SALON

Friday, Aug 10, 2012 6:40 PM UTC

Romney’s Catholic conversion

The GOP candidate makes a hard pitch to Catholics, and the church is pushing its members to line up behind him

By

Topics: Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Catholicism, Religion, Birth Control,

Romney's Catholic conversion (Credit: AP/Charles Krupa)

“Who shares your values? President Obama used his healthcare plan to declare war on religion,” intones the ad released by the Romney campaign this week. That’s followed by footage of Romney talking about Pope John Paul II in Poland, that same pope shaking Lech Walesa’s hand, that same Lech Walesa endorsing Romney. Romney practically is the pope, OK? And he doesn’t like the preventive care provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

It’s been in the making for months, but this week clinched it: Both sides of the presidential election are running hard on “women’s rights” versus “religious liberty,” and that’s not going away. Romney was once reluctant to get drawn into this particular fold, before the continued presence of Rick Santorum in the primary essentially forced his hand. But now, in an apparent sign that he hasn’t closed the deal with his own base, he’s back on the cause of allowing employers – even private, non-religiously affiliated ones – to deny their employees coverage for contraception and what is falsely termed “abortion-inducing drugs.”

Obama, on the other hand, has been here for awhile, from the unwavering support for the provision (lobbied for by pro-choice and other health organizations) to giving a call to Sandra Fluke – the same woman whose very presence caused the GOP to wildly veer off the message of “Obama saying that we must be a less Christian nation” to “only sluts want their insurance to cover birth control.”  The Romney ad coincided with Fluke introducing the president in Colorado Wednesday.

What’s fascinating (and terrifying) is that the wedge issue here is no longer abortion, regardless of how badly the Christian right wants to define abortion as the potential blocking of a fertilized egg and ignore the evidence that emergency contraception most likely doesn’t even do it. At a political moment where Personhood supporter Mike Huckabee has already declared, “We are all Catholics,” and an evangelical college is joining in the lawsuits against the provision, it’s broadly clear that the antiabortion slippery slope has inevitably skidded to birth control, where Catholics have always (officially) been. Romney, having such historically weak standing with this increasingly definitive “social issue,” seems to feel compelled to follow them all the way down there.

In exchange, the Catholic hierarchy is doing its utmost to make it worth his while, despite dubious evidence that there is such a thing as a “Catholic vote,” rather than a constituency whose picks tend to reflect broader trends and thus correlate with the winner. “In 2012, I expect the defense of religious liberty to cut as deeply against Obama as 3 million Catholic voters or more,” was Michael Novak’s wildly optimistic prediction in the National Review in June.

This is a long-standing strategy on overdrive. As Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel note in their anthology, “Before Roe v. Wade,” 40 years ago Nixon strategists, including Pat Buchanan, recognized that Catholic voters could potentially be peeled off from the Democratic Party over abortion, at a time when the issue didn’t necessarily map by party affiliation. As Novak points out, Nixon lost the Catholic vote by a wide margin in 1968, but in 1972 managed to bring his share up to 52 percent.

But as the debate over the very existence of the “Catholic vote” shows, the long-term impact isn’t a foregone conclusion. The hope for Romney is that it makes a difference in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and possibly with those sympathetic evangelicals. Still, for now, birth control coverage – preventive care! — isn’t nearly as divisive as abortion, and the Obama campaign is betting that independent women, especially single ones, will have far greater pull.

Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori felt the need to tell Kathryn Jean Lopez this week, “This is a big moment for Catholic voters to step back from their party affiliation.” He continued,  “The question to ask is this: Are any of the candidates of either party, or independents, standing for something that is intrinsically evil, evil no matter what the circumstances? If that’s the case, a Catholic, regardless of his party affiliation, shouldn’t be voting for such a person.” We’ll see if it works.

Irin Carmon

Irin Carmon is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @irincarmon or email her at icarmon@salon.com. More Irin Carmon.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 69 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
211 points212 points | 10 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
196 points197 points | 29 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
174 points175 points | 106 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
75 points76 points | 16 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
46 points47 points | 5 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations