The idea of “hitting bottom” is somewhat contested in addiction and recovery circles. The experience of beginning the road to recovery after finding oneself with “nowhere to go but up” resonates with the experience of some recovering addicts; but it’s been pointed out that every new low can potentially feel like “bottom,” until you sink lower still. Thus, one speaks of “hitting bottom” in retrospect, after a pivotal “moment of clarity”—a realization that one has been deluded, that one has a problem, that the way one has been living isn’t working, and that one doesn’t want to continue down the same path.
For the pro-life movement, for people who tend to vote Republican, and for people who align around the label “conservative,” the 2012 election might be considered a new low. Four years ago, as Ross Douthat points out in his astute commentary, it was possible to believe that candidate Obama had been swept into office by a unique convergence of anti-Bush backlash and blindly utopian optimism projected onto a largely unknown figure who spoke in inspiring generalities, and that this convergence of factors couldn’t be duplicated. Four difficult, disappointing years later, Mr. Obama carries a long, well-known list of liabilities—and his opponents have had ample opportunity to capitalize on them. Yet President Obama has won reelection, solidifying the victory of candidate Obama.
True, it was a close thing—closer than 2008. The nation did shift to the right; Mr. Obama lost support in most states and among most groups, the most notable exception being Hispanics.
And of course opponents can console themselves with a long list of mitigating factors. Yes, the Republicans put up an uninspiring candidate who campaigned on the narrowest of platforms, didn’t effectively capitalize on his opponent’s weaknesses, and didn’t offer a galvanizing alternative. Yes, the Obama campaign shamelessly distorted Romney’s position(s) while a deeply activist press ran cover, simultaneously turning a blind eye to Obama’s own liabilities, including the mishandling and lying about Benghazi. Yes, a fortuitously timed hurricane may have helped to shift momentum from Mr. Romney back to Mr. Obama. Etc., etc.
As true as all of that may be, it’s equally true that conservative pundits knew all that when they went into election night confidently predicting a Romney landslide. Conor Friedersdorf runs down the lineup:
So many on the right had predicted a Mitt Romney victory, or even a blowout—Dick Morris, George Will, and Michael Barone all predicted the GOP would break 300 electoral votes … Peggy Noonan insisted that those predicting an Obama victory were ignoring the world around them. Even Karl Rove, supposed political genius, missed the bulls-eye. These voices drove the coverage on Fox News, talk radio, the Drudge Report, and conservative blogs.
You can’t blame media bias for election-night delusion on the right. Or rather, you can—but it was the bias of the conservative media, not the liberal media, that misled conservatives. The polls were right, and all the wishful thinking and spin of right-wing punditry about oversampling and polling bias and so forth couldn’t change the underlying realities. Maybe a certain level of optimistic spin is built into the system—but thats precisely why it’s dangerous to spend too much time in the echo chamber of a single one-sided perspective.
This realization may be a moment of clarity—conservatives can decide to live in the real world and stop telling themselves that they have a winning program when they don’t—or it may simply be a new low, followed by retreating further into the conservative bubble and continuing to point fingers at all the usual suspects, above all the MSM, without taking responsibility for changing their own behavior.
In particular, for those of us who consider the holocaust of the unborn the preeminent social-justice / civil-rights issue of our time, the circumstances of Mr. Obama’s reelection is dramatic and depressing evidence of what must be recognized, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, as the ongoing failure of the pro-life movement.
I don’t want to overstate this point. It does seem that public opinion on abortion, particularly among the youth, has been trending pro-life, and in particular that pro-life youth are more passionate and motivated about abortion than pro-choice youth. It also seems to be true that most Americans today believe that abortion should be more restricted than it is.
But let’s not kid ourselves about the extent to which our cause has so far failed to capture the American conscience. Consider: If you are a male Republican politician, and you utter a single stupid or ill-crafted sentence involving the words “rape” and “pregnancy,” that one sentence will cost you your campaign and possibly your career, while potentially having a harmful ripple effect on others in your party. Whether that’s right, wrong or the media’s fault isn’t the point. That’s the reality.
But if you are a Democratic president and run an aggressively pro-abortion campaign—unapologetically and even crassly putting abortion, contraception and sex in general front and center as never before, from Sandra Fluke’s convention appearance to the MoveOn ads with Hollywood actresses—well, this may not help you with women voters the way you think it will, but it won’t cost you the race either. Nor will presiding over scrapping the platform piety that abortion should be “rare” in favor of the call for universal availability of abortion to all women “regardless of ability to pay.” You can do all this, and Americans will, minimally, not abandon you in numbers sufficient to make you unelectable.
Allow every mitigating factor you wish. Yes, Romney came to the race with dodgy pro-life credentials, made the minimum possible obiesence to the pro-life cause, and continued to send signals that he wasn’t one of us. Yes, the Obama campaign painted a ridiculous caricature of Romney as an opponent of women out to abolish contraception and who knows what else.
None of that obviates the crashingly obvious point that Obama ran an aggressively pro-abortion campaign, and it didn’t cost him the race. This means we haven’t yet succeeded in claiming the moral high ground that is rightfully ours. Americans generally may not like abortion nearly as much as Obama clearly believes they do, but they also don’t generally regard it as the unspeakable horror that it is. That’s the reality demonstrated in this election.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Obama won reelection, in keeping with historical precedent, with a majority of the Catholic vote, especially among Hispanics. Despite the clear and vocal concerns of the American bishops about religious freedom and the HHS mandate, along with what was, by recent historical standards, an unusually assertive showing of bishops emphasizing the preeminence of the life issues and the unacceptability of supporting pro-abortion policies or politicians, American Catholics were not persuaded that a vote for Obama was in any way contrary to Catholic values.
