SC Gov Mark Sanford

[12th Doctor]

Um yeah, Ferraro gave Mondale such a huge boost among Italian Catholics, right? Kerry was an Irish Catholic.

This is why Super is right and you are wrong.  Going to mass does not make you Catholic, living a life based on Church teaching does.  Driving your wife to the brink of suicide, divorcing her and marrying your colleague's rich widow, backing abortion on demand, and raising a daughter who wears a see trough dress to the Cannes film festival is not Catholic.  Kerry is a Catholic in name only.  Ferraro is also a Catholic in name only.  They are elite northeastern liberals who subscribe to a cocktail party ideology and use their religion for show.  Real Catholics sense this, and don't consider these people to be Catholic.

Thank you, John.  Exactly.

Example of a Catholic Democrat who might get a lot of support from the ethnic community:

Tom Vilsack

[12th Doctor]

In how many elections since 1860 has a candidate won more than 55% of the vote:

1864 - Lincoln gets 55.02%  (half of country doesn't vote)
1872 - Grant gets 55.63% (helped by disenfranchising Confederates)
1904 - Roosevelt gets 56.42%  (popular prez.)
1920 - Harding gets 60.32% (return to normalcy)
1928 - Hoover gets 58.21% (chicken in every pot)
1932 - Roosevelt gets 57.41% (Great Depression)
1936 - Roosevelt gets 60.80% (height of his popularity)
1952 - Eisenhower gets 55.18% (Korean War)
1956 - Eisenhower gets 57.37% (Ike popular, incompetent challenger)
1964 - Johnson gets 61.05% (Kennedy ass., Goldwater bad candidate)
1972 - Nixon gets 60.67% (McGovern bad candidate)
1984 - Reagan gets 58.77% (Reagan popular)

I count 12 out 37 times a candidate has gotten more than 55% of the vote.  National margins and parties are an anomaly, not to be expected very often.

Still 2.46% is one of the narrowest margins ever, and in in fact the narrowest for a sucessful re-election.
Also, you can't call 1924 a close election.

See, jfern understands what I am saying.  Why are you guys so opposed to the idea of winning by wide margins and building a broad cooalition when it is just within our grasp.

[12th Doctor]

Um yeah, Ferraro gave Mondale such a huge boost among Italian Catholics, right? Kerry was an Irish Catholic.

This is why Super is right and you are wrong.  Going to mass does not make you Catholic, living a life based on Church teaching does.  Driving your wife to the brink of suicide, divorcing her and marrying your colleague's rich widow, backing abortion on demand, and raising a daughter who wears a see trough dress to the Cannes film festival is not Catholic.  Kerry is a Catholic in name only.  Ferraro is also a Catholic in name only.  They are elite northeastern liberals who subscribe to a cocktail party ideology and use their religion for show.  Real Catholics sense this, and don't consider these people to be Catholic.

so what the hell does this have to do with ethnicity then? There's plenty of Irish and Italian Catholic folks who have opebo-esque lifestyles (hell, look at Flyers), and I bet there are plenty of German Catholics here who despite supposedly being closer to other whites than the people listed above who are Opus Dei nutcases.

Flyers only wishes he had that lifestyle.  He is also not a real Catholic, as he does not follow Catholicism.

Ethnicity doesn't have to be an objective standard in this context, only subjective.  It is more a description of what people identify with than what their actual heritage is.  The Catholic vote in this case is a reference to people who actually practice Catholicism, not just those who descend from Catholic families.

Like every Republican Catholic follows the verse "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".

How many times do I have to tell you?  You can not compare the socio-economic structer today to that of 2000 years ago.

[12th Doctor]

Um yeah, Ferraro gave Mondale such a huge boost among Italian Catholics, right? Kerry was an Irish Catholic.

Ferraro was an unknown VP candidate running against a well established incumbent.  You couldn't have thought of a worse example.

Oh, yeah, and John Kerry seemed really ethnic and Catholic to me.

You basically said people would flock to someone on the basis of their ethnicity and religion alone. That obviously didn't happen. So Kerry didn't play the race or religion card. Doesn't change the facts

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No it isn't.  Obviously you have never been to the Polaski or the Litz Club.

You think there aren't places in Minnesota that are super-ethnic Scandinavian? And guess what, outside of those places the people from there are just white. And in places that have lots of transplants here like where I live or the Twin Cities, no one cares what brand of white you are.

