New Knights of Columbus / Marist College Poll of American Catholic Voters

Earlier this afternoon, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson addressed the press from Rome during a live news conference from the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to highlight a new poll conducted for the Knights of Columbus by Marist College. The poll, which oversampled more than 800 Catholics nationwide, tackled a wide range of issues and produced some of the most detailed polling data ever collected on the Catholic electorate.

Here is the news release from the Knights issued earlier...

Poll shows major differences between practicing and non-practicing Catholics.

A just-completed nationwide poll provides new insights into America’s Catholic voters, highlighting the ways in which they differ from the electorate as a whole. But the survey also examines in detail the ways in which the 65 percent of Catholics who practice their faith regularly differ from the 35 percent who do not.

The poll was conducted for the Knights of Columbus by the Marist College Institute of Public Opinion between September 24 and October 3, 2008.

In some areas, the poll finds that Catholic voters’ views are similar to the general population, on issues like government funding for the poor, amnesty for illegal immigrants, global warming, civil unions and same-sex marriage and a belief that the economy is the nation’s number one problem. 70 percent of all registered voters and 70 percent of all registered practicing Catholics say they would vote for a candidate who believes marriage should only be between a man and a woman, including majorities of the electorate and of practicing Catholics who would "definitely vote for" such a candidate. Catholics and non-Catholics agree that America needs a moral makeover. 71 percent of all US residents and 73 percent of US Catholics believe that “the country’s moral compass right now points in the wrong direction.”

But in other areas, Catholic voters differ from the electorate as a whole. They are less likely to vote for a candidate who favors the death penalty, and more likely to favor a candidate who is committed to success in the war in Iraq.

Some of the most dramatic differences are found within the community of Catholic voters. 59 percent of practicing Catholics are pro-life, while 65 percent of non-practicing Catholics are pro-choice. Non-practicing Catholics are far more likely to be pro-choice than the population at large (65 percent vs. 50 percent). Only 30 percent of US residents favor same-sex marriage, while 46 percent of non-practicing Catholics do. 75 percent of practicing Catholics oppose same-sex marriage.

Parental notification if a daughter under 18 is planning to have an abortion is supported by 77 percent of U.S. residents, and by 84 percent of practicing Catholics.

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For a copy of Supreme Knight Anderson's presentation on the results of the poll, click here.

For a copy of the entire poll's detailed questions and responses, click here.

Pin the Crisis on the Donkey!

Special thanks to artist/photographer Alvaro Siman for providing this graphic to us for use on the ReaganConservatives.us Blog. Click on the image above see a full view of it...

ABC News Points Out Obama's Lies About ACORN

WOW! Read the article below found on ABC News.com web site. Maybe all the lies, deceit, and spin on the part of the Obama campaign are just too much for at least one of the mainstream networks to take.


Being Squirrelly About ACORN
by ABC News Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper

As reports pile up of voter registration fraud connected to ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, a group that advocates for low-income voters – the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has sought to downplay his past ties with the group.

But in their efforts to do, Obama campaign officials found themselves forced last week to correct an erroneous assertion made on the campaign’s “Fight the Smears” webpage that “Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.”

That wasn’t true.

In fact, ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg told the New York Times that Obama conducted two unpaid leadership training sessions for ACORN’s Chicago affiliate in the late 1990s.

The “Fight the Smears” website now asserts, "Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.”

Key word: hired.

Goldberg told the Times that Obama’s work for ACORN was unpaid.

You can see the old version HERE and the new version HERE.

Moreover, Obama also represented ACORN and other groups in the mid 1990s as an attorney suing the state of Illinois to uphold the federal Motor Voter law. The governor and other officials of the State of Illinois were refusing to comply with the law on the ground that it was unconstitutional.

**

Further confusing the length and depth of the Obama-ACORN relationship was the discovery by conservative bloggers of an error-riddled story in the journal Social Policy featuring not only a 2004 photograph of Obama and ACORN members but an essay called “Case Study: Chicago- The Barack Obama Campaign” written Toni Foulkes, a Chicago ACORN Leader.

"Obama started building the base years before,” Foulkes wrote in her 2004 essay. “For instance, ACORN noticed him when he was organizing on the far south side of the city with the Developing Communities Project. He was a very good organizer. When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois’ refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act, also known as motor voter. Allied only with the state of Mississippi, Illinois had been refusing to allow mass-based voter registration according to the new law.

Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5000 of them).”

Foulkes messed up the chronology in that account, making it sound earlier than it had occurred. The Motor Voter Law was passed in 1993, the lawsuit was brought in 1995.

Additionally, press accounts from the time of the Illinois Project Vote voter registration drive put the number of new voters registered at 150,000, not 50,000.

Still, that doesn't seem to square with the Obama campaign's assertion that "Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992."

Foulkes went on to note that “since then,” ACORN had “invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends."

Obama’s losing congressional campaign was in 2000, not 1996.