The dissident Catholic political line championed by John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden got a high-profile dusting-off at the vice-presidential debate. Once again, a prominent Catholic politician told the nation that his Catholic faith impelled him to advocate the Democratic line on certain economic and social issues under the rubric of “social justice,” while consigning the Church’s defense of life to the sphere of the personal and private, not to be imposed on others.
Some bishops have made noises about this sort of thing, and one bishop made headlines by declaring that Biden shouldn’t receive communion in his diocese, but as yet there seems to be no episcopal consensus on the practical application—if any—of canon 915 for pro-abortion politicians. The upshot is that the dissident Catholic line remains a workable dodge, and Church teaching regarding the necessity of defending life, not only as a matter of personal conviction but as a matter of public policy, will continue to be ignored by politicians touting their Catholic identity as a taproot of their policies.
A moment of clarity can be the beginning of a change in direction. One recognizes that one was fooling oneself, that one has a problem, that what one has been doing isn’t working, that one doesn’t want to continue down the same path. If so, there is the hard work of changing course. The alternative is a low point that turns out not to be the bottom, and an ongoing spiral downward.
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We’ve-thbpt!-hit-thbpt!-Rock-thbpt!-Bottom-thbpt!-all-thbpt!-right! (Sorry, old SpongeBob reference there). My only consolation is that when things truly do go to hell in a year or two, half of the country will deserve it.
And yes, okay, I’ve got other consolations besides that one. :-)
Steven, The Church should continue to speak for the unborn. But the people of the USA want to be able to kill and sin and sin. They want bread and circuses. The politicians will continue to give it to them. Basically the pro-life issue is the only thing keeping many people tied to the Republican Party. Without that issue keeeping them going, the USA would become a one party country. That is not a good thing because it will lead to a dictorship. So perhaps the Republican party should just drop the abortion issue and go back to just carrying about the rich. We the people made our bed of sin and it will become a huge pigstye. We can still leave the pigstye, not politcially speaking. We basically would give up totally on politics and just not care. This will work for many people; those people will go back to thinking that abortion is a shame, but it’s a nice to have sin just in case you need it.
I’m not persuaded myself that a vote for Obama was “contrary to Catholic values” - at least not in the sense that Catholics were required not to vote for him. Yes, religious freedom and still more abortion are major issues. But on neither of them, especially the latter, is there any compelling reason to think electing Romney would have done a whole lot of good. The chance that electing Romney would have resulted in Roe v. Wade being overturned was something akin to zero. Meanwhile, both Romney and his running mate held positions that were flatly contrary to Catholic teaching on war (among other things), and that cannot be adequately considered using the Catholic Answers “five non-negotiables” formula - which, despite what many American Catholics think, has absolutely no Church authority behind it.
The Republican Party was never about “the rich.” That is a bald-faced lie, a stereotype created by Democrats to fool people into joining them. The Republicans, economically speaking, have been about protectionism (in the olden days) and free markets (recent history). They are also about economic opportunity for all individuals regardless of race, ethnicity, background, religion, etc. So, please stop perpetuating the myth about Republicans being only for the rich. As for abortion and other Catholic non-negotiable issues, maybe it’s time we seriously considered influencing the two major parties from within as well as creating our own third party. (By the way, great column.)
Steven- It is time for the pro-life leadership to insist that the national candidates they publicly endorse must be willing to go on the offensive- like obama did in reverse on the Life issues. The only way forward is to change strategies- find true believers who know their facts and are passionate and convincing in debate with all the pro-choice arguments and dodges. With a candidate like Romney I didn’t believe I could trust him to go big with an Pro-Life Agenda- and I think the message goes out to the undecided religious voters that the elections are all about economic policies and maybe immigration policies- with the Life Issues kept on the Down-Low- so if the true measure is economics and immigration then voters are going to decide on that basis since you have to take the candidate’s own priorites as expressed in ads, debates, and interviews. Romney made his campaign- nearly all of it- on negotiable positions on debateable issues- and that was were his 47% comment really made an impact on alot of people who are more inclined to an FDR-style economy than a libertarian model. My advice for our pro-life movement is to go large or go home- demand more than what planned parenthood demands of the Dems- if you are going to lose- at least be after you have maximized the bully pulpit to try to educate and touch hearts to the genocide of unwanted unborn children. Put the Catholic and Secular Dem leaders and candidates on notice and on the spot- over and over and over- right now they are the ones who seem to the public to be the most passionate and interested in the abortion issue- and they get away with the lamest of arguments and talking points. If we lose it shouldn’t be for want of trying- or trying to move by stealth as if protecting the unborn was some exotic concern for a few uncomprehending old white males. Next time around there had better be a whole new look to the Republican offerings, with a new attitude as to who has the higher moral ground on the social issues. These guys need to be principled and schooled to be convincing witnesses for Life- if they aren’t they don’t deserve a political leadership role- hot or cold- the lukewarm get spit out- says Jesus Christ.
Pachyderminator: On the main question you raise, I have some thoughts, but they aren’t particularly relevant now.
