“Paleoconservative”? Coughlin was a Hitler admiring fascist.
Early in his career, Coughlin was a vocal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his early New Deal proposals, before later becoming a harsh critic of Roosevelt as too friendly to bankers.[3] In 1934 he announced a new political organization called the National Union for Social Justice. He wrote a platform calling for monetary reforms, the nationalization of major industries and railroads, and protection of the rights of labor. The membership ran into the millions, resembling the Populist movement of the 1890s.[4]
After hinting at attacks on Jewish bankers, Coughlin began to use his radio program to issue antisemitic commentary, and later to support at least some of the policies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.[5] The broadcasts have been called “a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture”.[6] His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious, with his slogan being Social Justice, first with, and later against, the New Deal. Many American bishops as well as the Vatican wanted him silenced,[citation needed] but it was the Roosevelt administration that finally forced the cancellation of his radio program and forbade the dissemination through the post of his newspaper, Social Justice.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin
Lots of people admired Mussolini, which made them open to Hitler who was an entirely different sort of cat. My parish priest knew Coughlin in the ‘50s. He kept his pledge to say nothing about politics, but he had his friends. I heard another priest in West Virginia who had also known Coughlin and who had nothing good to say about our involvement in Vietnam, that it was an imperial adventure.
He’s still a hero to many of them, especially palaeoconservative Catholics—just like Dennis Fahey.