One of the things that can be quite maddening after an election is the stories about the Catholic vote and how it is used to show approval of a pro-abortion politician.  Specifically in the case of President Obama.  In 2008 this pro-abortion politician  “Catholic vote” contingent was 54% and this time it is “51%”.

To which faithful Catholics always want a breakout of a least weekly Mass going Catholics.  In 2008 this statistic turned out to be 43%, better but not exactly a figure to want to should from the rooftops. It is easy to want to blame the media and pollsters for not being more specific as to what constitutes a Catholic voter.

For example I was raised in a liberal family in a very blue state and identified myself as liberal, though I have left my liberal faith.  If they used the same metric they  used for Catholics concerning me I would be part of the “Liberal vote.”

Maybe that isn’t the perfect parallel since if a pollster asked me if I was liberal I would not confirm it in the context of the modern sense of the word.  Apparently Catholics who have stopped practicing their faith do self-identify as Catholic. Somehow I don’t think they are making the ontological distinction of having been baptized into the faith.  Being Catholic becomes more like a group identity, a cultural backdrop, something you disagree with but maintain some tenuous connection.

Really though can we expect pollsters to make distinctions between Catholics who attend Mass weekly or not?  Somebody might be a faithful Protestant and whether or not they attend services weekly might have little bearing on that.  So expecting pollsters to make distinctions like this is asking too much.

Besides as many have noted their is no monolithic Catholic vote.   The party they are affiliated with is usually going to tell you much more than what church they are affiliated with. Mostly instead of the yeast permeating the leaven the leaven is permeating the yeast.

Maybe the positive news is that people are still willing to identify themselves as Catholics at all even if they currently have little connection with the faith. Considering the long lent of the priestly sexual abuse scandal and the relentlessly negative assault on the Church by the media this is a bit of a silver lining.  Sucessful programs like “Catholics Come Home” certainly remind us that we should not be dismissive of this group of Catholics as being seen just as something annoying that messes up polling statistics. We can laugh about “Christmas & Easter” Catholics and the other labels we have seen, but evangelizing them is certainly harder than the quick joke.

After election analysis can be interesting, but when it comes from the same people who got the pre-election analysis wrong it should be taken with many grains of salt. After election reactions can also be rather elitist.  I know it is easy to want to disparage those who voted against a supported candidate in a “How dare you” tone.  Political junkies kind of expect everybody else to be political junkies.

Still I was trying to understand the dynamics of this election and was not really finding a key to understanding it.  I was listening to Al Kresta and he said something that kind of provided that key of understanding to me.  That President Obama has become a cultural icon and the election turned more on this than an endorsement of his politics.  There are several seemingly incongruent facts that then make more sense when seen in this light. Being a cultural icon and a pop culture president you become more immune from nasty facts such as the state of the economy.  Scandals that might have overturned one president can be endured with this status.  We heard again and again how his election in 2008 was a “historic event” as if all historical events are not historical events.  The fact that as a leader he was rather dangerously inept did not matter as much considering he was such a part of the culture visiting cable and TV shows, appearing on a radio show with the “Pimp with the Limp”, opining about personal conflicts on American Idol, schmoozing with the Hollywood elite and others from the entertainment industry.

President Clinton was a bit of a pop culture President appearing on Arsenio Hall’s show and  other cultural interactions. But President Obama has been the master of this and transcending the act to a whole new level.  He was most comfortable and engaged with the pop culture.  Really having to do his job as President always seemed like a nuisance to him. People call the Affordable Care Act Obamacare, but he was not the driving force behind it.  It was Rep. Nancy Pelosi who did the heavy lifting and getting the Democrats in line to vote for it. Sure the President helped out concerning a couple of wrinkles at the end like writing a worthless executive order to soothe the conscience of Bart Stupak. Actually meeting with legislators to hammer out a budget was just too much work.  He created a jobs council and then didn’t meet with it. If he spent as much time thinking about the economy as he did working out the NCAA brackets it might have been interesting.  If we ever needing an Ambassador to Hollywood surely he is the person to fill that job.