Not being able to vote for Romney is simply not the same as finding it okay to vote for Obama. He campaigned on actual and planned objective evils, and promised to keep on implementing them. That’s what a positive vote went toward.
That was to Pachy’r. To SDG: excellent article.
@The Pachyderminator
Nobody was foolish enough to think that electing Romney would result in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Your argument is a typical red herring. We are however guaranteed that the election of Obama will result in an increase of the murder of the unborn, it will likely result in 1-3 new supreme court judges unequivocally pro-death and likely to hand down decisions at odds with Catholic beliefs. As to your assertion that the “5 non-negotiables formula” of Catholic Answers has no backing of Church authority, that is false. There were several Bishops who came out and said as much as well as the Pope. Perhaps you don’t think he has any authority?
even the democrats don’t pretend that they care about the poor.
I couldn’t agree with you more. This country is in trouble. We can only continue to pray realize that God is truly in control and this is part of His plan.
http://thewaywardcatholic.com/2012/11/07/the-vine-dresser/
I prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries yesterday, hoping for a different outcome. I had to remind myself today that Jesus did not promise it would be easy. I think about that fourth Sorrowful Mystery, fortunately Jesus and Mary are there to help us all carry our crosses. Thank you for the good post SG to keep it all in perspective.
What I have heard a lot of from my female friends in social media is “I would never dream of having an abortion, BUT DON’T YOU DARE TELL ME I CAN’T HAVE ONE!”
They understand abortion is (at some level) wrong, but they believe the right to control their own body under any circumstances is greater.
I had one friend (who used to sit next to me in CCD) argue that women had the right to abortion for any reason at any time because her right over her body was absolute.
I hate to say it but it comes down to whether one accepts the Church’s teachings or not. The Church was virtually silent after the first salvo by Cardinal Dolan and his brothers on the First Amendment violations imposed by Obamacare.
The Church has been silent when radically pro abortion Catholics such as Pelosi, Biden, and the Kennedy clan mock Church teaching.
The Church has been silent on the impending economic crisis which will afflict the poor much more so than the rich.
God gave us free will to effect events how we see fit according to His teachings. We must use the gifts He gave us to promote solutions based upon Christian teachings.
The Church should not remain silent on some of these issues not allow dissidents to express their own opinions as Catholic teaching.
Second, as I have said before, Obama’s gains among Latino voters (including a lot of Latino Catholics) has to do with his recent psuedoamnesty for certain undocumented young people who were brought to this country as children. Such a position is far more in line with Church teaching than the Republican position on the issue.
Matt:
“I hate to say it but it comes down to whether one accepts the Church’s teachings or not.”
Somehow, abolitionists got rid of abolition, and the civil rights movement got civil rights, without insisting on adherence to the teachings of any church. We have to do the same with abortion.
Matt, well said. I pray to St. Paul, St. John the Baptist, and St. Anthony for our bishops and priests to start preaching boldly and quite being so politically correct. If St. Paul had been timid, we would not have many books in the New Testament. Can you imagine him being afraid to hurt the feelings of the Romans, Corinthins?
It’s quite obvious to me that the American people want abortion and contraception and they want them to be “free.”
DN:
This is true of Obama. My point is that it is equally true of Romney. Neither viable candidate was acceptable from a Catholic perspective, and I don’t think there was a good reason to “privilege” Obama’s unacceptability over Romney’s unacceptability. However, if this is the case, and if we assume that it was allowable to vote for one of the candidates who had a chance of winning, voting for Obama might not be automatically wrong.
Jean Francois:
We’ve heard that every four years now for I don’t know how long, and it’s long since ceased to be meaningful. Most presidents appoint one or two Supreme Court justices, and it doesn’t make all that much difference. Besides, Romney’s alliance with the pro-life cause was so tenuous he would quite likely have made equally bad appointments. But we weren’t hearing about how it was a sin to vote for him.
Some bishops confirmed it. Others rejected it in favor of a more holistic treatment of Catholic social teaching. Whether by accident or by design, it’s oriented toward the good of the GOP rather than the advancement of a truly just society.
If the Pope confirmed it, I’d certainly like to educate myself. Could you give me a citation?
@ThePachyderminator
Start here and you can look up the references to the official Vatican documents from there. http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-benedict-xvi-on-what-should-be-the-principal-focus-for-catholic-voters/
You can also read what Cardinal Bernardin, hero of the “seamless garment theory” had to say on several occasions, http://tuitiofidei.blogspot.com/search?q=cardinal+bernardin
Here’s one though, He said, for example, in 1988, “I don’t see how you can subscribe to the consistent ethic and then vote for someone who feels that abortion is a ‘basic right’ of the individual.”
Thanks Jean Francois for defeating that distortion that is constantly brought up about positions that the GOP happens to hold.
5 non-negotiables are exactly that: non-negotiable because they are questions of intrinsic evils. It is frankly ridiculous for people to continue to bring up the fact that for Catholics there are other non-negotiables, for example, a Catholic can not vote for a supporter of chattel slavery (buying and selling of human beings), or prostitution. The reason it is ridiculous is because NO ONE, not a single candidate, is advocating chattel slavery or prostition (except Gary Johnson with prostitution, unbelievably). So yes, one could more accurately call the list the “5 non-negotiables that people seem to think are negotiable in our current age” but that is a ridiculously long name. People need to be more honest and stop pretending not to understand that abortion is the gravest issue ***in question*** in the United States.
