Santorum Loses Michigan Catholic Vote to Romney
In exit polls released by CBS news the Catholic Candidate Rick Santorum won just 37% of the Catholic vote, while the Mormon Candidate picked up 44% of the Catholic vote.
Rick Santorum had embraced the indignant letter from the Catholic Bishops which rebuked the current administration for their decision concerning contraception coverage for some Catholic institutions. A religious freedom battle in very short order would become a women's rights battle. The result was a toxic policy situation for Republican leaders and Rick Santorum appeared to want to declare himself a five star general in the war on women. This could explain why Romney was more popular with women Michigan voters.
There are serious doubts that Catholic voters will be persuaded one way or the other at the polls by the opinions of the Bishops. A candidate simply agreeing with the Catholic Bishops does not mean that candidate will receive more Catholic votes.
More importantly this week, Santorum has infamously come out publicly to state that comments made by President John Kennedy concerning the separation of church and state, made him want to puke.
With this one statement the increasingly controversial candidate Santorum threatened the hallowed memory of the one Catholic President, John Kennedy. Not a good political move if you hope to win a majority of a very important voting bloc of which Santorum is a member of in "good" standing.
President Obama won the Catholic vote in 2008 and he would like to win that voting bloc again in 2012. The exit poll results show that may be possible even if his opponent happens to be Santorum who happens to be Catholic.
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