison to Catholic voters, and others became indispensable
allies.

Novak and McInerny brought years of conservative investment to the
George W. Bush presidential campaign, and then to his subsequent
administrations. In 1982, they launched Catholicism in Crisis
(website), a conservative magazine that provided a profoundly partisan
"voice for conservative critics of the American hierarchy at a time
when the U.S. Bishops Conference was preparing pastoral letters on war
and the economy," the National Catholic Reporter's Joe Feuerherd
reported in the August 19, 2004 edition of NCR:

As the American bishops moved to the left politically, Crisis (as
the name would eventually be shortened to) argued the morality of
nuclear deterrence, supported Ronald Reagan's policies in Central
America, and defended U.S.-style capitalism against its critics.

Theologically, Crisis was conservative, backing Pope John Paul II
and critical of those whose interpretations of the Second Vatican
Council differed from those offered by Rome. Over the years, the
magazine's contributing editors and publication committee would become
a who's who of conservative Catholicism: papal biographer George
Weigel, Nurturing Network president Mary Cunningham Agee, former Drug
Czar William Bennett, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski, CEO J. Peter Grace, former Secretary of State Alexander
Haig, former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, former U.S. Ambassador
to the Vatican Thomas Melady, Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan,
novelist Walker Percy, former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon, and
political activist Paul Weyrich among them.

Deal Hudson entered the scene in the mid-1990s. He left his academic
career at Fordham University to become senior editor of Crisis in 1994
and editor the following year. He became the Republicans' go-to-guy for
all things Catholic.

In a National Catholic Reporter story dated August 19, 2004, Feuerherd
described Hudson as a "thrice-married former Baptist minister ... a
regular White House visitor, a leading Bush campaign Catholic proxy,
and a widely quoted partisan unafraid to use his pen to serve the Bush
cause."

At Crisis, Hudson found his calling: Feuerherd reported that he managed
to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from such right wing
foundations as Bradley and Scaife. Tom Monaghan, then the owner of the
Domino's Pizza chain, signed up for 1,000 subscriptions.

"Hudson further boosted circulation through improved professional
direct mail solicitations and raised the magazine's profile by hosting
radio and television programs on the Eternal World Television Network,"
Feuerherd reported. "The drably designed monthly became a four-color
glossy and established an Internet presence. Fundraising was no longer
a matter of last-ditch solicitations to stave off financial disaster,
but a series of well-planned and well-attended 'partnership dinners,'
golf outings, and cruises."

By 2004, the Republican Party's Catholic project was firing on all
cylinders.

Then came the story that detailed the circumstances under which Hudson
was forced to leave New York's Fordham University.

According to Feuerherd, Hudson's "rise to influence and his status as
public arbiter of Catholic morals is all the more remarkable given that
almost 10 years to the day of the 2004 St. Patrick's Day celebration,
the then-Fordham University philosophy professor stood accused of
breaching the bounds of the professor-student relationship."

Documents obtained by NCR found that Hudson had "invited a vulnerable
freshman undergraduate, Cara Poppas, to join a group of older students
for a pre-Lenten 'Fat Tuesday' night of partying at a Greenwich Village
bar. The night concluded after midnight in Hudson's Fordham office,
where he and the drunken 18-year-old exchanged sexual favors. The
fallout would force his resignation from a tenured position at the
Jesuit school, cost him $30,000, and derail a promising academic
career."

Hudson resigned from his position as chair of the Republican National
Committee's "Catholic Outreach" effort as soon as he got wind that the
story was about to be published.

Catholic-boating John Kerry

In 2004, John Kerry was not only "Swift Boated" over his military
record, but he was "Catholic Boated" as well. GOP officials, and their
Catholic neoconservative surrogates, continuously mocked and demeaned
his religious beliefs.

In March 2004, George Neumayr, managing editor of the American
Spectator, wrote that Kerry was "a more checkered Catholic" than John
F. Kennedy. "Unlike Kennedy who had some residual sense of respect for
the Church, Kerry uses his Catholicism as a campaign prop while
sabotaging its teachings."

"When people openly and persistently say, 'Well, I don't intend to be a
faithful Catholic' on matters X, Y, or Z, then the bishop and the
parish pastor and every priest has to say, 'You've got a spiritual
problem,'" The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief of First
Things, told Focus on the Family's Family News in Focus.

At around the same time, a Bishops task force, headed by Washington
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, Chairman of the Domestic Policy
Committee of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, basically joined
forces with Judie Brown, the head of the American Life League, in an
attempt to discipline progressive Catholic politicians.

Hudson, who at the time was one of George W. Bush's most trusted and
influential Catholic advisors, wondered whether "individual bishops
[would] continue to publicly challenge pro-abortion politicians and
will they be willing to challenge Sen. Kerry directly? Will they allow
the church's symbols to be associated with a candidate who has gone to
some length to portray himself as the most pro-abortion candidate?"

Two months before the election, the Republican National Committee
launched a website called "KerryWrongForCatholics.com." The Boston
Globe's Michael Kranish reported that the effort was aimed at "tak[ing]
the Massachusetts senator to task for voting against the Defense of
Marriage Act, favoring civil unions for gays and lesbians, opposing
vouchers for private schools, and taking stands on abortion and other
issues that are contrary to church teachings."

Kranish also pointed out that Priests for Life had "announced a $1
million campaign, including television commercials, aimed at persuading
voters to support candidates who oppose abortion," and Catholic
Answers, another non-profit group, would be "issuing millions of voter
guides that list five 'nonnegotiable' issues for Catholic voters:
abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and
'homosexual marriage.'" Winds of change

The 2006 mid-term election brought about another shift amongst Catholic
voters as they began drifting back to the Democratic Party. During the
campaign, Democratic candidates appeared to be more comfortable talking
about their religious beliefs, they attempted to broaden the "values"
debate to include poverty, health care, the environment, and care for
those with AIDS, and they devoted significant resources to the election
organizing effort.

Catholic voters were clearly disturbed by the Bush/Cheney quagmire in
Iraq; disgusted by the administration's horrifyingly slow response to
Hurricane Katrina; appalled by the ...

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