As a cultural icon he seemed to see his job as being cool and relating to young people and he mostly achieved that. Sure that is an overly broad generalization, but I think there is some truth in it.  Pop culture icons can be forgiven much and don’t have to be tied to promises and a record with little to brag about.  When the Nobel Prize committee gave him the Nobel Peace Prize at the very start of his administration they contributed to the cultural iconification where the idea of him was more important than the facts of him.  This election fundamentally has not been much different where the idea of him still triumphs.  Sure there is not an insignificant number of people who are with him all the way politically, but that he not what earned him another four years.  It seems many people still went out to vote for him mainly to feel good about themselves than to feel good about the direction of the country as some exit polling seemed to show.

What I think this means for the future is not that social conservatism and conservative ideas are dead on arrival as far as the culture is concerned.  The confluence of events that created the pop culture president is not going to be the defining truth for elections to come. This was more personality than politically driven.  The answer certainly is not for conservatives to try to imitate the pop culture aspect of his success – they never will, but they certainly have a long way to go to engage the youth and others.  In some ways President Reagan also became a pop culture phenomenon on his own terms with his extolling of conservative ideas along with a sense of humor broke through to a generation that other conservatives would have written off.  Romney was not effective engaging the new media and didn’t even spend money on ads at, for example, Hulu.  President Obama has been all over the old and new media including sites such as Reddit.  Certainly there are the younger generation of conservatives that are using the new media and maybe the next candidate will learn a thing or two from them.

So there is a new a new Archbishop of Canterbury – Rt. Rev. Justin Welby. Really being the Archbishop of Canterbury should be one of the Dirty Jobs that Mike Rowe tries out. This job is like striding across a fault line during an earthquake with two sides continuing in opposition and trying to maintain balance.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker has his analysis which is quite interesting.

Well it turns out that St. Teresa of Avila’s “Let nothing disturb you prayer” was just as apt the day after election. Really though it is apt everyday.

One thing about having the gift of faith is that it can give you perspective and serve you in ways you might not expect. For example any election result like the one we just had would have severely depressed me when I was an atheist. When you are an atheist the main tool for culture shaping is the government. The government becomes the lens to shape whatever desired vision of the body politic you see best. There is no heaven so you want to create one on earth. I know I was certainly very angry whenever some candidate I wanted to win didn’t.

This time around I am certainly disappointed, but not despairing. God can bring good out of evil and we keep providing him with material to work with. Sure I had a momentary pulse of anger, but it was one I could put down quickly. We are not exactly headed to the catacombs (yet). Sure the serious threats to our nation and specifically the human person are serious and growing. A false view of human freedom and rights continues to get exaggerated into distorted forms. It is not like Catholics have not been in this situation before. The cross is never far from the life of faith. We are not alone in this struggle though since many members of the Communion of Saints have “Been there, done that.” The fact that the reason we even know about many of the saints is because of their martyrdom in these situations. The fact that we are unlikely to be martyred does not diminish the fact that these false views being adopted and lived are damaging to the human person and the family.

While I am sure my faith plays a part in my not being as upset as I might have been, I wonder about other possible factors. For example Gov. Romney was not really somebody I wanted to vote for in the first place. His election would have brought a different set of problems.

Now since pretty much every pundit is weighing in on Romney’s loss I guess I will add to the metric tons of useless of opinions. Or at least to set a couple of points to ponder.

Some months ago on Facebook I quipped something to the effect that “Gov. Romney will make as great a president as Sen. Bob Dole, Sen. McCain, and 2nd Term George H. Bush.” Looks like I was right on that score. Moderate Republicans just plain lose. If there was any chance for a moderate Republican to win it was this time out considering the economy – but that just was not enough. All of these men had some things in common. For example you can describe none of them as really social conservatives. Social conservatives were held off at arms length for the most part and were something to be used but not embraced. All of them also had opponents that had severe failings and ultimately  did not take advantage of those failings. They were all pretty much fine with attacking fellow conservatives, but loath to say anything about their opponent that might come off as cross. Compare Romney’s attack ads against primary opponents to his ones against Obama. When it came to the 3rd debate Romney treated the President with kid gloves when it came to Bengazi and the Presidents complicity in their death seems to get worse and worse. Romney apparently thought he was just going to slide in upon the performance of the first debate.

