Are Catholic Pro-Life Republicans Useful Idiots?

A post over at Vox Nova has taken some thing Mark Shea have said and run with it. See Useful Idiots.

First let me say as a Catholic Republican I disagree with some of the things that Shea and also Morning Minion are saying. I think that on Shea's part there is a frustration that perhaps Catholics of good will don't see the world exactly through his prism as to some issues. Such as the Iraq war or what is torture etc etc. I can understand that and it is something that affects us all.

However the post I think contains some fallacies. Fallacies that seem to continue in the comment section where the bogeyman of Evangelicals come up.

As I mentioned in the comments no one seemed to be to concerned with this alliance of Catholics and evangelicals when they were all democrats. That was not such a long time ago.

What I want to focus on is what I think is a little bad history that is being presented.

First let me take a part of what Morning is saying:

Well said. Of course, this point is pellucidly clear when you have a group of leading Catholic supposed pro-lifers (from Deal Hudson to Judie Brown to Jimmy Akin to Michael Novak to Sirico/ Arroyo to David Carlin) all defending, to some extent or other, torture by the United States (something we know is intrinsically evil). But this has been clear to me for many year, long before Dick Cheney and his waterboard arrived on the scene, as I watched Catholic discourse turn in a more evangelical direction, where Catholic strategists deliberately aligned themselves with the so-called “religious right”, the largely southern-based evangelical movement that now dominates the GOP.

The goal was to focus on abortion, and play down the stuff that didn’t sit well with the new allies. It was quite deliberate. In the process, they lost much of what was inherently Catholic teaching, and many Catholics today have fallen under the sway of other ideologies. Look at Weigel’s distortion of just war theory. Look at Novak’s embrace of laissez-faire liberalism and Reaganite policies. Whatever happened to once-core issues like reducing poverty and inequality, the right to health care, combating global warming, the importance of unions, the right to a just wage, the need to stand with immigrants, and ending the death penalty? Catholic social teaching is incredibly rich and beautiful, and yet remains largely unknown, even to Catholics.

I think there are some problems with the timeline above. Mainly that it does not go nearly far back enough. A good background on how the Democrats lost their monopoly on the Catholic vote can be found in three arttices by Mark Stricherz. See the The Death of the Bobby Kennedy Coalition and Secular Feminism’s Path to Power which even goes into fascinating details and further Why the Democrats Are Blue: A Conversation with Mark Stricherz

If we are going to see how Catholics became Republicans (and if they really changed their views) we do indeed need to go back to 68 at the very least.

The Christian Right like Republican Catholics did not all just fall down from heaven all wrapped up in a bow. For the most part they were Democrats that got elbowed out of the party. There was in essence even back then quite a bit of diversity in Catholic thought among the different wings of the Democrat party. One wonders how much people really did change their core views. It has always appears to me that they just moved locations. In fact the blue collar Reagan Democrat is a big example of this.

Stricherz brings up this interesting fact.

Califano’s prediction viewed prophetic. In November, McGovern lost overwhelmingly among Catholics. Nixon carried 59 percent of the Catholic vote, the same percentage that Humphrey had won among Catholics four years earlier. As historian George Marlin noted, Nixon’s total represented a new record for a Republican presidential candidate. Even though McGovern did not run on the abortion plank, top party strategists recognized that he owed his colossal defeat in the election to his association with the cultural left. “The American people made an association between McGovern and gay lib, and welfare rights, and pot smoking, and black militants, and women’s lib, and wise college kids, and everything else they saw as threatening their value systems,” Rep. James O’Hara of Michigan, the chairman of the other reform commission created at the 1968 convention, said. “I think it was all over then and there.

That is pretty amazing. 59 percent!!! We had because of the events that occurred from 68 to 72 already a massive shift of Catholics in significant numbers toward GOP among Catholics. This was occurring also among factions of Southern Evangelicals no doubt.

It should be recalled that the GOP was very more moderate then. That only only on economic issues but as to social issues as to abortion. In fact we can now see the last effects of this today. It went largely un commented on but if McCain had been elected his wife would have been the first genuine pro-life First Lady as to personal belief since Roe V Wade.

