Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

How Barack Bamboozled Catholics
Real Clear Religion ^ | November 9, 2012 | George Neumayr

Posted on 11/10/2012 8:42:39 AM PST by NYer

The most anti-Catholic American president ever scooped up the Catholic vote again, winning half of all Catholics. This is down four points from 2008, but it is still an impressive feat after four years of persecuting the Church.

Historians will no doubt record the grim irony of his achievement with some wonder. He has now won the Catholic vote twice and boasts an honorary degree in law from one of the Church's most prestigious universities, all while breaking her. Saul Alinsky, who pioneered the technique of bamboozling and exploiting the Church, would be proud.

Obama also won the religious vote in general over Romney 50 to 48, another remarkable accolade for a party that tried to remove God from its platform earlier this year. That the Republicans couldn't win the religious vote amidst Obama's open war on religion is either a testimony to its ineptitude or calls into question the Romney campaign's decision to focus almost exclusively on the economy. The last Republican to win, George W. Bush, thumped John Kerry in the religious vote 51 to 48.

Romney fared better than Obama amongst regular churchgoers. But Obama still managed to poach a fair number of these from him. Almost four out of ten church-going Catholics voted for Obama and 55 percent of Catholics who go to Mass a "few times a month" voted for him, according to the Pew Forum.

The work of Obama's allies within the Church paid off. Obama's Fifth Columnists steered money into his campaign (Jesuit college and universities raised donations for him), honored his HHS secretary at Georgeown even after she hatched the contraceptive mandate, erected pro-Obama Catholic front groups like Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, motivated Catholic college students to get out and vote for him, and spread propaganda through Sisters Carol Keehan and Simone Campbell that Obama posed no threat to the Church.

Hispanic Catholics, under the tutelage of the Catholic left, voted for Obama over Romney 75 to 21. That was up three points from 2008.

Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, California, who is Congressman Paul Ryan's nemesis, complained earlier in the year that the bishops had given too much aid to "anti-Obama" forces. If that only were true. Once again, the bishops proved feckless and divided. Some bishops raised their voices against Obama; most didn't. Nor did the bishops counter Joe Biden's misrepresentations of "Catholic social doctrine" and "de fide" abortion teaching late in the campaign.

Plenty of mixed signals were sent: depending on which bishop was speaking, Biden and Paul Ryan were either equally good Catholics or equally bad ones. One bishop wrote to his flock to tell them that Ryan was as "inconsistent" in his adherence to Church teaching as Biden. Such bishops served as useful idiots for Biden, who used a campaign commercial featuring images of a crucifix to sell voters on the idea that the Obama administration embodied Catholic social justice.

The Obama campaign was worried enough about the Catholic vote to cut a few ads and set up a Catholics for Obama web site. But given the mixed signals of the bishops and given the unwillingness of Mitt Romney to hit Obama on his secularism, liberals didn't have much to fear. Obama shrewdly sensed that the HHS mandate would prove a greater political boon than liability. It nudged up the female vote and didn't cost him the Catholic one.

The Obama campaign had found a fallen-away Catholic, Michael Wear, to serve as its "faith vote coordinator." According to CNN, Wear was moved from the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to that position in order to put out fires related to the HHS-mandate backlash.

George Soros-backed Catholic front groups also went to work putting out those fires, whose operatives enjoyed ties to Catholic chanceries. Until earlier this year, one of the US bishops's chief political advisers was John Carr, a former White House staffer under President Jimmy Carter. (Carr organized for Carter an event that openly touted support for "abortion" and the use of the federal government's power to promote "family planning" and "homosexual rights.")

Obama's divide-and-conquer strategy was bound to work again in a Church still salted with such operatives. The unholy alliance that he formed with the Church in 1980s Chicago remains intact.


TOPICS: Catholic; Moral Issues; Religion & Culture; Religion & Politics
KEYWORDS: elections; idiotsdidntvote4mitt; jesuits; obama
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-77 next last

1 posted on 11/10/2012 8:42:43 AM PST by NYer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: netmilsmom; thefrankbaum; Tax-chick; GregB; saradippity; Berlin_Freeper; Litany; SumProVita; ...