They might not agree with Chick, which I never said, but they still believe a lot of stuff that is laughable (or sad, depending) non-the-less

as do you as you said earlier in the thread that most Protestants believe Catholicism is not Christian and a cult. And the issue is if they believe Catholics are not Christian. Almost no one outside of a few fundamentalist lunatics believes this. I dare you to find any mainline Protestants who believe this.

Thankfully, I don't need you to believe me to know that I am right.  I never seem to recall accusing you, or even all Protestants of anything either.

Most Protestants don't even consider Catholics to be Christians, rather, we are some wierd cult that worships the Pope and Mary.

um, yeah

Most Protestants don't even consider Catholics to be Christians, rather, we are some wierd cult that worships the Pope and Mary.

But if you deny that there isn't a strong vain of anti-Catholic bias in this country... well it is always easy to not notice these things when they aren't happening to you.

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in what way? When have there been any major anti-Catholic hate crimes since some Klan activities in the 70s? Conservatives first claim that problems of massive discrimination against blacks and women are no longer issues and gays don't have major problems with this either, and now claim there's massive amounts of anti-Catholic discrimination in the US? LOL!

I don't remember talking about Britian.

Well it's basically the same situation and in fact should actually be worse since they still have the Northern Ireland thing and all of the strife in the past from all the various kings switching churches and all. And yet, even there, Paisley/Chick type loons have very little support. So why would most Protestants here which has never had anything similar believe things similar to such nutcases?
[/quote]

I have already talked this to death.  You obviously won't listen, so I won't go on with this.  I'll just close with a few things:

1) Being of any German, English, French, Dutch or Scandanvain decent in this country cannot be compared with being of Irish, Polish, Italian or other Eastern European decent, because the former groups have always been accepted by the people of this country as those groups existed from the founding of the country.  The former, however, were often rediculed and and bigoted against because they were "foriegn", but also because they were Catholic (most of the French in early America were Hugnouts).  It wasn't until the 60's that we even started getting out of the ghettos in most places.

If you don't believe in the power of ethnic politics, study how Mike Dukakis won the nomination.  He won it largely thanks to very high turnout in Greek areas.  This isn't a guarentee of success.  The candidate must share common values with the ethnic group.  These values might be political, but they often transend the political as well.  Kerry did not share these values with most ethnically Irish, or most Catholics.

I was raised in an Italian family.  I have a friend who is acctually a "blood" Italian.  I'm more Italian than he is, because his family basically moved out of the ghetto and beat all of the Italianess out of themselves.  All that is left now is a last name.  So there are no hard and fast rules.  Which kinda prove my point about Kerry.

2) You want to find anti-Catholism, search the internet.  It really isn't that hard.

That belittles my point, however, which has been, from the begining that anti-Catholic bias in the country, though not raging, like it was as little as 50 years ago, is still present in daily life.

3) The British have rejected the rampent anti-Catholisism that you see in Northern Ireland, yes.  It is always easier to look at seething hate and see what is worng with it.  When bigotry is more subtle is when it is much more easily accepted, as is the case here.

4) Not so subtle things have happened.  In a town only 30 miles away from here, the Protestant churches spent a full year pulling their resources to pass out anti-Catholic literature, including many Chick tracts.

5) They then hit the town right next to mine, but it didn't last nearly as long because the community there is much larger and they put a stop to it.

6) Regardless of what you say, the average Protestant knows about as much of the truth about Catholic Teaching as a fish knows about riding a bike.

[12th Doctor]

Um yeah, Ferraro gave Mondale such a huge boost among Italian Catholics, right? Kerry was an Irish Catholic.

This is why Super is right and you are wrong.  Going to mass does not make you Catholic, living a life based on Church teaching does.  Driving your wife to the brink of suicide, divorcing her and marrying your colleague's rich widow, backing abortion on demand, and raising a daughter who wears a see trough dress to the Cannes film festival is not Catholic.  Kerry is a Catholic in name only.  Ferraro is also a Catholic in name only.  They are elite northeastern liberals who subscribe to a cocktail party ideology and use their religion for show.  Real Catholics sense this, and don't consider these people to be Catholic.

so what the hell does this have to do with ethnicity then? There's plenty of Irish and Italian Catholic folks who have opebo-esque lifestyles (hell, look at Flyers), and I bet there are plenty of German Catholics here who despite supposedly being closer to other whites than the people listed above who are Opus Dei nutcases.

