Posted on 07/28/2009 12:59:57 PM PDT by presidio9
Because Deal Hudson was director of Catholic outreach for George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, I was interested in hearing his take on the Obama administration's Catholic outreach for my God & Country column in tomorrow's U.S. News Weekly.
Hudson thinks Obama's "common ground" talk on abortion is disingenuous—the president has rolled back the ban on federal funding for abortion providers abroad, supports rescinding the federal ban on government-funded abortion in the District of Columbia, and hasn't ruled out covering abortion through healthcare reform—but is nonetheless impressed by the administration's ongoing Catholic PR blitz.
And Hudson is disturbed by the GOP's silence on the same front. "What is it that the Republicans have offered Catholics to rally behind that can compete with Obama's meeting the Holy Father or even the Notre Dame speech?" Hudson asks. "Nothing."
Excerpts from our chat:
You accompanied President Bush on his first meeting with Pope John Paul II in 2001. How did you think President Obama's first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI went?
It was misleading of the president to speak to the Holy Father about committing to abortion reduction when he knew the healthcare bill would include funding for abortion services and when he was on the record for supporting federal funding for abortions in the District of Columbia. I think those two things taken together will make his promise to the Holy Father a political mistake that will come back to haunt him when it's held up to scrutiny down the road.
If you focus just on the event and immediately afterward, it was a good day for Obama. He got what he wanted: a silent pope and an affable greeting and positive stories coming out about the warm conversation in a 30-plus-minute meeting.
From the Vatican side, there was an attempt, albeit not in your face, to control the spin on the meeting in two ways. First, the pope surprised Obama by handing him the bioethics document on human dignity, whose opening line is: "Human life should be respected from the moment of conception until death." And the Vatican press secretary stressed that life issues were discussed first and foremost with the president, and at length. The Vatican did what it needed to do without being hard-edged, which the White House seemed to accept graciously. So I don't think the White House overplayed its hand on the discussion.
Obama has made many overtures to the Catholic community, from sitting down with Catholic reporters before meeting with the pope to appointing a well-respected Catholic to be his surgeon general. Has such Catholic outreach become standard operating procedure for presidential administrations?
Bush did them, but you can't call them standard operating procedure. It's very smart for Obama to actually take the advice of his Catholic outreach team. They have done a good job navigating the challenges they face among Catholics over their policy positions. If you take some of their Catholic nominations, they seem to have a common thread. Sonia Sotomayor and/or surgeon general nominee Regina Benjamin—they are presented as Catholics, but the part of their story that the White House highlights is something that is compelling from another direction.
The administration knows in both cases that, once the Catholic issues are explored, there are going to be problems [because of the nominees' liberal positions]. But in both cases, they know they can be offset. In the case of the surgeon general, it was her rebuilding of a clinic to help the poor. That's something very appealing to Catholics.
And they know Catholics are very sensitive on Sotomayor to the struggle of a minority woman to navigate the byways of a male-dominated establishment. They have thought carefully about how they are going to offset the expected criticism of these pro-choice Catholic nominees by having stories ready that they know will appeal to Catholics and blunt criticism from the pro-life side.
When we spoke in March, you were disappointed by the Republican Party's anemic Catholic outreach effort. What's your current assessment?
There is not a unified message there. You take the case of the Sotomayor hearings. That would have been a great opportunity for the Republicans to pull together religious conservatives into a coalition. But there was a lack of intensity in their opposition.
I opposed the Republicans' anti-immigration crusade in 2005. It was a huge mistake. We'd gotten 44 percent of Hispanics in 2004, and I saw that all wash away in a number of months in 2005. So the Republicans are ignoring the fact that we have a very bad Supreme Court nominee on our hands because she's Hispanic. It's like we blew the immigration debate, so we're giving this nominee a pass. The Republican Party just hasn't done anything to reunite the religious conservative base and reanimate Catholic supporters.
What is it that the Republicans have offered Catholics to rally behind that can compete with Obama's meeting the Holy Father or even the Notre Dame speech? Nothing. The one chance they had was the Sotomayor hearings, and the best we heard was from some evangelical senators. The Catholic leadership of the Republican Party is laying low, with the exception of [New Jersey Congressman] Chris Smith.
You directed Catholic outreach for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and faced a Catholic nominee in John Kerry. How did his Catholic outreach compare with Obama's?
The contrast between Kerry's Catholic outreach and Obama's is night and day. We know that Kerry's inner circle did not take the advice they were getting from their Catholic advisers. There have been Catholic Democrats who've worked for Democratic presidential elections going back four or five elections. And they had this attitude that all American Catholics were post-Vatican II Catholics, that we know what the Vatican thinks but we know that American Catholics believe something else, and we're going to appeal to that something else. It was an undertone of we're on the side of the dissenters.
But between 2004 and 2008, a younger group of advisers like [Obama campaign Catholic outreach director] Mark Linton and [Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good co-founder] Alexia Kelley emerged. They realized that the kind of Catholics who'd voted for Bush were not the kind of Catholics who are moved by invocations of American dissent on contraception, reminders of the sex abuse scandal, and this whole plethora of smart-alecky talk about the Catholic Church in America.
Bush got the Catholic vote by showing respect for the Catholic Church and its leadership and some basic issues of importance to Catholics. And so Obama's advisers packaged him as someone who is going to do what he can to seek the same ends politically that the church wants the government to seek. It's an attitude that we know what the Vatican thinks, and we're going to go as far as we can with that. It's an undertone of respect.
The Obama White House is expected to unveil what it is calling a "common ground" approach to abortion and other reproductive health issues in coming weeks. What are your expectations for it?
Every time the Obama team has planned some sort of initiative on his behalf, it has come off pretty well. The exception would be the Notre Dame speech, which cost him. One thing we learned through the Catholic Voter Project at Crisis [a Catholic magazine Hudson published] is that Catholics don't like a lot of confrontational and aggressive speechmaking in politics. They like messages like "common ground" and "partial agreement" and "working together" and "nonpartisan."
They don't like the old evangelical, more stringent-type message. Actually, common ground has its own resonance with the official Catholic community because it comes from Cardinal [Joseph] Bernardin. So the plan is going to be one more finger in the dike of the eventual realization that the president misled the Holy Father. The policy itself is the funding of abortion, the appointment of pro-choice Catholics, and the repealing of the Mexico City policy, and that's the narrative people need to pay attention to.
0bama lies like Satan.
Bump for later reading
Bush got 52% for reelection in 2004 but he didn't win them in 2000 and things were back to normal in 2008 when Obama got 54% of the Catholic vote. Clinton himself got 53% in 1996 and that was with Perot getting another 10% of their vote that year.
The evangelicals in the Republican party just don’t “get” Catholics. Bush was the first leader since Reagan to be “simpatico.”
The evangelicals in the Republican party just don’t “get” Catholics. Bush was the first leader since Reagan to be “simpatico.”
You and the pollsters are confused by who is a Catholic. According to the Catholic Church, you stop being a member as soon as you stop going to Church every week. As soon as you start making up your own rules, you have invented your own religion.
I don't have the results for every election, but I believe 88% of practicing Catholics voted for McCain in the last one.
The Demonrats do a much better job at politics than do the Republicans generally. Elitist Republicans miss their good old days when the GOP was the Planned Barrenhood Party of Main Street banking skinflints and all Republicans were rather homogeneous in terms of nationality and socio-economic background. They apparently think they can bring the abortionist crowd back home along with the lavender "marriage" crowd and feminazis generally and since everyone down at the polo club agrees with their views, it is just hard to understand why they keep getting clobbered by commoners at the polls.
If we manage to lose this nation to permanent tyranny, permanent holocaust, socialism cubed and entrenched anti-Americanism in high places, it will not be the work of socially conservative Catholic ethnics. Also. ever bear in mind that being baptised Catholic does not make one a Catholic for life. The Faith must be lived. Many of the "Catholic" politicians and mere voters with whom you may be familiar are no more Catholic than Margaret Sanger who was baptised Catholic. If they are not weekly Mass goers and observant in other ways, including refusing support to abortion, they are not Catholic any more no matter what they may imagine. The Church defines "Catholic" not Gallup.
No one knows what the numbers are for your too specific for politics definition of Catholic is, but republicans got 62% of the white Catholics vote that go to church at least once a week.
To get to the 80s you would have to go with the white evangelicals that go to church every week, republicans got 83% of their vote.
About 32% of Hispanic voters are Protestant, they voted 56% for Bush in 2004, Catholic Hispanics gave Bush 33% of their vote in 2004, exactly the same as they did in 2000.
In the 2008 election republicans only got 22% of the Hispanic Catholic vote but they still received 48% of the Protestant Hispanic vote.
Obama is dishonest in his outreach. He is not reaching out to REAL Catholics — only the CINOs.
The canon law of the Catholic Church sets the following requirements: 1) Baptism 3) Total acceptance to the revelation of Jesus Christ as interpreted by the Church. 2) Adult Confirmation of Batismal vows (see 3) 3) Acceptance of and adherence to all other Church laws (ex: the sanctity of life) 4) Confession of sins through the sacrament of reconciliation periodically and as necessary 5) Attendence at Mass weekly and on Holy Days (1-4 are repeated during Mass) There are celebrites and political figures who call themselves Catholic, but fail to meet these requirements. When Church spokesmen are asked why someone like Ted Kennedy has not been excommunicated, the answer is frequently that no man can see into the heart of another man, but that he may have excommunicated himself. The media may accept the idea that anyone calling himself a Catholic is one. This is not the case, because religious affiliation is not the same thing as ethnicity. I don't know (and I REALLY don't care) what the rules are for evangelical Christians. The Catholic Church's rules are quite clear, and they have been in place for centuries. If you're not following them, you're not a Catholic. Period.
