The Catholic Democrat

A couple of years ago I looked into the correlation between one's religion & voting patterns. The general rule is those attending religious services on a regular basis tend to vote Republican. The trend is much stronger in evangelical faiths than Catholics where Republican voters appear to be a slight majority (however, it appears to be a margin within the margin of error). Still, in the late 1980s the Democrats enjoyed an advantage of 18% amongst Catholics (see: This PEW RESEARCH CENTER study).

Now, many of those Left Behind Catholics still voting for Democrats point out there is Catholic Social doctrine the GOP falls down on. That is debatable but it is a valid concern. Of course those Catholics who vote GOP point to the GOP's stronger stand with respect to Catholic Doctrine on life and moral issues.

Of course there is a group of Catholics who say Catholicism should follow the Gospel of John the Leftist.

However, the reason the Democrat's are losing Catholic voters is not because of the stands on issues of doctrine, pro-life, morals, social teaching etc. It is because the Democratic party is becoming increasingly hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular.

John Edwards in a way is doing us conservatives a good service. He is trotting out two burning stars of the lefty blogosphere and the publicity is showing the nation as a whole (not just us geeky bloggers & readers of blogs) of the outright hostility of the left towards religion. That is why the Democrats are bleeding religious voters.