Conservative Catholics and the GOP.

• Author: Miller, Patricia
• Position: National Affairs

WHEN PRES. BUSH met in May, 2002, with Pope John Paul II for the second time in less than a year, Secretary of State Colin Powell and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer weren't the only ones standing in line to greet the Holy Father. Bending down to receive the ailing Pontiff's greeting was Bush political strategist Carl Rove, who may need the Pope's blessing, having staked out the Catholic vote as key to Bush's reelection in 2004. The Bush Administration's Catholic strategy is no shot in the dark. It is the culmination of years of contacts between prominent conservative Catholics and leading members of the Republican Party who are playing a hunch that two unlikely groups--fundamentalist Christians and Catholics--have more in common than differences of theology or geography. In an effort to woo Catholics and unlock the keys to this infamously fickle group of voters, these conservative Catholics are being given unprecedented access to the White House and policy decisions.

The thought of an electoral alliance between conservative Catholics and the Christian Right has long had conservatives salivating. A year before the 1996 presidential election, the Christian Coalition, which estimated at the time that 16% of its 1,700,000 members were Catholic, launched a spin-off called the Catholic Alliance to capitalize on what it saw as a significant crossover between conservative Christians and Catholics on issues such as abortion and school prayer. "[T]hank God that Catholics and evangelicals have found one another. If some people find that scary, it's because they realize the tide is turning," wrote Deal Hudson in Crisis, a conservative Catholic magazine funded by large conservative foundations, in November, 1995. Hudson, a former philosophy professor and Baptist minister who converted to Catholicism, had only recently taken the helm of the magazine. He would soon play a leading role in the growing alliance between conservative Catholics and the GOP.

In the short run, however, the tide didn't turn fast enough for the Catholic Alliance. The effort faltered over deep divisions between Catholics and conservative Christians on issues such as welfare, health care, the death penalty, and immigration that many Catholics are more liberal about than their fundamentalist brethren. In addition, members of the Catholic hierarchy were clearly disturbed by the efforts of the Alliance to distribute voter scorecards that were supposedly representative of Catholic stances on issues. Albany (N.Y.) Bishop Howard Hubbard told an executive session of the U.S. Bishops Conference that he was bothered both by the "partisan tone" of the scorecards and its "blatant untruths," as well as "this organization's stated purpose of representing the Catholic community before the Congress, state legislatures, and other governmental bodies."

The Christian Coalition, which was not a major force in the 1996 elections, tried to dampen the criticism of its Catholic outreach efforts by spinning off the Catholic Alliance into a separately incorporated entity in 1997 and appointing a Catholic Board of Directors, which included Hudson, and a Catholic Advisory Board. Despite the changes, and the appointment of former Boston Mayor and ambassador to the Vatican Ray Flynn to lead the Alliance in 1999, the organization never recovered from its initial high-profile clashes with the bishops and did not have a great effect in the 2000 elections.

As 1999 opened, the presidential election of 2000 was shaping up to be contentious and once again looked as if it would hinge on the heavily Catholic Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. Recognizing the importance of this key constituency and its history of swinging between political parties, the Republican National Committee launched a Catholic Task Force in February, 1999, to drum up support for Bush's presidential bid among Catholics. The...