Inkless Wells

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Also also from the magazine: Here's something for Liberals to deny and ignore

by Paul Wells on Monday, November 24, 2008 11:47am - 36 Comments

A national note from Kate Lunau about the Catholic vote. I wouldn’t hang my hat off every stat in this piece, but this nut graf seems both (a) significant and (b) consistent with other evidence.

This year’s results confirm the trend: outside Quebec, 49 per cent of Catholics who attend church weekly voted Conservative, compared to just 38 per cent in 2004.

In my book, which I won’t flog again (oh, all right; Merry Christmas), Harper Conservatives talked about moving the Roman Catholic vote as a central strategic goal of each of their models for the 2006 campaign: Nixon ’68, Thatcher ’79, Gingrich/Congressional Republicans ’94, John Howard ’97. Catholics are, among other things, a proxy for working-class families with higher-than-average numbers of children. Sometimes you make an essentially overt appeal, often by polarizing on the abortion question. Harper having eschewed that path, the other way is through economic policy: child tax credits, toolbelt tax credits and so on.

An odd thing: I made a concerted attempt to find out how the Conservatives measured the Catholic vote, how specifically they had sought to appeal to Catholics, and how much they thought they had managed to move it from 2004 to 2006. And, although the Conservatives were very cooperative in other ways for my book, they wouldn’t respond to these requests. I got the impression I was asking too much about a trade secret.

Anyway, they appear to be still at it. After the latest election I asked Alice over at Pundit’s Guide to do a special analysis, tracking vote share in the ridings outside Quebec that report the highest Catholic populations in census data. She sent me an Excel file with this result: of the 15 ridings outside Quebec with the highest proportion of Catholic voters, the Conservative share of the vote increased, between 2006 and 2008, in 11 of those ridings.

UPDATE: See how the headline talks, a bit obliquely, about Liberal denial? It’s like I know these guys. Ahem. Stéphane Dion: “You see, the Catholics can be relied on to vote Liberal, always…” (h/t)

Tags: Catholic voters, conservatives

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http://www.leehamilton.blogspot.com/ Lee Hamilton

Thanks for the link. You’ve got to admit, that’s fairly new, and I don’t see a distinct appeal to Catholics there, beyond generalities. If it gets any traction, it will be interesting to see where it goes. But that kind of outreach hasn’t been part of the left’s programme in recent history (pre-9/11). Even post-9/11, you saw a bifurcation in anti-war activities and protests (Catholics being a key anti-war constituency, as they were during the Vietnam War). Perhaps the NDP is smelling new opportunities, but it’s a very late conversion on their part, if that indeed is what it is.
Stephen

“Perhaps the NDP is smelling new opportunities”

Or perhaps returning to Social Gospel roots?
http://www.leehamilton.blogspot.com/ Lee

I’m not so sure the NDP ever had those roots within specifically Roman Catholic communities to begin with. But regardless, I suspect we won’t find the NDP defending the Catholic separate school system, or defending Catholic adoption agencies that fail to comply with human rights directives pertaining to applications by same-sex prospective parents, or defending Catholic social welfare organizations that don’t follow the secular liberal line on family planning and abortion counselling. These are big issues that are hard to gloss over when push comes to shove. I agree on the need to have a middle ground where dialogue can take place, but unfortunately for liberal Roman Catholics the required compromises always turn out to be one-way. If you continually oblige something to be what it isn’t, then it eventual stops being what it was.
http://www.TennisVagabond.com BigDaveS

I found the ref to Kinsella/Barney/Doris quite interesting. I was reading Kinsella quite a bit during the election(s), and one thing that struck me was the crass and offensive shots he took at Sarah Palin for her religion. The same man who daily blusters at Steyn for any wisecrack against Islam had no problem mocking Palin’s religion (as if there were nothing else there to make fun of). This is, unfortunately, emblematic of the Left’s problem: widespread disdain for Christianity. Or, to put it another way, a propensity to be respectful of every religion except their own.
http://www.TennisVagabond.com BigDaveS

I should clarify that Kinsella does not regularly exhibit this Leftist trait, in fact he is the rare breed who speaks sincerely and believably about his own faith. But his forays into negativity when its to his partisan benefit are examples of the wider problem.
Stephen

“These are big issues that are hard to gloss over when push comes to shove. I agree on the need to have a middle ground where dialogue can take place, but unfortunately for liberal Roman Catholics the required compromises always turn out to be one-way. If you continually oblige something to be what it isn’t, then it eventual stops being what it was.”

I agree these are big issues, but I’d just add that they’re not the only issues.

On justice in international trade and development, war and peace, global disarmament, the environment, workers’ rights and on other issues, the Catholic Church–and other churches–take positions well to the ‘left’ (if that’s the word) of anything articulated by Stephen Harper or the various party’s he’s belonged to/led over the years.

