Protestants are about 31% of the Hispanic voters.
The Catholic denomination has always been a democrat voting block.
Romney winning 48% of the Catholic vote, is one of the greatest republican margins of all time.
This current period of 1972 to 2012, is as good as it gets, it was the glory days of the GOP sometimes winning a slim margin of the Catholic vote.
In fact, with possibly the exception of the disputed election of 1956, ALL of the handful of times that the GOP have picked up a slim margin from the Catholics, was 1972-2012.
“”Rothman and Lichter researched and wrote a book on American radicals, “The Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians and the Left” back in 1982. They discovered that the Christian component of the Left were largely Catholics.””
I also recognize that the Roman Catholic Church on economic issues has what might be charitably called a medieval and paternalistic view of the role of the state. There are important areas of disagreement even there, and they came out when Rick Santorum’s views on economics got criticized for being out of line with standard conservative evangelical views and even more different from secular conservative or libertarian views.
However, would you not make a distinction between the general population of people who call themselves Catholics and those who are committed Mass-going Catholics? We can't compare all Catholics to churchgoing evangelical Protestants without recognizing that there are major differences in commitment levels within Roman Catholicism, just as there are major differences within Protestantism.
A practicing Catholic who goes to Mass regularly and cares about what his church teaches is going to be much more similar to an evangelical Protestant in voting patterns.
Granted, evangelicals have their Ron Siders and Tony Campolos, and seriously committed Catholics have their social liberals, too.
But I don't see social liberals as being anywhere close to a majority of practicing Roman Catholics who take their faith seriously.
“The Catholic denomination has always been a democrat voting block.
Romney winning 48% of the Catholic vote, is one of the greatest republican margins of all time”
You make a mistake by throwing in the welfare hispanics when you count “catholic votes”. Take away the freeloaders that expect open borders and more food stamps from the “catholic vote” that Obama received, and he gets no where near the 51% of the overall “catholic vote”. Like I have said before anyone that claims to be Catholic and still votes for the party that believes in murdering unborn children and sodomite “marriage” should not be included in the statistics for the “catholic vote”. You can’t be for abortion on demand and sodomite “marriage” and still be Catholic. But the media loves to throw in this crowd and call them Catholic because they hate the Catholic Church. And from your replies I see that you are a Catholic-basher also.
There is no more “conservative” church in the world than the Catholic Church. When Roe v. Wade came along the Catholic Church stood almost alone among the Christian faith in standing up for the rights of unborn children. 99% of all protestant “churches” went along with abortion on demand. The Catholic Church also does not ordain women and homosexuals. Just about all the protestant faiths let women preach and allow homosexual preachers. There are some leftist “catholics” out there, but they know damn well what their faith expects of them and they snub their noses are faithful “conservative” Catholic teachings. The Catholic Church does have a history of supporting democrat politicians, but there was a time when the party had not been taken over by the pro-death crowd. The party before the early 70s was pro-life and certainly didn’t allow homosexual “marriage”. The party JFK was part of would be ashamed of today’s democrat party and no doubt JFK would be republican. He was a conservative.