Posted on 03/31/2006 3:25:28 PM PST by siunevada
The hunt for the great American Catholic voter of 2008 started in earnest last week, led by none other than New York’s junior Senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Speaking about a Republican-passed immigration bill that would make it a felony to be in the United States illegally, or to aid an illegal immigrant, Mrs. Clinton said, “It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures, because the bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself.”
Not coincidently, on the same day that Mrs. Clinton was channeling the late Catholic agitator Dorothy Day, the Democratic National Committee was disseminating via e-mail an opinion article voicing similar sentiments written by Cardinal Roger Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles.
The gambit shows the lengths to which Democrats will go to recapture Catholic voters, a quarter of the electorate, 55 percent of whom cast their ballots for President Bush in 2004 notwithstanding the Catholic faith of Democratic nominee John Kerry. It’s fair turnabout: During the 2004 campaign, Mr. Bush paid a high-profile visit to the Vatican, and months later, some Catholic bishops urged voters to shun politicians like Mr. Kerry who support abortion rights.
Now, Democrats want to woo back the many Hispanic Catholic voters who deserted them in 2004, hence their emphasis on immigrants’ rights, ventured out of conviction but also with the hope of flipping into their column states like Colorado and New Mexico, which went narrowly for Mr. Bush two years ago.
Mrs. Clinton, however, has positioned herself way ahead of her party and any of her putative 2008 Presidential rivals by championing initiatives that appeal to middle-class, white-ethnic, suburban Catholic voters, especially married women (another group that swung heavily to the G.O.P. in 2004). She knows that Catholic defections kept the vote uncomfortably close in some heavily Catholic states that Mr. Kerry won—including Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania—and contributed to Mr. Bush’s single-point victory in Iowa.
So we find Mrs. Clinton advocating “pro-family” legislation: for example, joining with the Senate’s two most conservative Catholics—Republicans Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania—to push for a bill authorizing research into the supposedly pernicious effects of electronic media on children. And there she was late last year, in a heavily Catholic Nassau County suburb, touting her bill to make cars safer for children. (As The New York Times noted this week, she has made herself an expert on the infrastructure issues of the aging suburb.) Need we mention her conciliatory language on abortion?
Strategists have been saying for some time that Mrs. Clinton will use her re-election campaign in the heavily Catholic areas of upstate New York as a laboratory for her expected 2008 Presidential bid. “Her spin is, ‘Hey, look, I can win Catholic votes. If I can win the western tier of New York, I can win Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania,’” said veteran Democratic operative Hank Sheinkopf. If religion-tinged issues such as abortion and gay marriage can be neutralized in those areas, the Democrats can win on economic issues among hard-pressed Catholic men, Mr. Sheinkopf argues.
Illinois-born Mrs. Clinton, contra her Republican caricature as an angry liberal, can claim an advantage with Catholic and other so-called values voters: Unlike most Democrats, she sounds sincere when she employs Jesus language. Her problem regarding religion and the American electorate is not that she’s a heathen: In fact, she qualifies as one of the most overtly Christian politicians in the country. It’s just that, with conservative evangelical Protestants ascendant, she’s the wrong kind of Christian. Raised in the United Methodist Church as a Goldwater conservative, in college she embraced the movement’s modernist “peace with justice” wing just as liberal Protestantism began a long decline. But she did learn how to speak to conservative Protestants as the First Lady of Arkansas, and once upon a time a follower of an evangelical denomination—a Baptist named Bill Clinton—begged her to marry him.
Even as some recent polling shows the G.O.P. losing its edge with Catholics, Republicans will counter with their accomplishments and positions. Mr. Bush elevated two Catholics to the Supreme Court—in part on a bet that abortion will remain a helpful issue for Republicans. He named the first Hispanic U.S. Attorney General. G.O.P. positions against embryonic stem-cell research closely track Catholic Church stands. The gay-marriage issue—which Mr. Bush cynically leveraged, then dropped like a hot potato after the 2004 election—could be reinvigorated. No strategist ever went broke overestimating the Democrats’ capacity to shoot themselves in the foot on national security.
’Tis true. But count on this: With Catholics or any other faith-based voters, Hillary Clinton will be the Democrat best positioned to speak to their issues.
You may reach E.J. Kessler via email at: ejkessler@observer.com .
copyright © 2005 the new york observer, L.P. | all rights reserved
Not too many Sunday photo-ops of of them coming out of church together these days. Easter's coming. Maybe one more for old times sake.
Hope that big ol' dew-honkin' Bible of Bill's can still be found in time for the next election.
The Marxist Medusa just wreaks of hypocrisy. There will be no place for her and her accomplice in heaven...Satan is waiting for them. Blatant hypocrisy.
Satan has a book of Scripture? Live and learn.
I'm Catholic.....a Clinton making a pitch for my vote?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
ROFLMAO
LOL
Hillary's gonna be the first Black Southern Baptist Catholic Episcopalian Jew that ever ran for President.
For those who thought that Hillary would be tough on illegal immigration, take heed.
Beastwoman-rising ping.
Understanding of the Scriptures?
Just MHO, of course, but Scriptures aren't understood...they are taken to heart. Of course, when one doesn't have a heart...