Flyers only wishes he had that lifestyle.  He is also not a real Catholic, as he does not follow Catholicism.

Ethnicity doesn't have to be an objective standard in this context, only subjective.  It is more a description of what people identify with than what their actual heritage is.  The Catholic vote in this case is a reference to people who actually practice Catholicism, not just those who descend from Catholic families.

Like every Republican Catholic follows the verse "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".

Rudy Giuliani is Catholic and he is about as socially liberal as you & I are

He also grew up in Brooklyn in a working class Italian ghetto.

John Kerry grew up on Becon Hill with all the other families that have been in Boston since the early 1700's.

[12th Doctor]

How many times do I have to tell you?  You can not compare the socio-economic structer today to that of 2000 years ago.

Are you saying that all of Christ's teachings are obsolete?

Know, I am saying that there is a context to everything.  If I make $70,000 a year today, I would be filthy rich compared to 99% of the population in Christ's time.

Also, 95% illiteracy meant that most people had no chance of becoming more than they were born into and thus the cycle of poverty truely was perminant.

Thus, the meager alms that many wealthy people gave at the time were not nearly enough.

[12th Doctor]

I don't think you hate the South.  I just don't see why a viable candidate still can't be Southern after so many Southern candidates.  To me it shouldn't really matter what part of the country the guy comes from, though sadly because of the electoral college it does matter.  I won't complain if both parties nominate Southerners, either.  Imagine John Breaux vs Mark Sanford.  I'd have a hard time choosing.

I see an oppertunity in 2008 to create a truely dominant party by reaching out to the battle ground states that went to Kerry, and even to some solid Kerry states.  Why not take it?  If we run a southern or plains state candidate, it will just be more of the same.  Having three election pass where the map looks bascially unchanged is very bad for the country.

We have an opportunity for reallignment here.  If we continue on in this state of flux, then one mistake, just one, could mean that the Democrats push us in the closet, lock the door and rule the house for another 20 years.  Is that what we want?  No, of course not.  We have to move and take advantage of this time we have now by expanding the base.  I don't know what the best way to do that is, but I do know that changing the status quo does not mean doing more o fthe same.

[12th Doctor]

To Walter Mitty, AuH2O and BRTD

I appreciate how all of you have taken one asspect of my initial argument and blown it way out of proportion.

Au,

Congrats on being Catholic.  Want a metal?

BRTD,

You are, of course, the original perpetrator of this whole thing.  Thank you for concentrating on one point of my argument in some attempt to discredit me.  This wasn't even a point.  It was a sub-point of a point.  You could have said that is was great of me for being a progressive thinker and thinking that a woman or minority could do the job, but intead, you attacked me for say that Catholics are a minority when pretty much any political science professor who has study voting patterns would agree with me.

That website you posted is bogus, by the way.  No Catholic would ever descirb themselves as being "slave" to anything, let alone Mary's Immaculate Heart.

Walter Mitty,

Don't get involved in an argument when you have no clue what is going on.  Clearly, you probably never even read what I originally said.

[12th Doctor]

Quick point: Kerry isn't an Irish Catholic (don't be fooled by the name) and certainly isn't an ethnic politician.
He comes off as more WASPish than a WASP like Bush, hence his poor preformance with Catholic voters and his impressive preformance with mainline Protestants.

Ethnic voters (and they're usually Catholic) are importent to both parties because on the one hand they are overwhelmingly Democratic by registration etc, but on the other hand they are usually somewhat socially conservative and don't have any problems with splitting their tickets (take a look at some of the statewide races in PA last year if you don't believe me).

Thank you, Al.


Quick question:  From what you have seen, do you think there is any anti-Catholicism here in America?  Acctually, the charge was made that anti-Catholicism was not a big deal in Britian as well.  Do you agree with that?

[12th Doctor]

Quick question:  From what you have seen, do you think there is any anti-Catholicism here in America?

Yes, it's just not as overt as it was. Think about how many people who voted against Kennedy in '60 because he was a Catholic are still alive now. Remember that most of the people who voted against him on sectarian grounds will have had children.
Sad fact is that bigotry (against any group) never entirely goes away. It just gets less blatent.

