May 10, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
What is Happening with the Catholic Vote? Polling Shows Biden’s Numbers Plummeting Especially with Hispanics
By Manzanita Miller
A brand-new study on Catholic voters has alarming news for President Joe Biden when it comes to courting the Catholic vote in November. Catholics – particularly Hispanic Catholics – are expressing a significant decline in support for Biden compared to four years ago.
According to an April 2024 survey from the Pew Research Center, former President Donald Trump now leads Biden among Catholics as a whole by twelve points, 55 percent to 43 percent. This marks a significant shift compared to 2020 when Trump won Catholics by a single percentage-point, 50 percent to 49 percent.
Hidden among this striking shift is the real group Biden has to worry about – Hispanic Catholics. White Catholics voted for Trump by a comfortable fifteen-point margin in 2020 and show a moderate increase in support for Trump now. However, Hispanic Catholics supported Biden by 41 points in 2020 but plan to split there votes nearly evenly in November.
Pew’s survey shows that Hispanic Catholics, who make up close to 40 percent of the American Catholic population, say they plan to support Biden in November by just two percentage points after supporting Biden by 41 points in 2020. Hispanic Catholics are now planning to support Biden by a razor thin margin of 49 percent to 47 percent, after supporting Biden by a margin of 67 percent to 26 percent in 2020.
According to Chad Pecknold, a theology professor at the Catholic University of America, Hispanic Catholics are shifting away from the Democratic Party, despite the left’s best attempts to court them. “They [Hispanic Catholics] were once reliable votes for Democrats, but they are now splitting down the middle”, Pecknold told the National Catholic Register. “What this suggests is that, despite their best attempts at buying their votes through political favors, Democrats are losing one of the identity groups they’ve worked hardest at keeping.”
As Hispanic Catholics have made a pivotal turn away from Biden in the last four years, white Catholics have further consolidated behind Trump. According to Pew’s survey on how Catholics plan to vote in November, Trump secures around 61 percent of white Catholics to Biden’s 38 percent.
While recent polls shows that economic issues in particular are pushing Hispanics and blue-collar voters away from Biden, social issues also play a significant role when it comes to the Catholic vote.
Catholics are less likely to support the left-wing cultural agenda, opposing both transgender ideology, abortion, and same-sex marriage at high rates according to survey data. A 2022 poll from RealClear Opinion Research found that Catholics hold distinctly traditional views on a wide range of social issues including abortion, transgender ideology, and parents’ rights in education.
The survey found a full 82 percent of likely Catholic voters support some form or abortion restrictions, and 58 percent reject the idea of forcing doctors to perform procedures which violate their moral convictions, including abortion.
On transgender issues, American Catholics are significantly opposed to forcing biological males into female environments. Sixty-seven percent of Catholic voters reject the idea of biological males competing against biological females in school sports, and 67 percent reject allowing transgender males to use girls’ bathrooms and showers.
The Catholic population as a whole firmly believes that parents’ rights should be respected regarding the curriculum their children are taught as well. The Real Clear survey shows that 90 percent of Catholic voters say parents deserve more information on what their children are learning in school, and 65 percent believe parents deserve to play a role in deciding what is taught in public schools.
It is important to note that regular church attendance among Catholics is highly predictive of holding more conservative social views, and the opposite is true as well. Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey of American Catholics finds that those who attend church at least weekly are significantly less likely to favor the church recognizing LGBTQ marriages or encouraging women to become priests.
Practicing Catholics who attend church at least weekly say by a 32-point margin, 65 percent to 33 percent, that the church should not recognize gay marriage. Less-practicing Catholics who attend church less than weekly say the exact opposite. By a 24-point margin, 61 percent to 37 percent, those who attend church less than weekly say the church should recognize gay marriage.
