The Catholic Vote and John McCain

“Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”

Guess who said that?

The guy who endorsed John McCain on the same day that William Buckley, the founder of the modern conservative movement and a devout Catholic, died.

John Hagee is an anti-Catholic bigot. He likes to the call the Catholic Church “the Great Whore.” Nice.

John McCain doesn’t need Hagee’s support.

But he does need the support of Catholic voters if he wants to be president.

Catholic voters are the Reagan Democrats. They are the independents. The party that best targets Catholic voters wins.

Republicans got spanked hard by the Catholic vote in 2006. Hello, Democratic majority.

Bush won the Catholic vote in 2004 and won handily.

He narrowly lost the Catholic vote in 2000 and lost the popular vote (although he did manage an electoral victory).

50.9 million Catholics voted in the presidential election of 2004.

That is a lot of voters.

John McCain needs to court those voters. He should just tell John Hagee thanks but no thanks.

One of Bill Buckley’s greatest legacies was taking on the scourge of anti-Semitism and removing it from the conservative movement.

Buckley didn’t feel the need to fight anti-Catholicism, because, well, he was Catholic.

But anti-Catholicism is every bit as reprehensible as anti-Semitism.

And it should play no role in the Republican Party.