CATHOLICS KEY TO BUSH/REPUBLICAN VICTORY

An article in this morning's Washington Times confirms my analysis, both on this blog and in the L.A. Weekly, of how the crucial shift in the Catholic vote--driven in large part by the Rove anti-gay strategy--was critical in shaping the across-the-board Republican victory on Tuesday:

"Mr. Bush's 2.5 percentage-point margin of victory in Ohio was largely achieved by wooing Catholics, who are 25 percent of that state's electorate. Mr. Bush carried Ohio Catholics by 10 percentage points -- 55 percent to 45 percent -- over Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat.
   

"Nationwide, the Catholic vote swung eight points from 2000, when 50 percent backed Al Gore to 47 percent for Mr. Bush. This year, it was 52 percent for the president and 47 percent for Mr. Kerry, a Catholic. Mr. Bush's 2.5 percentage-point margin of victory in Ohio was largely achieved by wooing Catholics, who are 25 percent of that state's electorate.
   

The WashTimes articles describes the Republican campaign targeting Catholics. Particularly effective was a church parking lot leaflet distribution in the 11 anti-gay referenda states on the Sunday before Election Day.

To capitalize on this success, the Republicans will now try to replicate it in the next election cycle with an anti-gay "values" assault on Democrats across the country--for example, in Michigan, where the Detroit Free Press reports this morning that both the state's governor, Jennifer Granholm, and its junior senator, Debbie Stabenow, will be hit on the gay issue and other social hot buttons.

I'll say it again: only if the Democrats develop a gut-grabbing populist strategy will they be able counter the Republicans' values assault. And, if I could, I'd force-feed every Democratic political operative Tom Frank's latest book, "What's the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Stole the Heart of America," which is the crucial road-map for any progressive comeback at the polls. If you haven't yet read this important book, buy it now.

A Knight Ridder analysis this morning encapsulates what happened nicely:

"He [Bush] broke down some of the economic and class lines that had separated Democrats from Republicans for decades, instead building a coalition along cultural and social lines to include married people, churchgoers and those who ranked moral issues as their top concern, above even terrorism or the economy."

If you want to understand how that happened, read Frank's book.

MORE SCARY NEWS: The latest issue of Editor and Publisher reports that the excellent Seymour Hersh says the U.S. military top command Is "scared" to tell Bush and Cheney the truth. He has a number of other pungent observations you'll want to read in this dose of reality from one of the great American journalists of all time.....

And don't miss Tom Frank's New York Times op-ed today, in which he argues that:

"The culture wars...are a way of framing the ever-powerful subject of social class. They are a way for Republicans to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency. Against this militant, aggrieved, full-throated philosophy the Democrats chose to go with ... what? Their usual soft centrism, creating space for this constituency and that, taking care to antagonize no one, declining even to criticize the president, really, at their convention. And despite huge get-out-the-vote efforts and an enormous treasury, Democrats lost the battle of voter motivation before it started." Then, once again--it's so important I can't say it often enough-- I urge you to buy Frank's new book....

Slate has a post-election piece that should make our leftie Brit cousins sit up and take notice: "'"Dear Limey Assholes ...' A crazy British plot to swing Ohio to Kerry—and how it backfired." It's about the boomerang effect of The Guardian's write-a-letter-to-America campaign....