Bobby Jindal is a Catholic. Would Evangelicals support him, or would they reject him the same way they rejected Romney for being a Mormon ... or worse?
I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but am asking an honest question.
Not exactly the same...this evangelical has gladly gone to Mass with friends or when that was the only thing available (overseas). You wouldn't catch me dead in a Mormon temple.
>> Bobby Jindal is a Catholic. Would Evangelicals support him, or would they reject him the same way they rejected Romney for being a Mormon ... or worse?
You’ve got a couple of wrong assumptions here.
(1) Evangelicals did not reject Romney, en masse, because he was a Mormon. If the conservative vote had not been divided between Romney, Huckabee and Thompson ... any of the three likely would have beaten McCain. The trio, however, fragmented the conservative vote.
I am an evangelical, and I personally went with Thompson over Romney for a couple of reasons. (1) Romney’s record in Massachussetts wasn’t particularly conservative, (2) I don’t care for Romney’s style and delivery (he’s a little too much like a “politician” sent from central casting), and (3) the mixture of his record and slick style made me wonder whether he was just telling me what I wanted to hear (rather than what he actually believed).
None of those objections — which were very prevalent on this site — had anything to do with his religion.
(2) I don’t think most evangelicals believe Catholicism to be particularly objectionable. On the basics of Christianity, Catholicism and Protestantism are pretty close to one another. There are distinct differences, of course ... but, on moral and religious issues, Protestants and Catholics (and Mormons, for that matter) are generally on the same side.
(3) Even those that found Romney’s Mormonism objectionable (which I contend was a small minority), are still less likely to object to Catholicism. Mormonism has distinct and radical departures from Protestantism ... Catholicism has far fewer.
And ... if conservative voters would vote for a liberal because the conservative candidate was Catholic or Mormon (which I believe VERY few would) — they’re not particularly conservative, and we’ll likely be better off without them.
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They would support him. Evangelicals were the one group that supported Keyes in Illinois. They would be happy to vote for a good man like Jindal.
I don’t think that would be a big problem. Hey, if JFK could do it, so could Jindal.
Evangelicals would be foolish to reject Jindal because he is a Catholic. I would personally vote for him in a heartbeat because his value system is the same as mine on most of the important issues, even though our worship forms are quite different. There aren’t enough Evangelicals or conservative practicing Catholics to make a political difference, but when we stand together on the important moral and ethical issues we can make that difference.
The history is yes.
Why is it that Roman Catholics don't support conservative Born Again Christians?
If Bush himself got 78% in 2004 and that was the highest any Republican has ever gotten, higher than Reagan ever got, in a good year for the GOP against an awful candidate like Kerry who made no attempt to court evangelicals, and Bush is a southern evangelical himself with direct personal ties to Billy Graham and other leaders, and he got his first real start in nat’l politics as the head of his father’s outreach to evangelicals and had been courting them and cultivating for close to 20 years by the time 2004 rolled around, and the economy was in fine shape so socail issues were more important, and the younger evangelicals weren’t sold like they are on Obama to at least some degree, etc...
there’s no way Jindal or anyone else gets 85% of them. I’d say the high 70s that Bush got is pretty much the ceiling.
All things considered, McCain’s 74% was a damn good shownig. If the economy hadn’t tanked the last 6 weeks he’d have gotten at least 76% or so, pretty much the same as Bush.
but 85% is a pipe dream.