Not surprisingly, the USCCB provided poor leadership leading up to this election.


2 posted on 11/10/2012 8:44:08 AM PST by NYer ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." --Jeremiah 1:5)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

There is no bigger supporter of the welfare state and thus welfare state politicians and the Dem party than the Catholic bishops. They love this destructive system based on envy, jealousy, covetousness, bitterness and theft. They promote this all the time and then they say oh, no, don’t vote for pro-abortion candidates. Good luck with that. Choosing which sins are ok and which are not is kinda tricky business.
Most Christians would rewrite Jesus’s parable and take the golden talents from the man with 5 and give them to those who had fewer or none. Our welfare state is an anti-Christ scheme and most “Christians” think it all love and light.


3 posted on 11/10/2012 8:44:28 AM PST by all the best (`~!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

I wonder how much the HISPANIC vote attributes to this. Wonder how he did with white Catholics.


4 posted on 11/10/2012 8:51:00 AM PST by KansasGirl ("If you have a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."--B. Hussein Obama)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: all the best

Spot on! More importantly, since Obama took more than 50% of the catholic vote, he will shirk any challenge by the USCCB on the HHS mandate.


5 posted on 11/10/2012 8:52:14 AM PST by NYer ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." --Jeremiah 1:5)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: NYer

The Catholics who voted for Obama were not bamboozled.

The ancient Hebrews were repeatedly threatened with death for offering their children as burnt sacrifices to the pagan god Baal-Moloch, but they still did so. While they called themselves Hebrews, they could not resist hedging their bets, in the hope of unearned prosperity and success.

Largess corrupts. When offered the choice, many will choose the possibility of “free stuff” over their own soul.


6 posted on 11/10/2012 8:53:24 AM PST by yefragetuwrabrumuy (DIY Bumper Sticker: "THREE TIMES,/ DEMOCRATS/ REJECTED GOD")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: KansasGirl

[ Hispanic Catholics, under the tutelage of the Catholic left, voted for Obama over Romney 75 to 21. That was up three points from 2008. ]

Oh, here it is. And yet, we hear over and over how this Hispanic Catholics are a natural conservative constituency if we would only grant them amnesty! BS!


7 posted on 11/10/2012 8:54:16 AM PST by KansasGirl ("If you have a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."--B. Hussein Obama)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: NYer

I’m Protestant but happened to be in FL earlier this week and went to a Catholic church with my friends. The priest just said we shouldn’t hate those with whom we disagree. That was it. So a POTUS who believes in infanticide shouldn’t be hated...especially by Catholics???


8 posted on 11/10/2012 8:54:22 AM PST by Aria ( 2008 wasn't an election - it was a coup d'etat.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: NYer; All
From the article: Hispanic Catholics, under the tutelage of the Catholic left, voted for Obama over Romney 75 to 21. That was up three points from 2008.

The only "good thing" here is that Latino Catholics didn't turn out very well...They are over 1/3rd of all Catholics...yet were still only 20% of the Catholic vote.

White Catholics turned out in less # than either 2008 or 2004, and yet still turned out better than Latino Catholics.

9 posted on 11/10/2012 8:54:27 AM PST by Colofornian (Some say "we're not voting 4 'pastor-in-chief'" --as if "gods-in-embryo" were divine only on Sundays)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

Nonsense, little barry soetoro bastard is supported gladly by a host of cinos.


10 posted on 11/10/2012 8:55:01 AM PST by MHGinTN (Being deceived can be cured.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer
America will collapse. These welfare leaches will get no more free money. Then what will the Catholic jackass say.
11 posted on 11/10/2012 8:56:13 AM PST by Logical me
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

Obama only “wins” Catholics because of the Latinos and CINOs whose last experience in the church was baptism.

Don’t let that stop me from ruining the circular firing squad us Christians have going though, Everybody seems to enjoy it too much.