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Compared to the '60's when the Tories held working class seats in Liverpool and Glasgow due to the orange (ie: anti catholic) vote and a visit by the Pope to Liverpool had to be cancelled because Liverpool City Council effectivly threatend riots, then yes it's not a big deal.

But in a more general sense, yes. There was all that fuss over Kelly becoming Education Secretary, and the bizarre incedent when the media tried to pry into Blair's religious beliefs.
Sectarianism still causes problems in Glasgow (especially Rangers v Celtic) and the Scottish Executive has been trying to stamp that out, without much sucess sadly.

Thank you again, Al.

But you mentioned abotu when Kennedy ran for President.  You mean to tell me that there were acctually anti-Catholics who voted against him in large numbers and that people were handing out flyers about the "evils" of Catholicism.  But Al, that was only 40 years ago.  According to BRTD, that all stop more than 100 years ago (befoe most Polish and Italian families were even in the country).  So, who is wrong here?

Is it possible that you, a Brit, know more about America than these Americans?

[12th Doctor]

Oh, and another thing, I went online to search for one of those signs that says "Catholics Need Not Apply" and instead found an essay on how all of that was a myth.  Bullsh**t!

My family has one of those signs.  My great-grand father used to hang it in his office when he was DA of Clearfield county (an possition he earned but only recieved tahnks in large part to his campaigning in Catholic ghettos).  He was an Irish Catholic, and he used it as a reminder of how far we had come since my family first came here in the 1840's.  So don't tell me they don't exist or that it never happened.

[12th Doctor]

So basically you're biased against the north-east? I think the north-east has had enough bashing from Republicans for political reasons.

No, I'm not.
Run a working class ethnic Catholic from Massachusetts or Rhode Island and I think they'd do pretty well (remember that Tip's approval rating was higher than Reagan's when he retired in '86), run someone who comes across as a WASP though...

Working class people tend not to run for President.

Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Ike Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover.

Gee, that's 7.

[12th Doctor]

As for the rest, I'll try to suffer through it when I get back.

[12th Doctor]

BRTD,

You are, of course, the original perpetrator of this whole thing.  Thank you for concentrating on one point of my argument in some attempt to discredit me.  This wasn't even a point.  It was a sub-point of a point.  You could have said that is was great of me for being a progressive thinker and thinking that a woman or minority could do the job, but intead, you attacked me for say that Catholics are a minority when pretty much any political science professor who has study voting patterns would agree with me.

actually no. You're basically advocating affirmative action. I will never take anyone's race or gender into account when voting for them in a primary. I will vote for the candidate I like best.

It isn't affirmative action.  The people I was talking about acctually earned their way in.  Affirmative Action is when you set a particular quote, with no regard for whether or not someone earned their way more than anyone else.

That website you posted is bogus, by the way.  No Catholic would ever descirb themselves as being "slave" to anything, let alone Mary's Immaculate Heart.

yes, it's an incredibly ridiculous loony site that very very few Catholics would agree with. Just like Chick and Paisley's sites are ridiculous loony sites that very very few Protestants agree with.

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The difference is, of course, that Jack Chick sells millions of tracts every single year, and guess where they end up?  On my door step.

[12th Doctor]

Well, soulty, let me begin by noting it's "medal," not "metal," which of course describes certain types of elements (and, in the vernacular, alloys).

Pointing out the spelling mistakes of others is childish and trollish.

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I didn't know, so I don't see how it can be a "lie".

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How can you say that?  Kennedy did worse than any other Democrat of that era.  Smith as well.  Not that that is hugely importantant, because I never said that anti-Catholic bias was localized in the south.  Did I?

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This is why I can't stand newbs, sometimes.  They have not been around long enough to know what they are talking about when attacking others.  I have probably defended the south far more than any northern poster on this board.

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I think I already answered the first part, so I need not go on with that.

So the base of the party has no room for expansion?

[12th Doctor]

Now, let me ask you a couple of serious questions, AuH2O.

I don't expect you to answer them if you don't want to.

1) Where do you work?

2) In what kind of activities do you generally participate?

3) Do you live in either Northern Virginia or the Virginia Beach area?

4) How active are you in religious functions?

5) Have you ever been told by a friend or girlfriend that they couldn't see you anymore because you were Catholic?