What cemented all this was the revolution the far left had done as to delegate rules. Mark Stricherz states:

The key event was really the McGovern Commission in 1969, adding implied quotas for female delegates. The percentage of female delegates went from 13 percent in 1968 to 43 percent by 1972. The second big event happened in 1980, when feminists succeeded in getting a measure that required half of all delegates to be female. So if you were running as a delegate from your county or congressional district, one out of two of you had to be female. This was not done in the interests of equality; this was done because the feminists had an agenda. They wanted abortion on demand; they wanted to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed; they wanted to control the platform.

So the die was cast!! The GOP of course has no such rules that were designed to keep a certain faction down. and one faction in perpetual power. In essence it was Catholic Democrats and conservative evangelicals that transformed the Republican party that was very pro-choice leaning into what we have today. In other words for the most part the GOP became the old conservative hawkish wing of the Democrat party. That alliance between Catholic and evangelicals just moved across the street.

Now of course there were other factors at play as to Catholics. There was starting in the 70's the migration of a significant number of Catholics to the Midsouth, Sunbelt and the deep South. Some part of the South had very significant Catholic growth. Such as areas of Georgia. Look at the Archdiocese of Atlanta for instance. Naturally many of these transplants and their children picked and adopted the more conservative tone of the area.

So is there much of a difference? While Morning is fretting over these Catholics that support in their view "unjust war" (I am assuming the reference is Iraq) a few decades back there was just as a spirited debate among Catholics over Vietnam. In fact I suspect it was just as intense if not more. Many of these similar debates Morning and Shea talk about were occurring among Catholics in the Democrat party way before the significant defections to the GOP.

Shea states:

“In our focus on abortion, we are forgetting that larger cultural forces are *using* us and that prudence bids us to pay attention to that and not let our fight for the unborn get co-opted by people who only wish to use us, not help us or the unborn…the average pro-lifer (and with Catholics the stats are even higher) has tended to identify with and defend things nobody calling themselves “prolife” should ever have tried to defend: namely, practically everything the Bush Administration did, no matter how stupid or criminal…We may wish that the kidz at ND could see more clearly the intentions of prolifers in wanting to save babies. But the fact remains that they perceive prolifers largely as tools of a discredited political party.”

Again who are "these" people. Do "these" people actually have much influence. Shea is a fierce advocate for his position on the torture debate and I respect that. But I find that many Catholics have varied opinions on this matter that are legitimate.

But what about those kids at Notre Dame? It appears the Obama policy on Iraq is in the end like the McCain or even Bush viewpoint. Where were the anti War protesters at Notre Dame?

It appears that as to enhanced interrogation and the WOT the Obama policy is looking very much like the Bush policy. Obama might get rid of water boarding but it is not clear at all if as to many of the matters that Shea is concerned about will change. We are currently using rendition to the other countries for example. Where were the anti torture protesters at Notre Dame?

Minion mentions the immigrant. Bush and McCain as well as a good number of Republicans supported immigration reform. It appears that Obama is in no hurry to move on that. Where were the consistent ethic of life protesters on that at Notre Dame?

In other words who really are the useful idiots?

Now Shea of course is in no way is an Obama fan. But I do wonder if he is tad over blowing the debate that is occurring on a few blogs. Are Pro-lifers really going out of their way to defend every action the Bush administration did in months after 9/11? Or are they trying to figure out in their minds if sleep deprivation of three days is torture or not?

One final note both Shea and Minion comment on the unpopularity of the GOP at the moment. Everything seems dramatic and life changing when we are in the moment of it . The Gop has been in this situation before and so have the Dems. There is a natural ebb and flow to these things. In fact I think we are seeing signs of some health coming back to the GOP

The best solution to all this as to the abortion issue is that all Catholics work in their respective parties to keep this issue alive and important. The other Core issues are important too that Minion talks about. As a Republican I see many people in my party trying to combat many of those issues. Again the proposed solutions might be different but in the end we are trying to get to the same place.