Take the 1998 Alberta Bishops’ Letter on Celebrating Creation. I don’t see much there that would line up with the positions articulated by right-wing parties in Canada in the decade since it was issued, and yet these parties tend not to be accused of adopting political positions at odds with church teaching, while the NDP (and Liberals as well) are often accused of taking positions on another set of issues (abortion, marriage, child care) at odds with the teaching of churches.

Finaly, I’m not quite sure what you mean about the required compromises being all one-way for Liberal Catholics, though I think you’re probably right about the social gospel having deeper roots in Protestant denominations than in the Catholic Church.
http://caiti-online.blogspot.com/ Transcanada

How do RCs or voters in general feel about a PM who continually says one thing than does another? Pick an issue and try to find the consistency in Harper’s position over time.

Harper’s way is the expedient way. Whatever gives him the momentary advantage at the time the words come out of his mouth will be the position he chooses. The pre-election position on the deficit vs the after election position is a good example of this, but there are many others.

Don Martin wrote a good piece on this today:
Harper flip-flops on running a deficit

I think most Canadians have Harper figured out, that’s why his popularity has never propelled him into majority territory. But he had the advantage of weak and divided opposition. If and when the opposition gets it’s act together Harper is on his way out.
http://www.leehamilton.blogspot.com/ Lee Hamilton

Stephen, you are right that those aren’t the only big issues, and that the Roman Catholic Church often takes position associated with the left (without getting explicitly ideological about it). They call that the Church’s “preferential option for the poor”. Or another example: take the Vatican’s very early and very loud opposition to the Iraq War, drawing on its long tradition of Just War Theory to pre-emptively criticize military intervention before it even occurred, while most other states and international organizations (including Canada) held their collective breath and waited (while the mainstream media acted as the U.S.’ #1 cheerleader). And the Catholic critique of unbridled capitalism is the most developed I’ve ever read. Or take Pope Benedict’s public comments that potable water was not a commercial product but a human right. Yet there are some issues that are more effective at galvanizing voting constituencies than others, and those tend to be domestic social policy issues (but not always). There’s an element of opportunism there. You’re totally right that some issues are emphasized disproportionately, and it’s fair to say that myopic fixation on a narrow spectrum of issues at the expense of others has caused some damage to the Church’s mission and to its ability to articulate its core message to the whole of society.

Just to clarify one thing: the social gospel is deeply rooted in Catholicism – I meant that I didn’t think the NDP’s lost roots in the social gospel ever extended into Catholic enclaves, but I could be wrong about that.
The Source

As an ex RC, I can tell you that when an RC is running in an election they can count on some solid support from other RC’s. I remember as a new 22 yr. old voter, going into the polling booth for a federal election and one of the scrutineers who recognized me looked over and said “You know what to do.” She was a long standing Liberal party member and the Lib candidate was RC. its like, there is an understanding that one who shares the same faith must be faithful to those who are a part of it. So glad So just for spite I went in and voted NDP. I finally came to my senses yrs later and am now a CPC supporter..
Gaunilon

There is a big difference between people who call themselves Catholic, and people who are practicing Catholics. Using ridings that are demographically composed of Catholics gives you the former, not the latter.

Nominal Catholics have traditionally voted Liberal, now they vote whichever way the wind blows. Practicing Catholics vote according to their civic principles, which are (1) avoid murdering people, (2) support those in need, and (3) sex and children are somehow related.

Based on those three principles, practicing Catholics look for a party that is (a) opposed to abortion, euthanasia, and unprovoked war, (b) supportive of the poor, albeit not necessarily through handouts, and (c) supportive of two-parent families, traditional marriage, etc.

It’s hard to see which party fits that description, but in general the CPC is currently seen as a slightly better fit, if only because more of its MPs hold these same principles.
http://www.leehamilton.blogspot.com/ Lee

Good concise post.

That’s the dilemma of trying to define what the Roman Catholic demographic is. How does one taxonimize for statistical purposes the nominal Catholics (“cafeteria Catholics”), the “cultural Catholics” and what I call (tongue-in-cheek) the “secular Catholics”, in addition to those attending mass regularly. There are lots of Canadians with ethnic and family roots in Roman Catholicism (e.g. Italian- and French-Canadians), whose cultural references are Catholic, who feel an emotional and historical connection with the Church, but who tend to be heterodox, non-observant, or simply agnostic.

These blurry distinctions are why we’ve been running into problems during election campaigns (here and in the U.S.) concerning the putative “politicization of the Eucharist”, when nominally Catholic or culturally Catholic office-seekers use their roots in Catholic constituencies for vote-getting purposes, and then are flabbergasted when bishops assert that the three basics you itemized above are actually to be taken seriously by those seeking public office using the Catholic vote.

So all this to say that following “the Catholic vote” is no straight-forward task.