The Religious Left and Other Oxymorons

The Dems' religious outreach didn't yield much in 2006 beyond the usual gaggle of crystal-sniffers, voodoo shamans, and Unitarians:

IN THE 2004 ELECTIONS, evangelical voters were the Republican's party's largest and most reliable constituency. Since then, Democrats have focused on peeling away the GOP's advantage among conservative Protestants.

Democratic efforts to refocus evangelicals away from gay marriage and abortion in favor of the environment and poverty seem mostly to have failed. In 2004, the Republican advantage among evangelicals was 74 percent to 25 percent. In 2006, it slipped only a few points, to 70 percent to 28 percent. (White evangelicals accounted for a quarter of the electorate in both 2004 and 2006.)

The Republican advantage among churchgoers as a whole slipped from 18 points to 12 points. Meanwhile, Democrats made significant gains among Catholics and non-evangelical Protestants. But evangelicals remained a pillar of Republican loyalty while the party lost ground among almost every other demographic group.

The Catholic gains are particularly disturbing, given the Democrats' hardly gave up their deathgrip on the Lefty sacrament of abortion. Catholics who support infanticide are usually known as Episcopalians, but perhaps liberal domination of that denomination have sickened the lapsed Catholics enough to return to the fold, in which case voting for the party of abortion this time around might be merely priming the confessional prior to a return to grace.

One hopes, anyway.