Conservatives And The Catholic Voter

Next month President Obama will give the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. He was no doubt happy to receive the invitation.

For political parties with national aspirations, the Catholic vote remains in high demand.

In 2000 and 2004 President George Bush courted the Catholic voter and nosed out two victories.

In 2008 Barack Obama worked for this vote, successfully turned the tables, and won among Catholics by 9 points on his way to a landslide victory.

But Republicans and Democrats have diverged in their pitches to these voters. The Bush campaign micro-targeted conservative Catholics. It focused on turning out the remnant of a once distinct urban and industrial Catholic culture and the small suburban vanguard of an emerging conservative Catholic culture.

The Obama campaign understood, however, that the behavior of the Catholic voter is no longer easily distinguished from the non-Catholic voter. So through his surrogates, he addressed Catholics primarily as citizens with working and middle class anxieties rather than as an interest group disassociated from the broader American culture.

The recent data on Catholic school enrollment in the United States seems to confirm that the conservative approach to the Catholic vote needs some rethinking. In short, Bush appealed to a shrinking demographic. Whether or not conservatives reevaluate their approach to social issues, conservatives need to make unique pocketbook appeals to a suburban Catholic voter who has different concerns than the Catholic Reagan Democrats of the 1980s.

The bad news for Catholic schools mirrors the slipping regional relevance of Republicans in the Midwest and Northeast.

In the 1960s there were almost 13,000 Catholic schools in the United States educating 5.2 million students. Today, there are 7,248 Catholic schools with a total enrollment of roughly 2.2 million students.

The decline in Catholic school enrollment has followed the collapse of the industrial economy in New England, the Great Lakes states, and the Mid-Atlantic. Even today, nearly 50% of Catholic schools are in the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states. Nearly 43% are located in urban and inner city areas. But the regional distribution of schools and enrollment is shifting toward the Plains, South, and West.

Yet, not all of the news is bad for these schools. While 162 schools consolidated or closed, 31 opened, reflecting demographic shifts toward the suburbs. There remains a demand for a Catholic education, with waiting lists at 2,114 schools. And the percentage of minority enrollment has risen from less than 11% in 1970 to 29% today. Hispanics now represent 12.6% of the Catholic school population.

In short, this data shows that the locus of Catholic culture continues its move from the Rust Belt and Northeast to the South and West. Like the rest of the country, Catholics are more likely to be post-industrial participants in a white collar service economy rather than union members. And insofar as a blue collar Catholic class remains, its members are more likely an Ojeda and Dinh rather than an O’Brien and DeLuca.

So how do conservatives address the pocketbook concerns of this changing Catholic population?

The current economic crisis presents at least one opportunity.

CNN recently ran a story on financially strapped parents forced to choose between the mortgage and tuition payments for their school-aged children.

Democrats, who have perfected the No mother should have to choose between X and Y argument, would know exactly what to do with this story:

This is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and Congress should not force parents to choose between putting food on the table and paying tuition for their children. No family should have to pull a child out of school – away from friends and teachers – because dad lost his job.

Conservative Republicans should run with this. They should promote a temporary tax credit for elementary and secondary school tuition. The credit could be phased out following two quarters of uninterrupted economic growth.

By taking up this issue, Republicans would provide immediate pocketbook benefits to the families of 2.2 million children. And a substantial credit would make a real difference for these families – the average tuition at a Catholic elementary school is only $3,159. Such a credit would begin steering tax policy in a pro-family direction, and conservatives could plausibly argue that because of the credit’s temporary nature, it does not pose the threat to public schools that vouchers might.

The conservative failure with Catholics since 2006 is in large measure a failure to appreciate the changing face of Catholic culture. As conservatives work to reenlist Catholic support, they need to appeal to these voters primarily as white collar suburbanites and working class immigrants rather than as culture warriors.

In this economy, a temporary tax credit for private school tuition would go a long way toward reclaiming the allegiance of the Catholic vote.