BOB ABERNETHY, host: And now we look at the election results and what they mean with David Gibson, religion writer for PoliticsDaily.com, and with Kim Lawton, our managing editor. Kim, you’ve looked at the patterns. What did you see?
KIM LAWTON, managing editor: Well, not surprisingly Republicans made gains among all religious groups, but there were some pretty significant gains. White Protestants voted Republican overwhelmingly. They’ve done that, they usually do that in elections, but even more so this time. The interesting thing for me was around Catholics. In the last two congressional elections, overall Catholics have favored the Democratic candidates. But this time around they went Republican and by significant margins. Catholics have really become in some ways a swing voting bloc. Obviously there are some who always vote Republican, some who always vote Democratic, but there’s this group who keeps swinging, and this time around they really swung Republican.
This analysis seems rather superficial to me, but still interesting. Especially the part about a growing divide between Anglo RCs and Latino Catholics. Given the continuing growth of the Hispanic segment of the Catholic Church and the US, that could be very significant.
And not least interesting was that bit at the end about guessing whether this election will lead both parties to show more willingness to compromise in order to get things done, or whether it might actually promote a greater partisan spirit in preparation for the showdown in 2012. That’s all pure speculation at this point, but I’m hoping for more pragmatism to emerge on both sides.
David Handy+