In the aftermath of these losses two things always happen. Conservatives who are not social conservatives blame social conservatives for losing the race. If only the social issues didn’t come up everything would be fine. Social conservatives blame the Candidate for not being a social conservative. Beyond the moral questions the idea that if Romney embraced abortion (again), and gay marriage that he would have won I think is rather silly. You just aren’t going to out-Democrat the Democrats on this. Would Romney have won if he was really a social conservative? Seems doubtful to me. This schism of conservatism and social conservatism is a false schism and I go for the both/and approach here. I want a candidate that can articulate conservative ideas that includes so-called social conservatism. Either way Romney was not the full package and certainly no conservative philosopher who had thought deeply on these ideas. Ironically it was the President who made his campaign about social issues and was quite strident in his abortion and same-sex marriage support.

There was much talk about Romney exciting the base and bringing more enthusiasm. This turned out to be a dud and obviously some of the base was not going to hold finger to nose and instead did what their consciences informed them to do. What might be some of the factors in this?

• I think the whole Mormon aspect played a larger role than many pundits expected.  A prudential case for not electing a Mormon as president can certainly be defended on some levels.  I certainly heard callers on some talk radio stations who were not going to vote for him based on this.  While some mainstream Protestants came out for him towards the end I think this played some factor – though probably not a decisive one.
• Going back to social conservatives again we knew the Governor was not one of us or that we were dubious of his claims of being pro-life.  For someone who supposedly repented of these views he did not act like this was a real concern to him.  Promising judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade is not the same as realizing the horror of abortion. That the GOP has been treating pro-lifers as second class citizens is becoming more and more obvious and I can certainly understand those who refused to vote for him based on these facts.  I might have preferred Romney over Obama, but I would not overturn someone’s conscience with pragmatic advice.
• For those concerned about the threat to religious liberty again Romney sounded hollow.  This was more of a sound bite issue to him than any real concern.  His duplicity regarding Catholic Hospitals and forcing them to use Plan B is certainly evidence that like the President he was willing to violate religious freedom for political reasons.
• For those who are opposed to Obamacare  it was hard to see how Gov. Romney’s  association  with Romneycare which included abortion coverage was to be trusted in repealing Obamacare.  Sure there are differences between a Federally mandated program and a state one, but there were also a lot of similarities.

The question is will conservatives learn anything this time?  Probably not.  Each loser seems to have been someone whose time had come and deserved the shot. Someone that had run for the nomination before and lost. Maybe this isn’t a metric for automatic dismissal since the same facts are pretty much true of other GOP nominees that went on to win.  It just shouldn’t be an automatic reward.

Now not to just dump on Romney, I don’t think any of the primary contenders would have won.  I was closest in philosophy to Sen Santorum (with some grave exceptions), but frankly he comes off negative and not charismatic. Unfortunately that is a factor in today’s races.  I just want a candidate that does not support any intrinsic evils. Apparently that is asking too much.

Now what will the President’s second term be like?  Well much like his first when he had a GOP dominated congress.  Nothing will get passed and he will side-swipe the constitution with more executive orders.  I don’t see the economy improving, but would love to see the private sector overcome these government imposed burdens. The drum beat for Federal approval of same-sex marriage will increase  now that we have had people vote in this non-reality.  There will be more persecution of Catholic and other faiths in the name of tolerance.  His possible Supreme Court picks could shape the court for another generation. He will only add to his rightly-earned dishonor of being the most pro-abortion president in history. I wonder how much the facts of the deaths of four Americans in  Bengazi will play out in a congressional investigation. We have talked about teflon presidents before and it is embarrassing that he could survive Fast and Furious, the economy, and the shameful betrayal of our embassy employees.  The media will hit the snooze alarm for another four years so whether these things will ever escalate into media coverage at least on the level of Valerie Plame is doubtful.

