Conservative Donnybrook

Duncan Hunter has dropped out of the race. We all mourn the loss of the last conservative.

Early on, it looks as though Romney has won handily. Ron Paul appears to have placed second. As it turns out, they were the only two to have campaigned in Nevada. Everyone else focused on South Carolina, who will not complete their voting for a few more hours. Romney’s win means he will most certainly be a factor going forward no matter how he does in South Carolina. Giuliani’s hopes are fading as he was expecting a decent finish in Nevada. Rudy now MUST WIN Florida to keep his hopes alive.

South Carolina will not be resolved for another couple hours…although early on McCain and Huckabee were tied in the latest polls. We will keep you updated.

In my previous post, I raised the question of who is courting Catholic swing voters. In it, I noted that George W. Bush likely won the White House by advancing his version of Compassionate Conservatism which attracted these voters. But that raises the following question, which I wanted to address separately from the swing vote question: Which is more important, for the Republicans to win elections or for conservatism to remain pure?

I am going to start with the premise that if G.W. does not advance a compassionate conservative platform, he is an unemployed politician colling his heels in Texas today. John Kerry is finishing his second term in office and Alito and Roberts are replaced by two very different Justices. In that scenario, Roe v. Wade is entrenched, perhaps irrevocably, as the law of the land for generations to come - and perhaps, permanently as stare decisis cements it in place.

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There was an interesting column in the latest Chronicles in the Cultural Revolutions section concerning the Catholic swing vote.¹

fn 1: Unfortunately, I accidentally left the magazine at work and so I am working from memory. I believe the article was written by a man named John Wilson. If you come back and read this post on Monday night or Tuesday, you’ll probably find this footnote removed and the post updated. If I get some of the details wrong, it is because I am working from memory.

At the same time, there is another post that looks at the same issue. These articles both raise the question: Who, if anybody, is courting the Catholic vote?

Prior to the reign of Ronaldus Maximus, Catholics tended to vote Democratic. Part of Reagan’s ascension to power came as a result of carving off a chunk of those voters by promising to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Wilson and Fr. J both point out that Catholic voters tend to have a different set of priorities than other religious voters. According to Wilson, Catholics tend to focus on the more social-related issues like employment, the health of the economy, abortion, marriage, etc., and are somewhat ambivalent about issues like the war on terrorism, taxes, and such. In this sense, George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism appealed to these voters and in all probability gained him the presidency.

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