And no Pachyderminator, it is NOT true that 1-2 appointments “don’t make much difference” when the person most likely to retire is Anthony Kennedy, and the second is Ruth Ginsberg. Replacing those two would give you a two person margin of justices likely to restrict abortions. You HAVE to realize this. Why are you saying such a thing that seems so obviously an effort to distort the truth? Do you really believe that Mitt Romney, a man who restricted embryonic stem cell research in Massachusetts and chose Paul Ryan as a VP has NO reasonable chance of making a more pro-life decision than Barack Obama? Really?!
Do you really think that Paul Ryan would have neglected to make that his highest priority in advocacy when the issue came up? Paul Ryan, a man who willingly is in frequent and (according to the Bishops he speaks to) substantive and serious discussion with multiple bishops on the serious issues of the day?
I can’t seriously believe that you believe what you are purporting. One can legitimately hold the positions of a Democrat (other than these obvious glaring atrocities) or defend those positions without trying to equivocate prudential positions on wars not yet waged with ACTUAL decisions on supporting, aiding, abetting, and funding ACTUAL murder of thousands and thousands of children.
Great column!
I share the same frustration as others regarding the role of Church leadership during this election cycle.
I have prayed in front of abortuaries, stood on lifechains, and held the position of “respect life coordinator” at my parish. After many years of this, I agree with Fr. Pavone… “America will not reject abortion until America sees abortion.”
This will not happen because, as G.K.Chesterton rightly observed, “We need not fear censorship of the press. We already have censorship by the press”.
Mr. Greydanus,
with all due respect, stop kidding your self, the ones who gave Obama the victory were: Irish in NY and MA, Italians in NY RI, CT, Slavics in Illinois and Cleveland, and Germans in Wisconsin among others
This election is a massive failure of so-called Catholics to stand for the faith. How can any Cathoic vote for a man who persecutes the Church, promotes abortion or murder and upholds gay marriage? Yet, millions voted for the new Herod in our midst and our bishops remained silent when people like Pelosi and Biden openly reject Catholic moral teaching and confuse the faithful. This election was a slap in the faces of our bishops and it isn’t the first slap, yet we hear bishops “asking” Obama to respect religious liberty and the life of the unborn as if Obama cared one hoot about these issues.
It’s time for our bishops to stand up and act like bishops, and it is time for “cultural” Catholics to admit that’s precisely what they are, instead of pretending to be Catholic.
I’d disagree that “the polls were right.” They were, but they weren’t. The thing is, the conservative pundits were analyzing the polls by looking at the internal data as opposed to the “headline.” The internal data of virtually EVERY poll showed two key things:
1) Independents favoring Romney by enormous margins
2) Democratic enthusiasm down considerably, and Republican enthusiasm up by even greater margins.
When you take the particulars of these numbers and factor in other known data, it is simply not possible for Obama to win. This is why the Karl Rove types were predicting a massive Romney victory. In the end, it turns out that Democrats turned out in relatively historic numbers (not as well as in 2008, but certainly far larger than is the modern trend and far greater than the polls suggested) and independents seem to have gone Obama’s way as well.
Where the polls were correct, generally speaking, is in their overall percentages. The confusion is that these percentages were devised based upon factoring in turnout models inconsistent with the remainder of the polling data.
In the end, what this means is that even now a whole lot of people have absolutely no idea what the heck happened with these polls and why there were so many inconsistencies.
I fear that conservative principles are not understood or are not accepted by a majority of Americans. Had a ruly conservative candidate like Santorum been the nominee he wouldn’t have stood a chance. You cannot underestimate the power of the press to influence public opinion. Had they covered Obama with the same vengeance as they did Bush, Obama would have been defeated. Unfortunately, a huge number of people who believe that they can’t stomach politics and “the news” generally, have their impressions crafted for them very subtley by a duplicitous media. Until we can effectively counter that we are always at a distinct disadvantage. Even then, the allure of evil is powerful and evil has no scruples regarding fairness or justice. That, too puts conservatives at an extreme disadvantage.
@waywardson Oh my, “far more in line” with Catholic teaching? Try only a hair closer, or nothing at all for the vast majority of undocumented workers. The Dream Act primarily benefits families who have managed a kind of middle class existence for themselves—what does that do for the migrant worker and their family? ALL federal politicians, our President at the helm, have taken to showing nothing but contempt for the migrants in our borders, some of the weakest among us. NONE of them implement programs that help these folks, who are usually in dire straights. Don’t you forget for a minute that it isn’t the government but Catholics (big shocker: most of them are faithful, orthodox Catholics) and other Christians who care for families here illegally.
Shane:
The idea that Nate Silver was right by accident isn’t going to fly. His track record over the last four years is too solid; his consistency in predicting, over the course of this election, the exact results we got, state by state, plus the local races — and doubling down on his predictions in the face of withering criticism and divergent polling results — is too impressive. Saying “a whole lot of people have absolutely no idea what the heck happened” is less persuasive than saying that Silver’s methodology works.
Nemo Lopes:
a) What are you talking about?
b) You are picking out comparatively small populations with demographic and electoral shifts insignificant compared to Hispanics, who went 40% for Bush 43 and only 27% for Romney — by far the biggest demographic/electoral shift.
c) You’re even picking a number of non-battleground states. So back to a).
The depression I felt after the election was the same awakening you center on. This election proved that it’s “not the war stupid”, it’s “not the economy, stupid”, it’s “not the lies, stupid”, it’s about the social mores of 21st century Americans. And it didn’t happen over night, but this election showed to me that we are probably beyond the point of return. What was once recognized as Truth, decency, and morality is now considered extreme, judgmental, right wing radicalism. We can’t undo the eugenics movement of Margaret Sanger, we can’t undo the perverted sex education of innocent elementary school children, or the violence in the media and games, or the barrage of sexual agendas in popular shows, that have all helped to shape what the morality of Americans in the 20 and 21st century; where good is now evil and evil is now good. But we can fight the good fight, because right is right even if everyone is wrong, and Truth is still Truth despite our American representative being a malignant, mendacious narcissist hell bent on even further moral “reform”. Babies are still being saved, one by one, and until God ends this world, it is worth persevering.
I did not vote for Obama, this time or last. But I can see why many did. The church got into this way to late to make a difference this time. They know it and have said they believe this will be a long fight. People inherently know that voting for a pro life candidate will not change one thing as far as roe v wade goes. Only congress can override the supreme court. Romney could not and would not change one thing about abortion. Setting all ethnic groups aside, since there is no difference between voting the party line or voting your race. But that is not the reason either, may be for some but not over all. The old adage it’s the economy stupid still stands. In the ninteys I had my own business. By the late ninteys I decided to go back to work force because I could see how bad the economy was getting. After 911 it has been terrible and getting worse. The true unemployment and underemployment numbers is around 25 percent or worse. For the first time in my life I could not get a job for over a year and a half. I finally have now but at less than half of what I used to make. My Health insurance premiums are unaffordable and my savings continue to shrink. As that happens my retirement account disappears. The truth is 48 million people are on food stamps. There are not enough jobs for us now and were not creating enough for the future youth to keep up. Things are just getting worse and worse. People are really hurting. The current government has given us 99 weeks unemployment. There trying to help people keep their houses, or so they say. The democratic party owns the “we fight for workers rights title” . No one can afford health insurance anymore. This government has promised change to help in that. Romney said that Obama care would be the first thing he would abolish. Well, people want to live, and they want their kids to live to. Add that to the unemployed who do own a home who do not qualify for any government health care problems because of what they own. I agree with everything you said about Romney, and more. But the economy is still the issue. My moral beliefs will not allow me to vote for Obama, I vote for them before I eat. Most people vote their pocket book.
I do not agree that the Catholic vote went to Obama because I do not think that Catholic is an identity one gives oneself. So, while it may be true that a majority of those who call themselves Catholic voted for Obama, that is not the same thing as a majority of Catholics voted for Obama.
As for “conservative” pundits, I use the same reasoning. The fact that George Will and Peggy Noonan have carved out media niches for themselves as “conservative” does not make them conservative. I gave up trusting these labels many years ago, when I first encountered the musings of David Brooks, who was described to me as a conservative.
SDG: I am talking about your subtle attempt to blame one particular group for Obama’s victory. According to what you are insinuating in your response, all of a sudden those groups I named are small populations in this country? Pleaase….The fact of the matter is those lapse Catholics in the Northeast, in Pennsylvania and other parts of the country are the main cheerleaders for this administration; and not only those in the category of “Hispanics” as you seem to insinuate. Stop living in denial. I can give you a long list of names of people who represent those groups who gave Obama yet another victory, beginning with Biden and Pelosi (Cuomo, Sebellius, Blago in Chicago, Kennedy anybody?).
Ah, I see, Mr. Lopes.
Please be assured that you are perceiving subtle insinuation where none exists. This blog post is not about assigning “blame” for the outcome of this week’s election. Indeed, it’s not about “blaming” anyone for anything, with the arguable exception of “right-wing punditry” (and all of us, to the extent that we paid any attention to them).
I’m not saying that Latinos “should have” voted for Mr. Romney but didn’t. Indeed, one could just as easily say that Romney “should have” wooed Latinos and didn’t.
But I wouldn’t say that either. The very fact that Romney got the nomination at all is part of the problem I’m indicting here.
That said, it is a fact, not an insinuation or an interpretation, that the most decisive demographic/electoral change between the Republican victory in 2004 and the Republican defeat in 2012 was not Irish, Italian, German or Slavic populations, but Latinos. That 40%-27% switch was decisive. If you are aware of equally significant switches among other populations, please let me know.
But again, I’m not assigning blame for this. I’m not even saying it’s a matter of blame.
I think the problem here is not so much what the Republicans and conservstives did or didn’t do. It’s pointless to blame ourselves. The MAIN issue here is the MINDSET of the PEOPLE who voted for Obama, the disposition of their hearts. Even if Romney would have pulled off a victory with the smallest of margins, the question still remains: Why did so many people vote for Obama? Although it appears that the margin of victory was slimmer this time around, the problem still remains: Why are people voting for Obama?
People’s mindset and attitudes towards life IN GENERAL tells us a lot about who they will vote for. For instance, the “blame other” crowd (i.e. African-Americans who blame “the whiteman” for their current misery; women who blame “robbed white men in Rome”; the “99% blaming the 1%” for thier poor “distribution of wealth”; the accusation that America is the root cause of every other country’s misery) ALL voted for Obama. And that’s exaclty what the Democrats did: they energized the envy, the greed, the lust in the HEARTS of their base. And of course, who could forget the ANGER towards God they demonstrated at the DNC. My mother used to say that “not every Democrat is envious, but every envious person is a Democrat.” And another gem: “Not every Democrat is a Communist, but every Communist is a Democrat.”