The Biden Administration’s corrosive social agenda, driven by the most radical elements of the cultural left, is turning off a variety of voters, including independents, swing voters, parents, and Hispanics. Hispanic Catholics are further distancing themselves from the left after favoring Biden by double-digits in 2020. The radical left’s transgender ideology, infiltration of the school system against the will of parents, and violent abortion agenda is only further isolating Catholics from the Democratic Party.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/05/what-is-happening-with-the-catholic-vote-polling-shows-bidens-numbers-plummeting-especially-with-hispanics/
Missouri AG Andrew Bailey Keeps Rolling Over For Planned Parenthood
By Rick Manning
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has a Planned Parenthood problem—he keeps rolling over in court, rescuing them from legal defeat or embarrassment and greasing the skids for fee awards that will fuel future pro-abortion litigation.
Bailey’s penchant might seem like a problem best left to the people of Missouri, after all he is in a heated primary already with one of President Trump’s attorneys from the Jack Smith case). But Bailey’s Planned Parenthood flops are an example of a wider problem: too many of our public officials talk tough on abortion but then fail to adequately take on Planned Parenthood after they leave the press conference podium. This is a wider issue that we in the pro-life movement need to take seriously and reflect on as we move firmly into the post-Dobbs era.
Bailey has only been in office for about a year—he was appointed by the Governor to the office vacated by now-Senator Eric Schmitt—but he has already found surprisingly different ways to drop the ball against Planned Parenthood in court. He has let Planned Parenthood keep their gender transition surgery secrets hidden for months or maybe even years by inexplicably waiving his right to see Planned Parenthood gender transition documents while a lengthy appeal is resolved. He has also had his efforts to overturn Planned Parenthood wins dismissed because he filed them in the wrong court. And then there is his penchant for blowing court deadlines against Planned Parenthood. In just one case involving over $100,000 in potential attorney’s fees for Planned Parenthood, Bailey managed to miss not only the deadline to appeal Planned Parenthood’s initial fee win, but also the deadline to file his main brief on appeal.
Let’s reminder ourselves that being a state Attorney General is all about being in Court; that is quite literally the measure of the job. Yet when it comes to the courtroom, Attorney General Bailey’s efforts against Planned Parenthood have more flops than an NBA game.
It might be tempting to explain this away by claiming Bailey is just a pro-choice Republican. But that misses the mark. Bailey is a self-described pro-life official who has made strong pro-life statements and touted his lawsuits against Planned Parenthood. Moreover, Bailey has every motivation to stand strong in these cases, now more than ever, as he is in a dogfight of a primary. Indeed, when explaining how he missed the Planned Parenthood appeal deadlines, Bailey didn’t cite ideology or a policy position or any other substantive defense, he instead focused on the “unavailability” of certain of his staff.
But herein lies the bigger problem in all of this for the broader pro-life movement.
It is cold comfort to the pro-life community when our elected officials hand wins to Planned Parenthood through error and incompetence as opposed to pro-choice sentiment or ideological alignment with the other side.
It’s one thing when we have a fight on our hands against the pro-choice crowd within our own party; we know how to fight that fight. It’s almost worse when our side talks tough, convinces us that they are our ideological kindred spirits, but then are so lacking in skill or commitment that they cannot close the deal when it matters.
This is a bigger problem, because it requires more of us.
We have to start looking deeper at the officials we put into key offices. We have to start looking beyond the words they say in order to see someone’s track record of actual success and evidence of actual competence on the job.
Because talking tough isn’t enough, as the situation in Missouri shows us so clearly. In order to actually advance the pro-life movement, we need wins, wins in the day-in-and-day-out fights over money and other front-line things that actually determine the practical realities of this fight. At a bare minimum, we need officials who will stand and fight instead of handing Planned Parenthood wins on a silver platter.
And that is why we as a movement must look closely at how to fix situations like what we see in Missouri, at how to avoid ending up with officials that talk tough and then fall down or roll over on the job. Because that problem isn’t confined to Missouri; it happens all across the country. And if we cannot solve this problem, we are going to face ever greater problems down the road.
To win, we need winners; we need fighters who know that the battle is won in the courtroom and the legislature and on the metaphorical front lines of this campaign, not at the podium or in a television interview. Until we use that as our North Star, we are going to be in trouble.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/05/missouri-ag-andrew-bailey-keeps-rolling-over-for-planned-parenthood/