Responding to Catholic neocon George Weigel's complaint about mid-western and northeastern Catholics not voting "correctly" in this year's election fellow conservative Ross Douthat says:
John McCain did not lose this election because the Catholic clergy failed to anathematize Barack Obama loudly enough, or because Pennsylvanians and Michiganders thought they were voting for Roosevelt or Truman. He lost it because his party flat-out misgoverned the country, in foreign and domestic policy alike, and because of late the culture war has mattered less to most Americans than the Iraq War and the economic meltdown. And pro-lifers who see the GOP as the only plausible vehicle for their goals have an obligation to look the party's failures squarely in the face and work to fix them, instead of just doubling down on the case for single-issue pro-life voting.
It's hard to imagine today's GOP, or its neocon enablers, facing the party's problems squarely, since neither have an interest in the basic duties of government. McCain's choice of Sarah Palin was only the most recent case in point. The administration's staffing of FEMA is another, highly representative example. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, obviously, another.