6) Even worse, has your family been split apart because one side is Catholic and the other is not?

[12th Doctor]

Basically, what I am reading from this conversation is that the Republican Party, in the eyes of its own members, is a party for Southern WASP's only.  We should not attempt to branch out and be leaders let alone leaders of a real cooalition.

Having a vision for leading the country is not nearly as important as holding onto power by sticking to a strategy that sqeeks out wins every 2 years.

We don't need states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, etc. to win, so we shouldn't even bother trying for them.  As long as we have Florida and Ohio, we are good.  No matter how slim our leads are there.

Vision=bad
Servicing the Narrow Interests of the Base Only=good

[12th Doctor]

BRTD,

You are, of course, the original perpetrator of this whole thing.  Thank you for concentrating on one point of my argument in some attempt to discredit me.  This wasn't even a point.  It was a sub-point of a point.  You could have said that is was great of me for being a progressive thinker and thinking that a woman or minority could do the job, but intead, you attacked me for say that Catholics are a minority when pretty much any political science professor who has study voting patterns would agree with me.

actually no. You're basically advocating affirmative action. I will never take anyone's race or gender into account when voting for them in a primary. I will vote for the candidate I like best.

It isn't affirmative action.  The people I was talking about acctually earned their way in.  Affirmative Action is when you set a particular quote, with no regard for whether or not someone earned their way more than anyone else.

wow, you are ignorant. Quotas != affirmative action. In fact, quotas have been illegal ever since the 1978 Supreme Court decision Board of Regents of University of California v. Bakke. I oppose race based affirmative action, but I will admit many people have no clue what it is. Giving people positions partially because of their race is affirmative action, even if they are also qualified, if their race is a factor, and I don't see how anyone can say with a straight face Rice and Gonzalez's races weren't factors, especially since Republicans kept bringing it up whenever they bashed Democrats for opposing them. And what you have suggested above is affirmative action for your party's nominee.

Quotas are used as a part of Affirmative Action.  This is true.  You cannot deny it.  I never advocated giving anyone a possition based on minority status.  I simply said that someone with qualifications who happens to be from a group would be a good choice.  Notice, no one on my list needed to fit tha qualification, I just put it out there.  I find it laughable that people are attacking me for it.

That website you posted is bogus, by the way.  No Catholic would ever descirb themselves as being "slave" to anything, let alone Mary's Immaculate Heart.

yes, it's an incredibly ridiculous loony site that very very few Catholics would agree with. Just like Chick and Paisley's sites are ridiculous loony sites that very very few Protestants agree with.

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The difference is, of course, that Jack Chick sells millions of tracts every single year, and guess where they end up?  On my door step.

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I know someone who collects them and finds them humorous. Not everyone who likes them is because they agree with them. I find them humorous too, since Chick is so out of the loop it's a wonder anyone takes him seriously.

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People do take him seriously though!  You came up with one example of someone who doesn't.  That does not account for the millions of those things that he sells every years.  And, as I said, you don't have to agree with Chick full tilt, or even know who he is in order to agree with some of what he says.

Do people have to be full out socialist libertines, like you, to agree with everything you say?

[12th Doctor]

Its not like I want the South out of our party, or anything.  I would much rather have them in, believe me.  I'm glad that we have such a solid base.

All I'm saying is that it wouldn't hurt any to expand the base and win over more states.

Right now, Missouri is not in the "base".  Ohio is not in the base.  Iowa is not in the base.  Florida is not in the base.  Nevada and New Mexico are not in the base.  Without them, we can't win.

[12th Doctor]

Its not like I want the South out of our party, or anything.  I would much rather have them in, believe me.  I'm glad that we have such a solid base.

All I'm saying is that it wouldn't hurt any to expand the base and win over more states.

Right now, Missouri is not in the "base".  Ohio is not in the base.  Iowa is not in the base.  Florida is not in the base.  Nevada and New Mexico are not in the base.  Without them, we can't win.

Of course, Super, by your definition of "base", Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire are the not in the base either for Democrats.

We just live in very divided times politically in the Presidential realm.  I honestly don't see that changing in the near future, either.

But when that time does come, which side do we want to be onto.  Every moment we dely is another 10 electoral votes that we are losing once the breech closes and "divided times" are over.