In the 1992 election campaign, Democratic political strategist James Carville famously coined the expression, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The slogan successfully focused media attention on the message Carville correctly believed would win the White House — that Democratic candidate Bill Clinton could manage the struggling U.S. economy better than incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush.

In that same spirit of delivering a simple sound bite that’s easy to grasp, the Daily Blog proposes a similar slogan to highlight the message many U.S. bishops are communicating to guide Catholic voters in this year’s presidential race: “It’s the right-to-life, not the party.”

Bishops such as Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver and Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph have come under attack for their alleged pro-Republican partisanship, for stating that it’s virtually impossible to conceive of a proportionate reason that would justify voting for someone who’s as pro-abortion as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

But as Register contributor Mark Stricherz notes in an Oct. 24 post on America magazine’s election blog, Archbishop Chaput didn’t say Catholics shouldn’t vote for Obama because he’s a Democrat, or that Catholics should be wary of voting for other Democratic candidates who don’t share Obama’s abortion extremism.

“It is true that Chaput has criticized pro-choice Democrats, such as Barack Obama,” comments Stricherz. “But that’s because they favor abortion rights, not because they are Democrats.”

Moreover, Stricherz points out that Archbishop Chaput “has not endorsed, or even praised” a Republican candidate in the current election cycle.

Writes Stricherz, “For what it is worth, I suspect that the archbishop is a Democrat. He invited me to give the annual Bob Casey lecture at the archdiocese. In talking with him, I learned that he is as much of a strong pro-life Democrat as Casey himself. As a young seminarian, he worked as an ‘active volunteer’ for Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968. He supported Jimmy Carter’s presidential bids in 1976. He opposed the Iraq war and some of the GOP’s attempts at cracking down on illegal immigration.”

And to demonstrate the Daily Blog’s own bipartisanship, here’s a link to an Oct. 26 New York Times article about some courageous pro-life Democratic candidates who are running for Congress despite the hostiility of many members of their own party.

— Tom McFeely