Catholics were told by presidential candidate Sen. James G. Blaine (R-Maine) in 1884 that they weren’t welcome in the GOP: Blaine called the Democrats the party of “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion”. As a result, Catholics stayed away from the GOP.
Interestingly, today, who would doubt that Obama or Hillary Clinton would put faithful Catholics into concentration camps if they could get away with it.
I’m a lifelong Catholic; prior to moving to the DC area in 1976 I was a staunch Democrat, because both my father’s family and my mother’s family were Democrats. It wasn’t until I moved to DC that I found out that the ‘Rats despised most everything I believed in. I’ve been a conservative ever since.
As for the Church, it is split into a number of factions—probably half of those who call themselves Catholics are CINOs; most of these don’t even go to Mass, and their champions in DC are Pelosi, Durbin, Mikulski, etc., etc.
Then you have the quisling element, such as the apparat within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and people like John “Iscariot” Jenkins of Notre Dame who pretend to be Catholic when they need to raise money from believing Catholics, but then are self-hating Catholics when they gather with their heretical brethren from places like Harvard and Yale.
Then you have conservative novus ordo Catholics—those who try to defend the new order established by Vatican II, but who go to Mass every Sunday and cling to pre-Vatican II traditions. The EWTN organization (which I happen to admire in most respects) would be the champion of this group.
Then you have those who try to exclusively attend the 1962 Missal traditional Latin Mass; Pat Buchanan is one of this type of Catholic. There are at least two orders of priests who operate churches “in union with Rome”; the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter; and the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest.
Then you have those who attend the chapels operated by the Society of St. Pius X or Society of St. Pius X—Strict Observance. Pope John Paul II (unjustly in my view) excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The SSPX and SSPX-SO recognize the present pope, but the Vatican trashes these wonderful priests every chance they get.
Then you have the sedevacantists, those that believe that John XXIII excommunicated himself when he called Vatican II, and that his successors have excommunicated themselves, and as a result there has been an interregnum which started in 1958 at the death of Pope Pius XII. They continue to say Mass according to the authentic Missale Romanum of 1570 published by Pope Pius V. There are maybe 50,000 of this group, tops.