Voting in the USA seems to have come down to one issue:
“Which party will give ME the most stuff?” And then the person picks the party that will hand over the stash. For Democrats, that means access to ABC, abortion, and welfare for the poor (mostly black Americans). For Republicans, less regulation and taxes so businesses can make more profits.
And nothing but nothing is going to shift anyone’s position. No matter what Obama does between now and Nov. 2012, he will still have many voters including Catholics. That is how entrenched the sides have become. No matter what issue comes up, it will be defended. He wasn’t elected only based on his race, that was the cherry on top. Black Democrats would still have voted for a Democrat, even Hillary, before they would ever even consider the other candidate.
I have told many people this - if someone who was anti-abortion, small-government, strong on national defense, strong on the border and who would lower taxes, and he or she had a (D) after his/her name, I’d vote for that person. But I seriously doubt if anyone on the other side would consider switching no matter what.
I think we need to recognize that New Deal and Great Society programs are almost certain to remain in place, no matter what. Imaginably, the Paul Ryans of the congress might propose some trimming, and some Democrat or other might propose some additions, but fundamentally it will be almost impossible to change any of them.
And Democrats are at least as much in bed with big business as the Republicans are. Look who got the big Wall Street money in 2008. It wasn’t the Republicans. We need to rid ourselves of stereotypes that no longer bear any reasonable relationship to reality.
It is probable, though, that Obama will promise some new “pie in the sky” thing for the 2012 election; some middle class bribe, just as he did in 2008. Repubs almost certainly won’t, and will try to repeal Obamacare, a middle class welfare bribe that most are now seeing as illusory. There could be a “once bitten, twice shy” reaction among many.
“White guilt” voters and the dedicated left won’t change, of course.
But when it comes to abortion, one party is totally, utterly dedicated to abortion on demand, and one generally opposes it. If one feels a moral obligation to oppose abortion on demand and our being forced to support it, then one has to oppose those who favor it, and to do it effectively (voting third party isn’t effective). It’s really not complicated at all.
When it comes to Catholics, though, I’m not sure the support for Obama is necessarily very strong. In 2008, 54% of white Catholics voted against him. It was only the Hispanic Catholic vote that gave him a majority of Catholics. Will the 54% increase? It could. Evidently, some 30% of Catholic women have had abortions; a fact that makes one think the majority of them might feel personally invested in it. And, there would have been complicit persons (parents, boyfriends) who might feel the same way. There is still some room for movement, though. Those who are not complicit in abortion and who voted for Obama in the belief that he would somehow serve “social justice” might well come to realize the truth; that it’s all talk and no do.
And among Hispanics? I don’t know. I know a fair number of them, and those of Mexican heritage, at least, absolutely resist being forced to do anything that costs money, even more than native born whites do. A much greater number of them than whites simply refuse to take employer-based health insurance, because they think of it as coercion. Will they figure out, by 2012, that Obamacare is not “free”; that if they have a decent job it’s going to cost them and that they will be forced to buy insurance or get fined? Maybe the ones I know are unique, but as I said, they are extraordinarily resistant to economic coercion. It’s one thing to be on the receiving end of social programs. It’s entirely another to be on the paying end. And never have I met a people as averse to paying interest as Mexican-Americans are. Obama will lean mightily on Bernanke to keep rates down, but it might not be possible to keep the lid on through November, 2012. Obama can go down and joke about alligators all he wants, but Mexican-American Hispanics, at least the ones I know, care a lot more about things like coerced costs and interest rates than they do about people who want to come across the border. And, at least among Mexican-Americans, 'gay marriage" is anathema. They are among the most “homophobic” people on the face of the earth. How many of them really oppose abortion on demand? We don’t know, but it’s almost certainly greater than among white Americans. Without a convincing promise of economic benefit, they might abandon Obama in greater numbers than we might now think.
Rob