So, we must resort to our first and HIGHER calling: changing people’s hearts, through the grace of the Holy Spirit. There is REAL hope - not the “false” hope that Obama promised. I witnessed a few people’s hearts change this past election cycle from ‘08 as they voted for Obama back then because of the “social issues,” but voted for Romney this time because of the life issues and because of religious freedom - not the economy. The Economy will correct itself when people’s heart change, not changing the economy in order to change people’s hearts.
With all that said, I will propose a change in srategy for next time:
We must TAKE AWAY the social issues from the Democrats because as REAL Christians, we OWN the social issues!!!! The Social Issues BELONG to Authentic Christians, not the the secularists and atheists. The people who voted for Obama did not vote for him because of the economy or his handling of foreign policy: They voted for him because of his stance on the social issues.
SDG: Thanks for the clarification. I guess we both agree then that there was a switch but the fact remains: those other groups simply voted according to what by now has become their normal tradition, namely in support for an administration that is persecuting the Church and that stands for everything that is contrary to the Gospel. Peace
I realize we cannot start a new moderate party that shed the shackles of the political far left and far right to form a truly Catholic common sense party…but I’d like to. Think about it. The two parties split the Catholic vote because they split the Catholic ideals. The schism this inevitably causes is apparent. Why? Because we are putting party politics above our faith. We let politicians fit us into one box or the other. Neither representing us well. So what are we left with…a drifting faith being jelled by some values we know are good and consistent with church teachings and others that are not. The sad part is we compromise those elements we know are right with pathetic rationalization a that would make a 10 year old roll her eyes. Don’t believe me? Just look at Catholics for choice. To justify that is the crown jewel of stupidity. And for the other extreme, pretending like policies promoting war, environmental degradation and abandoning the most needy of our culture to stop gay “marriage” is equally naive or gullible. Time to she’s the lies and compromises. I just don’t know how we could accomplish this.
Perhaps we need a Pachydermatologist so we can do rash judgments on the GOP.
I think it was clear that Obama’s support was quite tepid. Romney decided to spread herbicide on the grass-roots at the Convention, other than a little verbal feint praise, he rejected the Ron Paul delegates. He had the numbers, there would be no actual fight, but he went ahead and was as disrespectful to them, and to the paleocons including the pro-life and pro-family wings.
He was so awful that even holding your nose was not enough for some long-time republicans. There was nothing this Mickey Mouse’s dog, Pluto-crat to offer democrats. Independents had to pick the least stinky candidate, and in this case better the familiar stench.
The GOP party machinery has proven it can easily force through the nomination of an unelectable corrupt jerk who is so bad he cannot beat a weak democrat in the general election. Twice. They will probably do so again in 2016. W only got a second term because the democrats made the same mistake in 2004. And in 2000, Gore was not liked. VPs don’t do that well, especially when they flip flop like Bush41. And remember Senator Ethanol in 1996.
Reagan was a clear, shining light. You knew where he stood. So he created the “Reagan Democrats”. You either loved him or hated him. There was not this cold gray lukewarm despair and resignation after the convention. The GOP machine had to get behind Reagan or lose. Love conquers all including hate. Mediocrity and tepidity only engender sloth.
One further note. I supported Ronna Romney (a real conservative) for Senate here in Michigan, and watched the GOP machine and celebrities TELL EVERYONE TO VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRAT!!!.
American Catholics have a very big ambiguity situation in leadership of Catholic identity with the USCCB approach to life issues and the equation of the preferential treatment of the poor to a social welfare state. It is not by accident that Rome came out extremely critical of the NETWORK organization that has worked to pass Obamacare and diluted the message of life in the Church. These types of Alinsky inspired community organizing are heavily supported by the grants of the CCHD. It is the plugin that the Hispanics have with the Catholic Church that gets their support for Santa Claus social welfare programs that degrade the protections of conscience of Catholics as a whole. As you can see, the Campaign for Human Development (CCHD)the USCCB social justice program, grants are for community organizing. Here was last year’s grants
http://www.usccb.org/about/catholic-campaign-for-human-development/upload/2011-2012-CCHD-Grantee-List.pdf
This demonstrates that the Bishops are speaking out of both sides of their mouths, one side for conscience and prolife issues, and the bigger side being the liberation theology hotbed of community organizing and even climate change through http://catholicclimatecovenant.org/
This is a very strong network to the Hispanic community that rejects the Church’s teaching on contraception.
I direct the reader to a Human Events article regarding the CCHD and its history http://www.humanevents.com/2009/10/26/leftwing-radicalism-in-the-church-cchd-and-acorn/ as it mentions PICO in California that is extremely active in San Jose. The Diocese of San Jose in its November 2012 edition of the Valley Catholic had a picture of Barack Obama, Cesar Chavez’s widow on the front page with a picture of Benedict XVI below it that came out the week before the election. With an pictoral editorial like that to all Catholic households in the Diocese, who could ask for better free political advertising? Serrendipity, I don’t think so. http://noontimeatthewell.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-valley-catholic-october-23-2012-vol.html
You might be a movie critic but you’re a pretty good social/political commentator!
