Catholics have clout in vote-rich states - Special Report: The Catholic Vote

National Catholic Reporter, Feb 14, 1997 by John K. White, William V. D'Antonio

Since Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, much has been made of the support Republican presidential candidates received from self-described "born-again" evangelical voters. When the GOP nominated Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and George Bush in 1988, evangelicals supported them in overwhelming numbers. When the Republicans chose relatively unpopular candidates as they did with Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996, evangelicals continued to give these candidates substantial majority support.

There is another religious group that has not received nearly as much news coverage, but has far more clout: Catholics. Catholics constitute important voting blocs in such voter-rich states as New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Texas, New Mexico and California. Several political strategists have attempted to discover the keys to winning Catholic support, since they realize that in doing so their man (and, some day, woman) will be well-postponed to enter the White House.

John F. Kennedy's legendary 1960 campaign for the presidency, for instance, was premised on the idea that Kennedy's fellow believers could be enticed to return to the Democratic fold after their dalliance with Dwight Eisenhower. That's strategy paid off, as Kennedy won 78 percent of Catholic votes cast in 1960. Likewise, in 1980 Ronald Reagan won 50 percent of the Catholic vote (compared to Jimmy Carter's 42 percent) by stressing his strong anti-communists beliefs -- positions that appealed to ethnic Catholics who had relatives still entrapped in the captive nations of Eastern Europe and Soviet Union.

Reagan's appeal to Catholic was indicative of the popularity the Republican party had among many Catholics as the Cold War progressed. Throughout the long struggle with communism, Republicans accused Democrats of being "soft on communism." The charge, though manifestly unfair, struck. In the 1952 and 1988, Republican's won seven of them. Their victories were premised on pursuing hard-fought arms agreements with the Soviets while assuring voters that they were hardheaded negotiators at the bargaining table.

"Peace through strength" became a Republican mantra, and would-be GOP presidents chanted it over again. Democrats protested that they were not when it came to dealing with the various general secretaries of the Soviet Communist Party. Indeed, John F. Kennedy out-hawked Richard Nixon in 1960; Lyndon Johnson's appeal to "reason together" provided a stark contrast to Barry Goldwater' assertion that the Cold War should be won outright -- even if that meant "lobbing one into the men's room of the Kremlin." But more often than not, the Democratic responses were ineffectual. After Michael Dukakis lost to Bush some democrats wondered whether their party would ever win the presidency again.

Cold War coalition

Catholics became an important part of the Republican Cold War presidential coalition. Long before Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire", Catholics harbored an intense antipathy toward anything that smacked of communism. In 1930, the pope asked Catholic Americans to pray for the conversion of Russia. After Franklin Roosevelt signed the Yalta Agreement in 1945, ceding much of Eastern Europe to the communists, House Republican Alvin O'Konski, who represented an ethnic Chicago Democratic machine, expressed the anger many Catholics felt: "The New Deal betrayed and sold down the river Poland, Yugoslavia, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and other small nations, and the president didn't even blush when he signed their life and liberty away."

By 1949, 77 percent of all Americans saw communism and Christianity as incompatible -- including 81 percent of Catholics. During the 1950s Republicans sought to capitalize on the Democrat's perceive the softness toward communism. In 1956 the Republican National Committee established a Republican Nationalities Division that distributed "I Like Ike" buttons in 10 languages along with 500,000 pamphlets titled "The Republican Policy of Liberation." Four years later, during the 1960 presidential race, Republicans tried to neutralize John F. Kennedy's Catholic appeal by stressing their solidarity with the Catholic-dominated nations of Eastern Europe. American Nationalities for Nixon-Lodge printed fliers claiming it was during "the Roosevelt-Truman era when the freedom of millions if people in Europe and Asia was turned over to communist slavery." That same committee distributed 48,000 foreign-language buttons, held freedom relies in cities with large Polish populations (including Buffalo and Chicago), and printed thousands of post cards depicting the famous Nixon-Khrushchev "kitchen debate". By responding favorably to such overtly nationalistic appeals, Catholics found an important psychological release: In denouncing communism they had proved once and for all that they were truly American.

By 1992 the Cold War, was over and with it Republican domination of the presidency. Bill Clinton won because the country had left the Cold War behind and was anxious to solve problems lingering at home. George Bush thought the Cold War's end would win him electoral plaudits: "I hope every mother and dad out there says. `Hey, we ought to give this president a little credit for the fact that our little kids don't worry so much about nuclear war.' Isn't that important?" It was important, but most voters saw Bush as a Cold War president with out the Cold War. The electorate saw Bush as lacking in vision and purpose and so chose Clinton.