Interesting. Even Newsweek is admitting that abortion is killing the Democrat Patry by driving Catholic voters — a traditional Democrat constituency — over to the GOP. Here are some interesting excerpts from the article in question:
The Democrats are likely to lose the Catholic vote in November—and John Kerry could well lose the election as a result. It’s about abortion, stupid. And “choice,” make no mistake, is killing the Democratic Party.
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It begins with the tale of Tom Ampleman, “a blue-collar union member who lives … just outside St. Louis, says he voted for Bill Clinton twice and then Al Gore, but … is now grappling with deep religious misgivings about the Democratic Party.” He says, “I’m not happy with the moral issues at all with the Democrats. The Republicans will hurt me in the long run in providing for my family, but it’s probably more important to watch out for the unborn and that kind of stuff.”
First, I find it wonderful that there are Tom Amplemans out there for whom voting is not only an economic calculation—a what’s-in-it-for-me? decision—but a moral exercise, a matter of trying to do the right thing.
But Democrats don’t seem to get that. And they don’t get Tom at all.
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I don’t know if it’s quite as calculated as I’m going to make it sound, but …
I think for a lot of liberal-leaning Catholics, abortion hadn’t been the turnoff it has become for Kerry, for two reasons: (1) lower expectations for the heretics and schismatics the seperated brethren, which the previous Dem nominees all were; (2) at least Clinton and, to a lesser extent, Gore could talk a good game about “safe, legal and rare”; and what the Communion furor, as the article notes, did was foregrounded just how radical and how at-ease-with-it Kerry was about his pro-abortion stance.
I have brought up this point to every political pollster who has called (and living in NH, being an undeclared and female, I get a lot). I have called in to talk shows and actually got on the air once. I am not going down easily – I am mad as Hell at the Democratic party for having abandoned me – and I refuse to take it any more. I’m with the union worker – the Republicans have and will hurt me and my personal interests in the short run, but with my eternal soul at stake I can not support the Dem platform nor the majority of candidates they put forth.
What’s going to be a real shocker for Catholics defecting to the Republican party over abortion is the discovery of how much a bill of goods they’ve been sold about economics. Robbing from the future to pay off now is a great hallmark of current Democrat economic policy. That sort of short-term thinking isn’t in people’s interest in either economics or social issues.