It is said that George W. Bush won the 2004 presidential
election because of religious voters, especially evangelical
Protestants. What is not said is that John F. Kerry lost the
election because he failed not only to win religious voters
generally but Catholics specifically. Because he lost Catholics —
an amazing fact when one considers that Kerry himself is Catholic
— he lost the race.
Put differently, Catholics voted for the Protestant, George W.
Bush, and did so in large part because they agree more with him
than Kerry on moral issues, such as abortion, closest to Catholic
hearts. Just as Al Gore did not win the Electoral College in 2000
because he couldn’t carry his home state of Tennessee, John Kerry
failed because he couldn’t bring a natural constituency from his
own church.
According to CNN’s exit poll data, 27% of those who voted on
Tuesday were Catholic, which equated to roughly 31 million of 115
million voters. How these Catholics voted is striking: They voted
for Bush over Kerry by 51 to 48%. In other words, they mirrored the
popular vote to the exact number.
Kerry lost the Catholic vote to Bush by at least a million. A
Catholic with a major party nomination should have won the Catholic
vote by several million. Another Democratic senator from
Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, once won an extremely close
election because he overwhelmingly took the Catholic vote.
The numbers diverge more sharply when one considers devout
Catholics compared to those who find their way to church only for
weddings and Christmas. Catholics who attend Mass weekly voted for
Bush by 55% to 44%.
The breakdown among states is most interesting. Bush remained
close to Kerry in Pennsylvania, a state with millions of pro-life
Catholic Democrats, which went for Kerry 52 to 48%, because he
carried Catholics who go to Mass weekly by 52 to 48%. In New
Hampshire, which barely went for Kerry, Bush took Catholics who
attend Mass weekly by 63 to 35%.
Most impressive, Catholics played a key role in Florida and
Ohio. In Florida, they comprised 28% of voters, and went for Bush
57 to 42%. In Ohio, they made up 26% and went to Bush 55 to 44%.
The margin was even wider for Catholics who attend Mass weekly: In
Florida, they went to Bush by almost two to one, 66 to 34%, and in
Ohio they supported Bush by 65 to 35%.
In fact, Catholics for Bush made it unnecessary to begin
counting provisional ballots in Ohio. Ohio Catholics cast 780,000
votes for Bush and 624,000 for Kerry, a difference of 156,000
votes. Compare that to the overall vote difference for all Ohio
ballots: which was 136,000. Thus it can be asserted that Kerry lost
Ohio, and therefore the election, because he couldn’t get the
support of people of his own faith in Ohio.
The Catholic vote kept Bush competitive in the liberal East,
where the 41% of voters who are Catholic went for the Protestant
president by 52 to 47%, and those who attend Mass weekly supported
him by 56 to 42%. Bush actually won the Catholic vote in New York
by 51 to 48%. Those Catholics were offset by the 12% of New Yorkers
who claimed no religion at all; these atheists eagerly voted for
Kerry by 78 to 19%. Kerry actually almost lost the Catholic vote in
his own liberal home state of Massachusetts, where Catholics gave
him the nod by a paltry 50 to 49%.
THE ISSUE BEHIND THIS Catholic snub was abortion. Pro-life
Catholics were aghast at the prospect of a Catholic president
becoming the greatest champion of legalized abortion ever to step
foot in the Oval Office, as Kerry would have been. Kerry could
speak all day about how his piety would prompt him to boost the
minimum wage. Catholics could care less; they wanted him to defend
babies in the womb.
The Democratic Party has ditched pro-life Catholic Democrats
(like my grandmother in the mountains of Pennsylvania), pursuing
instead the pro-choice feminist driving an SUV through the suburbs
of Maryland. In so doing, it has lost the votes of millions of
people who long voted Democrat. By bowing before the altar of the
feminist church, liberals like John Kerry have ceded a huge
constituency. It cost the Democrats the 2004 election, and may do
so again in 2008.
Liberals will bellyache about how Karl Rove took the vote by
mass-mobilizing evangelical Protestants. What they will not talk
about is how they, and a presidential nominee named John F. Kerry,
drove both evangelicals and Catholics toward Bush. Kerry did more
for Protestant-Catholic unity in America than the churches
themselves could accomplish. The fact is that moderate to
conservative Catholics had nowhere to go but to George W. Bush.
Liberal Christians like Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi say that
Democratic politicians are “faith-filled” people as well; they read
the Bible and Matthew’s gospel. However, if church-going Democrats
want to win the church-going population, the solution is obvious:
it’s about abortion, stupid — an answer they do not want to hear.
Call us club-carrying troglodytes, but us simple-minded Christians
in the hinterland just can’t countenance that Jesus would be a
champion of legalized abortion. And until Democrats recognize that,
they will never win the churchgoers they need to drive them to the
White House.
