Catholic League president William Donohue commented today on the league’s new strategy in dealing with the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) alliance with an anti-Catholic organization:
“Whether Terry McAwful (a.k.a. McAuliffe) is fired as the DNC’s chairman makes no difference to the Catholic League. What does matter is the DNC’s obstinacy in defending anti-Catholicism. For the past three months, the Catholic League has protested the DNC’s link with Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), a notoriously anti-Catholic organization headed by Frances Kissling. But the DNC won’t drop CFFC from its links page.
“There is little doubt that in close elections, neither party can afford to alienate its base. Catholics, as everyone knows, hold the key to the White House and they are roughly evenly split between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Catholic League is attached to neither party and has indeed fought both of them on several issues, ranging from the tricks the Republicans played in the House Chaplain issue to the tricks the DNC is currently playing with Kissling. A prudent DNC chairman would have dumped Kissling by now but McAwful has chosen not to do so. So he loses and, by extension, so does his party.
“Here is the Catholic League’s new strategy: over the next two years, our goal is to inform every Catholic in the United States about the support the DNC shows for anti-Catholicism. Let me be clear about what we want. If the DNC wants to support abortion rights, it can do so without getting any flak from the Catholic League. While we are, of course, pro-life, it is not our job to fight abortion. Our job is to fight anti-Catholicism and that is why we are adamantly opposed to the anti-Catholic efforts of Frances Kissling. If the DNC continues to list CFFC anywhere on its webpage, it does so at its own peril: the Catholic League will be the DNC’s greatest nightmare in 2004. We’re in this for the long haul and only a fool would doubt us.”