12 posted on 11/10/2012 8:58:37 AM PST by Shadow44
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer
He didn't fool anyone.

The so-called Catholics who voted for him decided a long time ago that their faith is no where as important to them as their politics and a lot of other things, especially contraception and fitting in. They're just another clique who claim to be Christian but who in reality believe in going along to get along and not much else.

13 posted on 11/10/2012 8:58:55 AM PST by Rashputin (Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

For many years, the Catholic Church tolerated the Kennedys, Pelosi and many other heretics.

Why should anyone be surprised when members support Obama?


14 posted on 11/10/2012 8:59:02 AM PST by Rides_A_Red_Horse (If there is a war on women, the Kennedys are the Spec Ops troops.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

They tried the threat of eternal agony to get people to sign up for their socialistic schemes and that didn’t work.

Time to break out the guns.


15 posted on 11/10/2012 9:01:26 AM PST by DManA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: KansasGirl

THIS white Catholic voted for Romney,but,alas,I’m obviously outnumbered by the folks that live as perpetual victims,whose number-one issue in their lives is more free government goodies,and northeast Catholics that vote for democrats because “John Kennedy was Catholic and he was a democrat,so that means democrats are good!” (I SWEAR that’s how some of them think).

For example:
I have this neighbor who is in her mid-sixties.She is Irish-Catholic, born in raised in South Boston,sent all her kids (that I grew up with) to Catholic schools,and was a lector at our parish for years.

A while back her husband and I were talking about how everywhere we go around here now,we feel like WE’RE in the wrong country because we’re the only two speaking English! I joked “What can we expect when we have someone in the white house that probably wasn’t born here?”

His wife jumped right in,saying how “all those stories on the internet are lies! You can’t believe ANYTHING you see on the internet!” (But then referencing Snopes to defend Obama!)

She went on saying how she believes Obama may not be the best president ever....and he’s BLACK....(she added THAT,I assume,as a back-handed accusation that I only dislike Obama because he’s black!),and went on with her diatribe about how she’s a born-democrat and democrats best represent the values this country was founded on! So I guess the country was founded on the murder of the unborn and gay “marriage”????????

So believe me...THIS Catholic isn’t defending catholics like her AT ALL!

(...and,of course,her husband is a retired UNION sheet metal worker,so naturally after all his complaining HE votes straight democrat,too!)


16 posted on 11/10/2012 9:02:55 AM PST by massmike (At least no one is wearing a "Ron Paul - 2016" tee shirt........yet!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: KansasGirl
I wonder how much the HISPANIC vote attributes to this. Wonder how he did with white Catholics.

The "white Catholic" vote went for Romney 56-43. That's not very different from the overall Protestant or the "mainstream Protestant" vote. Latino and Black voters were heavily for Obama, and White Evangelicals heavily for Romney. I put "white Catholic" in quotes because as the government keeps telling us, "Hispanics can be of any race."

17 posted on 11/10/2012 9:04:34 AM PST by x
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: MHGinTN
Looks like you need to include the US Bishops in the number of CINO's.

They love and have pursued 99% of social justice junk like Obamacare...all but the abortion stuff.

18 posted on 11/10/2012 9:05:28 AM PST by what's up
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: NYer

This is really sad that some people want the Catholic Church to be a arm of the Republican party or perhaps to make the Republican party an arm of the Catholic Church. Either way is a loser for the Bishops.


19 posted on 11/10/2012 9:08:16 AM PST by ex-snook (without forgiveness there is no Christianity)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: KansasGirl

According to reuters -

Hispanic Catholics were far more likely to favor Obama - by 76 percent to 23 percent - than white Catholics, who favored Romney by 56 percent to 43 percent,

In addition -

The Pew survey found that among those voters who attend services once a week or more, 59 percent went for Romney, while 39 percent went with Obama. Among those who never attend church, six in ten went for Obama.


20 posted on 11/10/2012 9:12:18 AM PST by stop_fascism (Love your country, but never trust its government - R.A. Heinlein)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-77 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson