Bread & circuses.

THIS YEAR Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour plans to be more persistent in seeking converts than a Jehovah's Witness. When the typical Jehovah's Witness learns that he's knocked on a Catholic's door, he'll assume it's a hopeless case and move on in search of more promising prospects. (Try it). But Barbour is convinced that many Roman Catholics are ready to abandon their historic allegiance to the Democrats. He believes these converts could provide the margin of victory for Republicans in November.

Ed Gillespie, the Republican National Committee's Communications Director, explains that Catholics are among the GOP's top targeted groups. There are, of course, millions of Catholic Republicans. But the majority of Catholics remain a swing vote that "is critically important in battleground states." Catholics represent about 25 per cent of the population and are heavily concentrated in the states that will be most hotly contested in November. They are 30 per cent of the population in Pennsylvania, 31 per cent in Illinois, and 42 per cent in New Jersey and Connecticut. And since Catholics vote so faithfully, they wield considerable clout at the ballot box -- they account for 39 per cent of the voting population in Pennsylvania and 50 per cent in New Jersey. In seeking Catholic support, the Republicans will be proselytizing where the votes are. But are most of these traditional Democrats ready to convert?

The omens are promising. From 1976 through 1992, Democratic House candidates received, on average, over 60 per cent of the Catholic vote. In November 1994, for the first time in history, a majority of Catholics supported GOP House candidates. By examining the vote that helped put Newt Gingrich in the Speaker's chair, Republicans hope to craft a message that will solidify their newly won Catholic support.

Exit-poll data from the Voter News Service reveal that support for GOP candidates was strongest among younger Catholics (53 per cent of 18-to-29-year-olds, and 59 per cent of 31-to-40-year-olds), indicating that they share the faith of their fathers, but reject politics patrum. Catholics with higher incomes and educational attainment were unsurprisingly more likely to vote Republican. What is significant is that 41 per cent of Catholics in "union households" also supported the GOP. Specific issues and Bill Clinton's fluctuating popularity both appear to have helped swing Catholics into the GOP column. Family values and taxes were significantly more important than other issues to Catholics who voted Republican. For those who regularly attend church, abortion was the third issue of concern. In last June's The Public Perspective, four political scientists, after examining these issues and the demographics of various religious groups, concluded that "religion was more powerful than economics in 1994." They write, "New forms of ethno-religious politics are emerging, with the GOP drawing the more religiously observant voters, at least among whites, and the Democrats attracting the least observant in the major traditions, seculars, and various minority groups." If the central tenet of the GOP's gospel remains a balanced budget, it will not be speaking directly to the sensibilities of these values voters.

The majority of Catholic congressmen from New York are now Republicans, and one of them draws the same lesson from his own observations: Rep. Peter King believes that in order to appeal to ethnic Catholic voters, his party has to emphasize "neighborhood, community, and patriotism and get away from what will happen to the economy in 2002."

King would like to see Republicans talking more about crime, quotas, education, and welfare. He tells how he has recently learned of the appeal of an issue little talked about in Washington but enormously popular with voters. To fill a space in one of his newsletters, King inserted a paragraph about his co-sponsorship of an English-as-the-official-language bill. "Mail came in by the ton," King recalls. He reports that he recently received a standing ovation from a group of retired constituents when he briefly mentioned the English-language bill as a preface to his remarks on Medicare. "It's a metaphor for what's wrong with the country and for the failure of the Great Society programs," King says.

Recent polling data confirm King's assertion that the same sort of issues that appealed to Reagan Democrats in the 1980s still appeal to Catholic voters today. The Tarrance Group has found that over three-quarters of Catholic voters support parental choice of schools, oppose race and gender quotas, and believe welfare programs foster dependency. The Executive Director of the Maryland Catholic Conference, Richard Dowling, believes that Democratic support for gays in the military and for an ever higher wall of separation between church and state has alienated many Catholics. "The Republicans may yet be bland in the eyes of traditional Catholics; the Democrats have become countercultural," he states.

OTHER polling data suggest that in voting for Republicans in 1994, Catholics were voicing their disapproval of Bill Clinton, the man and the moral agenda. His previously high approval rating among Catholics began sinking in the spring of 1994, and by election day only 33 per cent of Catholics had a favorable opinion of the President. Observers believe that the Joycelyn Elders controversies, the Clinton Administration's clash with the Vatican at the Cairo population conference, and the crime-bill debate cost support from Catholic voters, who eschew the Republican label but identify themselves as conservative rather than liberal by a ratio of 2 to 1.

However, Republicans can't count on these Clinton mistakes being repeated. Barbour's opponents at the DNC are studying the same electoral maps. Clinton, posing as a reconstituted New Democrat in favor of strong families, Hollywood self-restraint, tax cuts, and welfare reform could win back the disaffected. Indeed, today, 53 per cent of Catholics have a favorable opinion of Bill Clinton. Haley Barbour's troops still have their work cut out for them.