How the Republican Party Used Supreme Court Attacks to Pursue Catholic Voters

Abstract

Changes in Catholic voting behavior, as well as Republican Party (GOP) strategy documents, suggests that congressional attacks on the United States Supreme Court played an unrecognized role in the GOP’s efforts to appeal to Catholic voters in the 1960s and 1970s. Republican members of Congress used court-curbing proposals to publicize and take conservative positions on three key social issues: school prayer, busing, and abortion. These stances fit with majority Catholic preferences on these topics. Congressional attacks on the Court—in all three issues—played a heretofore unrecognized role in garnering enough Catholic votes for the GOP to compete for national majorities. Consequently, this research argues that the relationship between attacks and coalition-building deserves future scholarly attention.