Posted on 03/07/2012 7:50:09 AM PST by marshmallow
(CNN) - Rick Santorum, a conservative Catholic who is outspoken about faith-based issues, lost Catholic voters by a wide margin in Ohio on Tuesday, potentially a key factor that allowed Mitt Romney to squeak out the narrowest of victories overall in the state.
According to CNNs exit polls, Romney took 43% of Ohio Catholics on Super Tuesday, compared to 31% for Rick Santorum, and Romney beat Santorum overall by 38% to 37%.
Catholic voters accounted for a third of Ohios Republican electorate, the largest share of Catholics in any Super Tuesday state.
The margin of Romney's win among Ohio Catholics is surprising, given Santorum's traditional Catholicism, says John Green, a political science professor at the University of Ohio. Romney's margin among Ohio Catholics - especially in the three largest metropolitan areas - may account for his close win in Ohio.
Green notes that Romney, a Mormon, has consistently won the Catholic vote in this years Republican primaries. That pattern runs counter to speculation that Catholics would focus more on hot-button issues at a time when Catholic bishops are battling the Obama White House over government-mandated contraception coverage.
Romney has denounced the Obama administrations contraception rule but Santorum has gone further, making social issues a cornerstone of his campaign. Last week, the former Pennsylvania senator said that John F. Kennedys 1960 speech in which the then-presidential candidate advocated an absolute separation of church and state nearly made him throw up.
(Excerpt) Read more at religion.blogs.cnn.com ...
Loudly Catholic Santorum loses Ohio Catholics CINOs
This is based on one exit poll. I don't know how accurate it is or what the margin of error is.
But even if it were true, so what.
Most Catholics don't vote based solely on religion. The vote for who they think is the best candidate.
And would have us believe the same.......my answer...........no way!
agreed Nana but you know you’ll get flack for that
That would be a very expensive memo for the Church.
Lukewarm Catholics still put their checks in the collection plate each week.
I don’t expect the Church to ever take such a hardline.
mark
Might have helped him yesterday. Will kill the party in the fall. YAY RICK.
Could be some truth to that in limited geographic areas -- like the rust belt including Ohio, I guess. But sure isn't around here or many places. Your "Catholics in the USA" is way over-stated.
I meant to type Midwest USA. My apologies.
Anyone can call himself a Catholic.
Anyone can call himself a conservative Republican.
Anyone can call himself an American citizen.
But rarer is the man that will call himself the truly Catholic, truly conservative, truly American specifics:
Anti-contraceptive, hire whomever I damn well want to, government is only good when and where it is helping me to defend my family militarily.
I bet they won’t make such an easy peace with the Angel of Death.
I think that the great strategist, big thinker, and convert to Catholicism Gingrich, is well aware of this Catholic voting problem, and I think that he knows how to get in there and penetrate that wall, and do some political “evangelicalism” of the Catholic vote, getting into their skulls that the conservative movement and the GOP is where they all need to be.
I see a President Gingrich as taking on the Catholic vote as one of his big picture issues to fix during his administration, and I think that when he was finished that we could start counting on a majority of that Catholic vote, going our way.
Gingrich is not just a placeholder, a rino Republican who happens to be Catholic, he is a leader, a problem fixer, a red meat conservative politician who went from the right wing Southern Evangelical denominations to the Catholic church, my guess is that he would like to get his now fellow Catholics voting like his fellow Southern Baptists of his past. Let’s face it Newt is something of a Crusader.
Mormons require tithing, or you cannot become a true Mormon like Temple Mormons Bishop Romney and Harry Reid.
The religion enforces it also, Bishop Romney had the authority to require tax returns if he suspected you, and you were asking to become accepted as a Temple Mormon.
You didn't fix anything, the majority of Protestants vote pro-life, the majority of Catholics vote pro-abortion.
Religious issues? The better candidate? You prefer liberal candidates?
Where do they get this idea? It would like me going around asking "how can you be a protestant when they forbid their members from eating pork?"
"I was basically pro-choice all my life, until I ran for Congress"
In 1996, Santorum was supporting this party platform as he endorsed Arlen Specter for President.
I pledge to lead the fight to strip the strident anti-choice language from the Republican National platform
With both Catholics and Protestants, political conservatism increases in proportion with their church attendance. With Protestants, political conservatism increases in proportion to the theological conservatism of their denominations. As a group, Baptists are far more conservative than Episcopalians. Among Lutherans and Presbyterians, members of the more conservative denominations, such as the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod and the Presbyterian Church in America, are much more conservative than those who belong to the more liberal and larger denominations, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Presbyterian Church USA.
That was a response to post 53 clarifying Mormonism and tithing?
And a second followup to post #24.
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