Someone posted the 5 non negotiables didn’t have any church teachings behind it? Let’s see Catechism of the Caholic Church CCC. Look up this: Abortion 2270, Cloning 2274, Embryonic Stem cell research 2274, Same sex marriage 2335, 2363. Euthanasia 2277, 2324, Add contraception 2370. Dust it off take a look or if you don’t have one buy on. It is the Catholic Magisterium by John Paul II approved by all the Bishops of the world. Leo Rutten Nebraska
Michael Demers: Thanks. My feeling is, a film critic who isn’t qualified to write about lots of things other than film isn’t qualified to write about film either.
SDG: Isn’t it true that the nation only shifted right in comparison to the ‘08 election, but shifted left when compared to the ‘10 election? 4 states voting in favor of gay marriage (or against traditional marriage) by popular vote for the first time, 2 more Democrats in the Senate, more Dems in the House - not exactly to the right.
Apparently, Romney got 2 million less votes than McCain, so I’m not sure we’re even to the right compared to ‘08.
There is still hope for the future of this country. We need to have a third party, the Pro-Life Party with a 100% prolife platform. Every candidate needs to pass our litmus test: every abortion kills an innocent life including those babies concieved in cases of rape and incest. Furthermore, oral contraception kills innocent life because the pill is an abortifacient. The Pro-Life Party would be more in line with the Consitution of the United States of America than other parties claim to be. The Pro-Life Party would have strict adherence to the duties of the government: to protect all its citizens including the unborn citizens. We need to protect the innocent.
JD: Actually, I delimited the question even more narrowly than you suggest: The “rightward shift” I spoke of was solely with respect to demographic/electoral voting patterns in ballots cast for the presidential candidates themselves, not other races and ballot questions and certainly not larger questions of national attitudes, etc.
And while Romney got fewer absolute votes than McCain in 2008, President Obama also got fewer votes, and won on a narrower margin, than candidate Obama. So fewer people overall voted than in 2008, but those who did preferred Obama less decisively than voters in 2008.
We can place the victory of liberalism in this past election, with a large majority of Catholics voting for Obama, squarely at the feet of the Catholic Bishops. They have never taught the flock about birth control, traditional marriage, or most basic tenets of the faith. A few have stepped forward, but you can count them on one hand. A shepard is supposed to guard the flock.
SDG:
You’re vastly overestimating the success Silver has had, in at least two
ways.
First, comparative to other forecasters, he hasn’t had some extraordinarily greater success, but has been on par or so with many folks.
Second, as a whole he’s had a number of fairly significant misses. He fared terribly when predicting some UK elections some time ago, and he was grossly wrong about the 2010 midterms until very late in the game.
I’d add a third: do some searching on the internet and you’ll find all kinds of people who have devised models using simpler mathematics that have produced results just as good as his. Some are fans, others are critics. All say the same thing in the end: there isn’t anything special about his method, folks were using nearly identical ones 20 years ago. He just happened to become famous doing it.
All of that said, the point really isn’t about Nate Silver. It’s about the fact that the internal numbers of virtually every poll were well off, but the big “headline” numbers ended up being right because, for some reason, the pollsters put their final results together in a way which contradicted their internal numbers. This is the rather interesting “mystery” that those following this sort of thing are considering right now.
Single party control of the media is just as diastrous as is single party control of the government. The Democrats own the media, or maybe the media owns the Demoncrats, either way, until that changes count on one progessive/secularist culture of death freak show after another to hold the White House.
Shane: I cited Silver not because I think he’s got any special magic or because he’s never wrong, but simply because, as you note, he’s a well-known face for highly reliable methods. I’m familiar with others who’ve gotten similar results using simpler (but convergent) math (in fact, it was on a site exploring such alternative methods that I learned about Silver in the first place).
Silver isn’t doing anything but math, and math is only as good as underlying numbers. Silver’s (and convergent) math works in the US and not in the UK because UK poll data isn’t as good as US data.
Credit where it’s due: Silver enjoys the prestige he does right now not only for his accuracy and precision, but also for his nerve. In the face of the withering criticism he received this past week and in recent weeks, it must have been tempting to hedge his bets and protect his rep from possible explosion, as nearly all the other pollsters and pundits were doing. Instead, he not only stood by his predictions, he continue to revise this degree of confidence upward to the end. Many people were predicting his downfall, but he didn’t waver. He stood by his method, and he was dramatically vindicated.
This article reminds me of a drug addict who claims he has hit rock bottom while he shoots more drugs. The GOP is done for in America. Fascism does not fly here anymore, thanks mostly to the internet, which the GOP does not understand. However, in 2012 as in 2008, the majority of Catholics understand this, as they voted for Obama. Bigotry, hatred, tyranny, these things that the GOP has embraced are on their way out of this world. Amen! Praise Jesus!
Thanks for that helpful input, Chris Feroz. God bless you.
The United States of America as a legal/political entity is finished, and its collapse is only a matter of time—not much time at that. We must now concentrate on rebuilding the Church from the womb up, and laying the groundwork for Catholic culture in North America for the next thousand years—and it may take close to a thousand years to accomplish that. While our descendents 500 and a thousand years from now may be once again living in a prosperous civilization much like ours—I don’t envy our descendents 50 and 100 years from now. They’ll be living in something that looks like “Blade Runner” or “The Book of Eli” or “The Road.” So be it.
Things have just gotten a little easier for the pro-gay-marriage folks and the Planned Parenthood mentality that contraception and abortion are absolutely necessary for the advance of woman. How will we ever climb out of the abyss?
