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Reaganites for Obama?Sorry, McCain. Barack Obama is a natural for the Catholic vote.

By Douglas W. Kmiec
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2008, at 1:29 PM ET
Barack Obama. Click image to expand.

My dear late mother would say: "Steer clear of mixing religion and politics in public discussions." Sorry, Mom, but the mix is unavoidable. Religion shapes us, and politics is our addictive national reality show. In any event, my faith, Catholicism, teaches that pluralism is enhanced, not threatened, when religions talk to one another.

Apparently, we're pretty persuasive. Catholics have been on the side of the top vote-getter (who, as we know from playing hanging chad, is not always the winner) in the last nine presidential elections. The Electoral College and the Supreme Court threw us a curve in 2000, but many Catholics probably put their choice of Al Gore in the "you can't blame us" department. Unlike our Jewish brothers and sisters who trend Democratic, and our Protestant friends who regularly populate Republican ranks, we're the ultimate flip-floppers, picking Republicans five times and Democrats four since 1972. Naturally, this led me straight to supporting Mitt Romney, whom McCain once snidely called "the real candidate of change," claiming that the governor changed positions more often than the rest of them (which from where I sit is a bit like asserting the Atlantic is wetter than the Pacific).

As a Catholic legal scholar chairing Romney's Committee on the Constitution, I worked to help him overcome a form of religious prejudice that had previously plagued John F. Kennedy, who needed to promise Protestant ministers in 1960 that his Oval Office would not have a hotline to the Vatican. Romney was pressed to assure voters that there wouldn't be a Mormon prophet lingering behind the West Wing curtains. Had anyone actually listened, Romney's "Faith in America" address was a tour de force in defense of the best traditions of religious liberty. But his eloquence—unfortunately and unfairly—was not reciprocated with faith in him.

But now that Romney's out, whom might Catholics turn to? Since I served at one time as Reagan's constitutional lawyer, it would be natural for me to fall in line behind John McCain. Don't worry about his conservative lapses, says President Bush, the foremost expert on lapsed conservativism. There is no gainsaying that McCain is a military hero deserving of salute. But McCain seems fixated on just taking the next hill in Iraq. His Iraqi military objective is laudable, but it assumes good reasons to be there in the first place. It also ignores that Catholics are looking to bless the peacemakers.

Now, don't think me daft, but when Obama gave his victory remarks in Iowa calling upon America to "choose hope over fear and to choose unity over division," he was standing squarely in the shoes of the "Great Communicator." Notwithstanding all of Bill Clinton's self-possessed heckling to the contrary, Obama was right—Reagan was a "transformative" president. Reagan liked to tell us he was proudest of his ability to make America feel good about itself. He did. Catholic sensibility tells me Obama wants it to deserve that feeling.

Much of the Catholic primary vote has been in the Democratic column, going at first to Hillary Clinton over Obama, as in New Hampshire, where she won 44 percent to 27 percent. But lately, Obama has been narrowing the gap, using the Catholic vote to vault to victory. In the Illinois primary, where Obama bested Clinton 65 percent to 33 percent, he attracted 48 percent of the Catholic vote. When Obama's share of the Catholic vote drops, the races tighten: In still-undecided New Mexico, only 39 percent of Catholic voters went for Obama.

Clinton lost Tuesday to Obama in Maryland, the first Catholic settlement in America, but also in Virginia, where the number of Catholic households in the burgeoning northern section of the commonwealth is up more than 67 percent over the last decade. However hard-working, intelligent, and policy savvy she may be (and she is), Clinton seldom inspires even the so-called "social justice" Catholics or reveals that rare gift of empathy that defined Reagan and that one glimpses in Obama. Say what you will about not preferring style over substance, modern leadership requires both, especially now when the international community—whose help we need to arrest terrorism—seldom gives us the benefit of the doubt.

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Douglas W. Kmiec, the former dean of the Catholic University of America School of Law, is presently the chair of constitutional law at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.
Photograph of Barack Obama by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Comparing the death penalty and abortion can't be made without comparing the number of people on death row vs. the number of abortions. [They're] not even in the same ball park. Millions of abortions have taken place since Roe vs. Wade. A few hundred people have been executed. If a Catholic who is against abortion votes for Obama they can be sure he won't put someone on the court who would rule to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

Regardless of why we got into Iraq it is a real problem that must be solved. McCain is clearly the best person to do so.

--kandrewf

(To reply, click here.)

While I'm sure the smooth-talking Obama is attractive to some, his stubborn refusal to recognize the dignity of life is in direct opposition to Catholic teaching. Furthermore, his support of homosexuals' desire for "marriage" is also a contradiction to the Catholic faith. If that wasn't enough, Mr Obama supports fetal/embryonic stem cell research...the creation of a human being for spare parts and a research subject.

These are "non-negotiables"...and a Catholic who votes for Obama puts their souls at risk.

--Crusader.Airman

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I've only been of the age of political awareness to see two presidential elections, but the idea that my Catholic faith should ever lead me to vote Republican is ludicrous to me. The fault lines between the parties have the GOP as the party that helps the wealthy, the Dems as the party that helps the poor. The GOP is of exclusion, the Dems of inclusion. The GOP is about self service while the Dems are about stewardship to the community the environment and the world. There's no question which side our faith teaches us to take on all these issues. The Democrats generally abide by the golden rule of "do unto others" while the GOP loathes this rule and attacks those who advance it.

But then there's abortions. If we assume that abortion is to be viewed as murder, then the Republicans certainly have claimed the right side there. But what have they actually done about it? They whine and whine about a culture of death without making any tangible steps to stop it, as if the mere act of condemnation will stop it. Catholicism teaches to love the sinner, loathe the sin. Republicans have that backwards, they loathe the pro-choice movement as murderers but love abortion for the political influence it gives them.

The Republican Party has become the party of death, despite what they throw at the left. They've brought about abortions through their opposition to condoms and other birth controls. They've killed people over seas through incompetence and dishonesty. They've let people slip through the cracks of our society. They are, in a phrase, morally bankrupt. It sickening to me to see those who claim religious high ground to have so thoroughly perverted what religion is supposed to be about.

--theamazingjex

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(2/13)

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