Wow this is all pretty depressing.  Thank God I don’t rely on just the Government to be the solver of all things. History is full of surprising events and even more surprising conversions.  No executive order can stop me from praying and living the Gospel.  My Hope is the one who Changes water into wine and wine into his own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.  Meanwhile I will be praying for the President and his administration, but loving my enemies is not the same thing as saying I don’t have any.

My employer is obviously trying to kill me.  Pope Benedict has said access to food is “a concrete expression of the right to life.”  The United States’ Declaration of Independence called for the protection of  “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”  Yet my employer is not paying my food bills.  They do no support a food insurance plan or any plan to subsidize my grocery bill.  So since my employer is not paying my food bills it has to mean that they are denying my right to food!

Now this might seem like a ridiculous argument and of course it is.  But of course it is exactly the same argument being used by those that would enforce employers to pay for contraception.   Now a sane person would look at my argument for employer bought food and make the obvious observation that since I am payed a salary and can buy food with my salary my employer is no way blocking my access for food.  The same goes for people who think they have a right to contraception in that nothing is blocking them from paying for it out of their own salaries.  Now maybe some people can’t pay for the extra-premium extra-pricey contraception that Sandra Fluke says she is paying for and costs so much more than in all the normal pharmacies.  But even those who contravene the natural law and demand hormone-based birth control are not going to be going to the poor house based on that.

Really the HHS mandate has an agenda that is just an attack on future children.  There are many things they might have demanded that insurance companies paid for regarding real world health experiences. Yet the three they choose to mandate were contraception – prevention of children, sterilization – eliminating the possibility of children, and so called Plan B after the fact contraception and abortion inducing chemicals.  The Obama Administration is like Dana Carvey’s church lady on SNL but instead of the hush tones where the answer to every problem is “Satan!” they use the same tone with “Children!”  Surprised they haven’t yet redirected Smokey the Bear to say “Only you can prevent children.”  Funny how they divorce children from sex and then equate sex with voting.

One of the saddest things about this direct attack on the 1st Amendment of the Constitution regarding religious freedom is how mostly the American people have yawned about it.  Sure there is a small segments of Catholics that are up in arms about it and the Bishops have been very vocal about it.  There is even a nice portion of Evangelicals who see this as an attack on religious freedom and have joined in on the law suits.  But mostly this is not an issue this election will turn on. Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan have brought it up from time to time – but it is not centerpiece or major part of  there stump speeches.  The President and Vice President have also bragged about it and have made it a major part of their campaign.  We can laugh about Sandra Fluke drawing tens of people, but they certainly have made the HHS mandate seem righteous to their supporters.

I remember when the whole HHS mandate first broke and I was awed by how giant this political miscalculation was.  An administration that could be so blind to infringing religious freedom and the repercussions is just amazing.  The bubble the Obama Administration lives in  is obviously sound proof and pretty much impervious to realities other than “I heart abortion.” Audacious and arrogant is what the HHS mandate is and when there was an initial outcry they created a non-compromise that did not change the moral calculus – just fudged the moral equations. Yet again the election will not turn on this.  This is just a naked power  grab to enforce a view of the world onto religious believers and if the economy was better they might have totally gotten away with it.  Now if the President were able to win election then certainly this is something that will be decided in the courts.  But just because something is blatantly unconstitutional does not mean that they will not give it a judicial seal of approval.

I certainly hope to see the death of the HHS mandate in the short term.  The problem is that we have a culture that was pretty much open to it in the first place and we will continue to see manifestations of this mindset.  While a political election might solve one problem, the real problem is not  going to be solved by politicians and as Jesus told the Apostles some things need much prayer and fasting to drive out.