While you are claiming that 32% of Hispanics are Protestant, I am quite skeptical and I was using the Mexican vote figures and not the Hispanic figures generally. The other major Hispanic groups are Puerto Ricans who tend to be overwhelmingly Demonrat and the much smaller Cuban population that is still heavily Republican but not as much as previously.
I have no interest whatsoever in getting involved in a Catholic vs. Protestant urination contest here. I also claim very little knowledge of Hispanic Protestants of any stripe. If 48% voted Republican, good for them and may they be ever more Republican than they already are. I can tell you that the GOP is suiciding with the Mexican Catholic vote and that is borne out by all voting statistics in recent elections and trends among them. The high percentage of Hispanics among Catholics (most of them by far Mexican) threatens the GOP among Catholics generally since attacks on some of us are often regarded, right or wrong, as attacks on all of us.
Again, the Demonrats, in spite of their all out support for baby-killing and for sexual perversions, play the game of politics infinitely better than does the largely clueless GOP.
I’m interested in politics right now not religion so you are wasting your time giving me the long religious point of view about voting numbers.
Even you must agree that breaking the Catholic vote down to being ‘a white Catholic and attending church at least once a week’ is close enough to your definition of “Catholic”, that group was the most conservative of the Catholics, voting 62% republican in 2008, not the 88% that you thought.
“While you are claiming that 32% of Hispanics are Protestant, I am quite skeptical and I was using the Mexican vote figures and not the Hispanic figures generally. “
Hispanics and the 2004 Election:
Population, Electorate and Voters Pew Research
• Religion appears to be linked to President Bush’s improved showing
among Hispanics in 2004 over 2000, when he took 34 percent of Latino
votes. Hispanic Protestants made up a larger share of the Latino vote last
year (32% in 2004 compared with 25% in 2000), and 56 percent of these
voters supported the president in 2004, compared with 44 percent in 2000.
The president’s share of the Hispanic Catholic vote remained essentially
unchanged between 2000 and 2004.
I happen to be Catholic and I am NEVER going to change that. OTOH, I would be a fool not to ally with other hristians who agree on about 95% of the important things and differ only on a few things. I generally refuse to fight with non-Catholic Christians for the entertainment of our mutual enemies. The exceptions are when my Catholic Faith is attacked and when people who are not Catholic claim to be and misrepresent the Catholic Faith.
What percentage of the Hispanic vote is Catholic or Protestant and what percentage of the Hispanic population in the US is Catholic or Protestant are not the same thing. My Knights of Columbus Council is a verrry successful and verrry fast growing council but we have had almost no success in recruiting Mexican Catholics (who abound in the parish which is our home base). The pastor belongs and is Mexican/American and one other member is a Mexican born during World War II in Texas. Recent immigrants are afflicted with paranoia over all the immigrant-bashing and this affects even those whose papers and immigration status are entirely in order. They absolutely pack the Spanish Mass on Sunday. They are absolutely respectful, fervent religiously, large families, well-behaved kids. The people at the Anglo Masses should look as Catholic.
Further, it is important to break down the Hispanic vote by specific nations of ancestry. They are by no means homogeneous. In order to win elections, we want more of them voting our way, regardless of religious affiliation. We had better figure out how to get those votes because they are already more numerous than African-Americans. Between Hispanics and lacks, the two groups make up ore than 25% of the population, leaving us to try to get 2/3 of the Anglos despite the large number of white leftists.
Yet there is. The more the conservative American Catholics learn about what the reality of Catholic voting is then the sooner they are likely to start looking at their non conservative voting segments and try to examine what is going wrong in those parts of the Catholic demographic.
I think the secret to winning the new demographics to conservatism is to expose them to the truths of our faiths as we interpret them here in America.
Nice backtracking, ftom when your point was that a majority of Catholics voted for Obama. I don’t define Catholics, the Vatican does, but how can you make a statement like that, if you have no idea what a Catholic is in the first place. Are you accepting the MSM’s definitions again? This is sort of like admitting you don’t have all the facts than then calling a police officer stupid anyway.
You seem determined to turn a political voting issue into some kind of personal thing, voting is what it is and when American people track votes by the major religions they do not contact the Vatican or you.
By the way you really don’t seem to know much about this subject, your interest seems to be some personal chauvinism of your own related to which church you go to.
Now, believe it or now, aside from the childish isults ("you really don’t seem to know much about this subject), which have been demonstrated invalid in this very thread, I give you the benefit of the doubt. We are on the same side, and you are probably a nice guy. You just seem to be willfully ignorant on this subject. In the future, if you must spread MSM rumors and innuendo about the Catholic Church, you need to identify it as such. I won't be the only one who sees insintations like a majority of Catholics voted for Obama as a skulking attack on my faith.
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