Rove reveals what led to victory(credits president's win to strong turnout of churchgoers)

Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, continued his public victory dance Tuesday, attributing Republican dominance in part to cultural issues such as gay marriage as well as a strong turnout of regular churchgoers.

In an hourlong lunch meeting with reporters, Rove expanded on the presidential campaign and about a second Bush term. He suggested that opposition to gay marriages resonated with many voters this year. Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages.

"This is an issue of which there is broad general consensus," he said. "People do not like the idea of the concept of marriage as a union between a man and woman being uprooted and overturned by a few activist judges or a couple of activist local elected officials."

Rove said the president did well with evangelical Christians the campaign targeted and with other people who attend church regularly. He said that Bush received a greater percentage of votes among Catholics this time than in 2000.

His comments were the latest in a rare round of media discussions for Rove, who has been reluctant to comment publicly about his work. It started Sunday with an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press.

On Tuesday, Rove referred to the South and the Prairie states as "big swaths of the country where Democrats are becoming less and less competitive." When he was asked why Bush this time lost every New England state, Rove acknowledged the home region advantage for Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

To underscore the impressive nature of last week's win, Rove noted that Bush's getting 51 percent of the popular vote was better than any Democrat presidential contender since Lyndon Johnson received 61 percent in 1964. However, Bush received a smaller percentage of votes than his father did in 1988, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Richard Nixon in 1972.

While Rove echoed Bush's contention that he will try and reach out to Democrats to work on legislation in a second term, he said the president had been frustrated by lack of bipartisanship in Washington.

"This is one of the things he shakes his head at because in Austin, Texas, politics is like Friday night football, a blood sport. But after you get it done you sort of put it aside for a couple of years and try to find ways to work together," Rove said.

Democrats, however, have complained that for much of his first term the president did not work with them and failed to live up to his pledge to be a uniter, not a divider.

When pressed, he also faulted independent groups working against Kerry, such as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which ran ads questioning Kerry's Vietnam service. He said the Swift Boat group, whose leaders included Houston attorney John O'Neill, had an impact on the race.

Rove said that he expected to remain in the White House for the second term as a senior adviser. But he said presidential candidates seeking expertise in 2008 will have to look elsewhere.

"It will be left to somebody else who has a little bit more energy and interest than me," he said. "This will be the last presidential campaign I will ever do."

A CATHOLIC VOTER’S GUIDE -
THE FIVE NON-NEGOTIABLE ISSUES
These five current issues concern actions that are intrinsically evil and must never be promoted by the law. Intrinsically evil actions are those which fundamentally conflict with the moral law and can never be deliberately performed under any circumstances. It is a serious sin to deliberately endorse or promote any of these actions, and no candidate who really wants to advance the common good will support any action contrary to the non-negotiable principles involved in these issues.

1. Abortion

The Church teaches that, regarding a law permitting abortions, it is "never licit to obey it, or to take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or to vote for it" (EV 73). Abortion is the intentional and direct killing of an innocent human being, and therefore it is a form of homicide.

The unborn child is always an innocent party, and no law may permit the taking of his life. Even when a child is conceived through rape or incest, the fault is not the child's, who should not suffer death for others' sins.

2. Euthanasia

Often disguised by the name "mercy killing," euthanasia also is a form of homicide. No person has a right to take his own life, and no one has the right to take the life of any innocent person.

In euthanasia, the ill or elderly are killed, by action or omission, out of a misplaced sense of compassion, but true compassion cannot include intentionally doing something intrinsically evil to another person (cf. EV 73).

3. Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Human embryos are human beings. "Respect for the dignity of the human being excludes all experimental manipulation or exploitation of the human embryo" (CRF 4b).

Recent scientific advances show that often medical treatments that researchers hope to develop from experimentation on embryonic stem cells can be developed by using adult stem cells instead. Adult stem cells can be obtained without doing harm to the adults from whom they come. Thus there is no valid medical argument in favor of using embryonic stem cells. And even if there were benefits to be had from such experiments, they would not justify destroying innocent embryonic humans.

4. Human Cloning

"Attempts . . . for obtaining a human being without any connection with sexuality through 'twin fission,' cloning, or parthenogenesis are to be considered contrary to the moral law, since they are in opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union" (RHL I:6).

Human cloning also involves abortion because the "rejected" or "unsuccessful" embryonic clones are destroyed, yet each clone is a human being.

5. Homosexual "Marriage"

True marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Legal recognition of any other union as "marriage" undermines true marriage, and legal recognition of homosexual unions actually does homosexual persons a disfavor by encouraging them to persist in what is an objectively immoral arrangement.

"When legislation in favor of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic lawmaker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral" (UHP 10).

ABBREVIATIONS

CCC Catechism of the Catholic Church

CPL Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Notes on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life

CRF Pontifical Council for the Family, Charter of the Rights of the Family

EV John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life)

RHL Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation

UHP Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons

Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics

Catholic Ping - please freepmail me if you want on/off this list

Well this is a good time to say that the cup is half full...indeed more (52%) full. (GWB took 61% of evangelicals...this could be improved also).

In terms of those who identify themselves as Catholic or evangelical AND those who really are (you get the idea...true believers), I think Bush gets most of those votes.

The important thing is that the numbers are inching upwards on those who vote their faith, or put better, those who truly adopt their faith and apply it to all areas of life including the vote.

There are roughly 50 million Catholics in this country and 16 million Southern Baptists. Let's assume that half of that is registered to vote. That's 33 million.

The GOP should understand that if they EVER nominate someone who is pro abort or pro gay, and if the D's simultaneously nominate someone who is anti gay and at least for some restrictions on abortion, then the GOP will lose. I remind myself of this, because just last week I was wondering if only Rudy could take out Hillary. I have come circle on that. Also, when in doubt, don't calculate...just do what's right. That means sticking with life and marriage. Let the D's go down in destruction.

Rove said one of the big surprises of the 2004 campaign was the amount of soft money spent by 527 political groups, which he said had circumvented campaign finance laws to help presidential contenders. Rove named a number of Democratic donors to 527 groups, such as billionaire George Soros, as chief offenders of laws limiting campaign contributions. When pressed, he also faulted independent groups working against Kerry, such as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which ran ads questioning Kerry's Vietnam service. He said the Swift Boat group, whose leaders included Houston attorney John O'Neill, had an impact on the race.

"Would our system have been better off without the 527s? I think so," he said.

The Democratic Party nominated a Massachusetts liberal who had no other identity that as an opponent of American prosectution of the Cold War. Ronald Reagan's success in the aggressive prosecution of that conflict should have made such people as John Kerry a laughing stock. It should have made the Democratic Party which nominated him uncompetitive outside Massachusetts and environs. But Rove and Bush elected to avoid fighting that battle and, without the SVBT whom Rove presumes to criticize, might even have lost the election.
Bush signed the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold law which institutionalizes the obvious fallacy that journalism is objective. There is no reason, other than the massive propaganda campaign of institutional journalism, to think that journalism would be objective.
In fact, nobody enters journalism without a desire for political influence. Indeed to understand the phenomenon of political liberalism it is only necessary to assume that a journalist (like all celebrities) thinks that nothing actually matters but PR.

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