Republican presidential wannabees have been claiming they are positioned to win in November because Reagan Democrats will rally behind them. They may be correct about their appeal to this mostly Catholic voting bloc. But the key question is: Can these voters still swing elections?
Disgruntled Catholic Democrats first hit the political radar in 1965. That year, the Conservative Party of New York, founded in 1962 by two Irish Catholics, ran fellow Catholic William F. Buckley Jr. for mayor against Democrat Abe Beame and the Republican candidate, John V. Lindsay. Buckley really ran in order to stop the very liberal Lindsay, a fellow Yale alumnus, by garnering the votes of Manhattan’s old-line Republicans.
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