I think that there are too many good Catholics, who attend church each Sunday, baptize their children, receive the sacraments and work hard to raise their families, that have no idea, no clue as to what Holy Mother Church teaches about the “5 non-negotiables.” These same Catholics have never heard a sermon about the evils of contraception, of abortion, of embryonic stem-cell use, of the importance of natural, traditional marriage to society and of the danger to religious freedom at this point in time. They don’t hear it at Church, they aren’t reading good, solid Catholic papers/publications and they go to the voting booth uninformed and unable to defend their Catholic faith.
Even worse, the presidential candidates, with the exception of Rick Santorum, are unable to articulate a good argument in defense of life. they lack the knowledge to defend natural marriage. They aren’t attracting folks to the light of truth, because they arent’ speaking it. Let’s get to the heart of the matter! Nothing will help our Nation unless the unborn are allowed to be born. We will continue down this descent into the abyss of darkness if we don’t first uphold the right to life. Notice that the media, knows well enough to not ask the tough questions of Pres. Obama and Gov. Romney. LET THEM ASK:.....“SO, IS AN UNBORN CHILD WORTHY OF PROTECTION??
I have not given up hope. I will work harder, but please tell me how we can better inform our Catholic parishioners?
Why is it that the gay marriage supporters resort almost entirely to Ad Hominem attacks? I don’t expect Chris Feroz to respond to any comments about his post though. He seems like a hit-and-run poster, who doesn’t want to actually have to read opinions he doesn’t already agree with.
As for those who want a Pro-Life Party which makes no exceptions for the life of the mother, or in cases of rape, all you will do is siphen away more votes from the GOP and both parties will have absolutely no chance of winning. When I started to switch from being militantly pro-choice to pro-life, it didn’t happen all at once. I became open to some arguments but not others. Shifting ground can take time. Your mind starts to open slowly when it comes to this issue. Dialogue with young people who call themselves pro-choice, but who will say in the same breath “But I’m opposed to partial birth abortion” about why their stance is illogical is a start. The vast majority of people don’t think that abortion in the third trimester for any reason is a good thing. But if forced to pick sides between those who say you must allow a woman whose life is endangered by a pregnancy to die rather than have an abortion, or those who say abortion should be legal at any time for any reason, they will choose the latter side (even if that side doesn’t entirely represent the way they think).
First, SGD: hitting bottom is for the addict to realize he needs to change. Who are you analogizing needs to change here? The country? I’m not so sure, because people seem to have bought into the lies and drivel of the mainstream media.
You aren’t blaming. But I might suggest that Maureen has a point. I am 52, and all I’ve ever heard from the pulpit is to “vote my conscience”. This year, for the first time, I heard it explained, from the pulpit, what exactly that means.
So, I’m not sure who must hit bottom, who must be the one to change, but maybe it’s our priests and bishops for starters. What we need is clear direction and leadership. So many people do not have well-formed consciences necessary to discern right and wrong, because they have heard “thou shalt not judge,” more than “though shalt not kill.”
God bless America.
“It also seems to be true that most Americans today believe that abortion should be more restricted than it is.”
No, as a college professor, I can never find a student who thinks this, so I think you are living in a bubble. I know no non-Christians who think abortion should be restricted.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE to our dear bishops—-excommunicate the pro-abortion politicians. My father was saying this about Teddy Kennedy forty years ago.
I’m sick of so-called Catholic politicians who DEMAND Communion when they REFUSE to be in communion with the Catholic Church. They treat the Body and Blood of Christ as a photo-op. Jesus said: “As often as you do to the least of My brothers, you do to Me.” Would these so-called Catholics abort the Baby Jesus?
They need to be excommunicated for their own good!
The only thing I know absolutely is that no Christian voted for Obama. This is the real tragedy for America: the father of lies has successfully blinded so many of our selfish and arrogant brothers and sisters. Orwell had it right.
You are so right Patty Bennett; with few exceptions, our bishops are gutless and perhaps too comfortable sipping port in their castles to be concerned about the examples they are to the American people. All the while good people who need direction are allowed to enter the gates of hell.
Both parties need bigger tents, as it were, and there need to be more Independents. The GOP will fight for a child to be born, but the Democrats will fight to see that the child’s needs are met once outside the womb, throughout life, and into old age. Conversely, the Dems don’t fight for the child to be born (although outlawing abortion doesn’t necessarily stop people from having abortions - they just do it in private), and the GOP will says government should abandon the vulnerable and let capitalist greed magically take care of them (which it doesn’t by and large). Until the Dems become more pro-life and the GOP becomes more concerned with social and economic justice, neither party will be morally consistent, and we, the voters, are left without trully good choices…
“Pro Death”??? Really? Call into your kitchens, where y’all like to keep yer wimmen folk and ask them if the abortion that they had when they were 16 and scared to death was something that they looked forward to.
I have NEVER met anyone who is “pro abortion”. Never. They simply do not exist.
Just as you would agree that there are no “pro pedophiles” in Catholicism.
Right?
Hello?
Right?
When you all weed out your pedophile priests, you may have a leg to stand on but until then your word is nothing more than holy hypocrisy.
I am not stupid enough to believe that this will get published in the comments section here, but at least ONE person involved in this discussion will read it. The censor.
This is a dummy comment. Feel free to delete, Steve.
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