For to dager siden ble Trump formelt valgt til ny president i USA og den kjente forfatteren og kommentatoren F. H. Buckley skriver i denne artikkelen (les om ham HER og HER) at det i praksis var de katolske stemmene som gjorde at Trump ble valgt:
… Elections are won by the marginal voter, the swing voter, the guy right at 50 percent. And in American politics he’s generally a Catholic. That’s the story this time, too.
It wasn’t the white Evangelicals. They went overwhelmingly for Trump, but that was also true in 2012 when they weren’t even sure Romney was Christian. They aren’t the swing voters.
Catholics, on the other hand, were plus-2 for Obama in 2012 and plus-7 for Trump this year. Evangelicals helped Trump in states he was mostly going to win anyway. Catholics? Now we’re talking about Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. And that was the election. …
… But why (did the Catholics vote republican)? Because Trump’s Republican Party is culturally Catholic, in a way that today’s Democrats never could be, and that yesterday’s Republicans, even the Reaganauts, never quite were.
I’m not saying Trump Republicans are Catholic, of course. Many of them are, most aren’t. What I’m saying is that, apart from the dogmas, there’s a Catholic sensibility that lay Catholics get and that Trump supporters share.
It’s not sectarian. It’s about sensibilities.
First off, the church is catholic in the small-c sense, meaning universal and composed of just about every ethnic group. James Joyce saw this, and thought the church’s motto should be “Here comes everybody.” That was Trump’s motto, too.
Indeed, it was the Democrats who practiced the politics of division. In private comments, leading Democrats ridiculed Catholics, and in an exchange with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, President Obama’s solicitor general suggested Catholic and religious colleges that are faithful to their beliefs might lose federal funds.
Hillary Clinton herself said our legal system must reform “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases” to ensure ready access to abortion. …
Second, like Trump supporters, Catholics are patriotic and strongly attracted to the call to “make America great again.” They don’t think they need apologize to anyone for their country, and they don’t like what’s happened to American history as it’s taught in our schools and universities.
Third, lay Catholics, at least the nonintellectuals, aren’t the prisoners of political ideology. They’re looking for policies that speak to the concerns of ordinary Americans, things that work, not abstract theories.
Did you ever hear Trump talk about John Locke? Neither did I. Instead, he talked about a corrupt elite, a middle class left behind, jobs lost. …