Romney 29%-Santorum 21% Nationally

Of course the Catholic Social Justice types are out now with their denunciations of Santorum:

http://www.faithinpubliclife.org/fplaction/the-catholic-case-against-rick-santorum/

Perhaps we can start to take these points one by one to show how some are using CST for rank partisan purposes.

That poll proves that Romney hasn’t hit a ceiling. The previous Rasmussen poll had Romney at 17%. It’s true that Romney has never hit above 30% in any poll (with the exception of PPP which seems to be a random number generator). It’s also true that nobody has hit above 40%. It’s hard with so many candidates. RealClearPolitics has Romney at the highest level of support ever. Higher than Cain ever got. There’s no reason to believe it won’t rise further.

On Intrade, Santorum’s rise has hurt Gingrich but it hasn’t affect Romney. In fact, Romney’s numbers have improved, presumably because Santorum is the less threat.

Just saw Santorum on The OReilly Factor last night. I was a little disappointed. Bill completely misrepresentation regarding Catholic Teaching on birth control and Santorum really seemed to back off from calling him out on it. In fact Bill gave him an opening to go into social issues more and Santorum dodged the question.

In fairness, I know that Santorum has limited time to respond to questions thrown at him. I am sure he was completely caught off guard by the question.

But it really seemed as I was watching the interview live that Bill needed to be corrected on his. He completely butchered Catholic teaching on birth control. Santorum made some silly faces after Bill said it, but never followed up on it. Considering millions of people were watching it seemed to me the sort of thing that really needed to be corrected. Especially since Bill brought it up and gave Santorum the chance for a follow up on it.

For those uninformed people watching the exchange you would probably think Bill was right about birth control after the exchange.

I guess the very fact that birth control even came up is a good thing

I think Santorum handled the O’Reilly interview pretty well. Santorum knows that debating contraception isn’t going to win him any votes. No sense in dwelling on the topic.

But I want to pin down Santorum’s exact position. So he’s personally opposed to contraception. But he’s said that he doesn’t want to ban it. I guess that’s morally permissible if you think banning it would do more social harm. But Santorum has voted to fund contraception. Is that morally permissible?

I think Santorum handled the O’Reilly interview pretty well. Santorum knows that debating contraception isn’t going to win him any votes. No sense in dwelling on the topic.

I would agree except that Bill framed it as a “Catholic” position, and not a general “conservative” or “republican” position. It seemed that framing it that way relieved Santorum somewhat in that it became an issue of what Catholic teaching is. Basically a case of one Catholic correcting another Catholic on an aspect of the faith.

I am not skilled in the ways of politics, and most likely naive regarding this. Very likely a battle regarding Catholic teaching wouldn’t be a good political move. But it seemed like the opening existed for more to be said and just maybe a little clarification would have been a good thing.

Phillip & Don,

Thanks for the replies. I’ll keep it all in mind. (I think what concerns me is that it’s not one bishop saying one thing and another bishop saying something else. On the issues discussed in the link, there seems to be a set of fairly unified and consistent positions among the bishops who have expressed opinions. Not risng to the level of inerrant teaching, but not something to ignore either.)

Spambot,

This from Vox Nova by commenter “A Sinner.” An excellent rebuttal of the prevailing distortions about CST by some and better worded than I could:

“I don’t like all these things about him either. But “show me the dogma.”

Vox Nova’s tactic has fallen ridiculously flat of trying to “give the conservative heresy-hunters a taste of their own medicine” by trying to draw equivalency with disagreement on the prudential question of the concrete means of implementing social teachings (of which the absolute abstract moral principles in themselves…are much broader and more vague than you’re making them out to be, and there IS plenty of room for debate on whether this or that given solution fulfills the criteria).

Now, albeit, I do generally believe the in the approach of the Vatican and USCCB towards economic questions and immigration and war, etc. But to act like Catholics have to toe the line on specific policy questions like that is very dangerous. The conservatives may (with things like the culture wars and abortion and gay issues) bring religion too much into politics, but the sort of “obedience” to “Catholic social teaching” you are proposing here would bring too much of politics into our religion!

I support both positions, to be sure, but amnesty for immigrants or supporting Medicaid or opposing the Iraq War…are simply not De Fide questions, and there is certainly a lot more room for debate and disagreement about the application of various moral principles there than is about the statement ‘the State has a duty to defend unborn life.’”