I saw Tom Tancredo on Sunday morning with George Stuffin-envelopes, Georgie asked Tancredo about this quote and Tancredo laughed. He said something like "I'm not surprised at Senator Clinton's 'understanding' of the scriptures."
Does this mean tha she knows that she will never get the protestant vote?
Bartender, I'll have a double of whatever this writer is having....
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WHY THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT MUST MOBILIZE AGAINST HILLARY:
CLINTON CONFLATES EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS AND ISLAMO-FASCIST TERRORISTS
AFTERWORD: A note to the Religious Right
Well, it is a New York paper. And she can actually pronounce the name Jesus which does give her a decided advantage over most other Democrats.
She'll never be Slick, though. If only she had allowed him to fulfill his true vocation as an Elvis imitator, we'd all have been so much happier.
Mrs. Clinton, however, has positioned herself way ahead of her party and any of her putative 2008 Presidential rivals by championing initiatives that appeal to middle-class, white-ethnic, suburban Catholic voters, especially married women (another group that swung heavily to the G.O.P. in 2004).
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'04 ELECTION PROVIDES CLUE
The venue is Washington Journal (C-SPAN). Enter Harold Ickes, looking weirder, more Ichabod-Crane-on-crank, than usual. Looking weirder still when one remembers that Harold Ickes is a strictly behind-the-scenes sort of guy. Only something very important could have coaxed Harold Ickes onto center stage....21 Forgoing the standard niceties, Ickes launches into his planned tirade. He accuses Bush of terrorizing white women to get their vote.22 (The way he carried on, you would think he was accusing the president of rape or something.)23
Now fast forward to October 11, 2005. Susan Estrich, alignments adjusted upward--ALL alignments--is on Hannity and Colmes. She is there to huckster The Case for Hillary Clinton, 24 both the book and candidate. Estrich's spiel turns her recent dire warning to the Democrats ("The clintons are sucking up all the air. Get them off the stage!" )25 on its literal head.26 (Air? Who needs air when you have a clinton?) ICKES + ESTRICH PROVIDE ROADMAP FOR HILLARY DEFEAT (oops!)
She argues that hillary clinton is the best chance, probably the only chance, for a woman president in our lifetime. The false and demeaning argument and offensive gender bias aside, someone ought to clue in Susan Estrich. Gender feminism requires as its token a functional female. So why is Susan Estrich making such a transparently spurious and insulting argument? She isn't that dumb. For the same reason Harold Ickes is fulminating on C-SPAN.
The white woman, the only real swing voter, the demographic the Democrats MUST get in order to win the White House, has turned red. In the immediate aftermath of the 2004 presidential election, a journalistic consensus emerged to explain George W. Bush's victory. Despite the sluggish economy and deteriorating situation in Iraq, voters supported Bush primarily because of his values. One prominently featured exit poll question showed "moral values" to be the most important issue for voters, ahead of terrorism, Iraq, and the economy. Backlash against the Massachusetts court ruling allowing gay marriage and attraction of Bush's appeals to Christian faith helped bring out socially conservative voters and cement Bush's second term. This explains why Bush won Ohio, for example, where an anti-gay marriage proposal was on the ballot. However compelling this story might be, it is wrong. Instead, Bush won because married and white women increased their support for the Republican ticket.... In this article I briefly account for the factors behind Bush's rise in the state-by-state popular vote between 2000 and 2004. This is not the same as identifying who elected Bush. That sort of analysis would put responsibility on white men since they voted 61-38 for Bush and comprise almost half of the active electorate. Instead, I focus on what changed between 2000 and 2004. In this view, it is white women who are responsible because they showed more aggregate change. Identifying a cause for this shift looks for an explanation also in things that changed in the past four years. For example, John Kerry was not exactly Al Gore, so differences between Bush's two opponents could be a factor. But I suggest that such differences are dwarfed by a much larger intervention: the attacks of September 11. Turnout was up in 2004 because the perceived heightening of the stakes after 9-11 and because of intense competition between the candidates in a small number of battleground states. Higher turnout also appears to have helped Bush slightly. But it was the shift of married white women from the Democratic camp to the Republican camp that gave him the edge in 2004. Post Election 2004: An Alternative Account of the 2004 Presidential Election
WHY HILLARY MUST NOT WIN. WHY HILLARY CANNOT WIN. (ICKES + ESTRICH PROVIDE ROADMAP--oops!--FOR HILLARY DEFEAT) |
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COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006 |
Thanks, Mia T!
I only hope that she will really be herself on the campaign trail. She'll never make it to the convention if she lets loose. The containment vessel has already shown a few cracks this year.
you're welcome :)
The Clintons (and everyone associated with them) are so September 10th.
They've been irrelevant since the '94 Republican Revolution.
I don't think she'll have any problem getting the votes of the so-called Catholics ala Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. :-)
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To better understand why this move is fatal for missus clinton, we must go back to November 8, 2004, which is exactly six days after the re-election of George W. Bush. 
"If you look at white women, and I think that was the key to this election, Kerry won 45% based on the exit polls--but they're generally in agreement--Kerry won 45%, Bush won 55% of white women. 
Hillary Clinton's revisionist tome notwithstanding, 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. It is in that light that I make this not-so-modest proposal on this day, exactly 64 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. 