Obama Catholics Blast Bill Donohue, Blame Conservatives for Failing to End Abortion [UPDATED]

Deal Hudson reports that the Obama Catholics have taken exception to something Bill Donohue wrote, and Hudson notes in particular the "surprisingly aggressive" aspect of this paragraph of the Obama Catholic response:

As Catholics, we view abortion as a profound moral issue. But what have nearly three decades of Republican promises to end abortion accomplished? Other aspects of the conservative Republican agenda have been carried out with fervor, such as weakening of the social-safety net, privatization, deregulation, destruction of labor unions, and belligerent and aggressive foreign policy. But ending abortion remains the perennial promise, one that is too often hijacked by partisan operatives who seek only to divide voters. Many Catholics are fed up with the divisive antics and empty promises around this issue.

(emphasis Hudson's)

Not that I blame him, but this appears to have set Hudson off a little:

Those of us who have been politically active in the GOP on behalf of a culture of life are accused of seeking "only to divide voters." That is not only a silly statement, it's arrogant and offensive. Are these Obama Catholics NOT seeking to draw Catholic voters into the Obama camp? Is this a tactic to "divide voters"? IT SURE IS! That's what a political campaign is --getting the voters to vote for your candidate rather than the other guy.

But why would they accuse Catholics like me of dividing voters? I will tell you why -- for the simple reason that they assume all Catholic voters should think just like they do, that it's acceptable for a Catholic to support a candidate who supports infanticide as long as the candidate is a Democrat and a liberal.

[Read more]

Hudson has a point.

Many left-liberal Catholics have never gotten over the fact that Catholic voters no longer automatically consider themselves to be Democrats. These folks longingly ache for the days when the Catholic Church was considered by many to be "the Democrat Party at prayer". They continue to believe that the Democrat Party is the one and only legitimate "natural political home" of Catholic voters. So, of course any attempt to urge Catholics to support anyone other than a Democrat is seen by them as "divisive". (Never mind that the Democrat Party left Catholic voters, not vice-versa.)

But beyond that, I once again marvel at the chutzpah of people who can, with a straight face, chide conservatives and Republicans for failing to end the very scourge that these Obama Catholics and the candidates they support have fought tooth and nail to protect.


UPDATE
I have to highlight Donald McClarey's comment below:

Obama "Catholics" blaming conservatives for failing to end abortion is akin to Jefferson F. Davis in 1860 critiquing the failure of the Republicans and the abolitionists in ending slavery.

LOL! True, that.


UPDATE #2 (10 May)
Christopher Blosser takes on the "pro-life conservatives and Republicans have done nothing to end abortion" meme:

... So tell me -- because I honestly don't get this: if all of the pro-life efforts of the Bush administration and the GOP really, truly amount to nothing as Catholic Democrats claim, exactly why is Planned Parenthood so adamantly opposed? (See George W. Bush's War on Women: A Planned Parenthood Report on the Administration and Congress and its Chronology of Bush's War on Reproductive Rights?

Likewise, why does the Democratic presidential candidate from Illinois, favored by Gerald Campbell and many Catholic Democrats attack the federal ban on partial birth abortion, condemning it as "part of a concerted effort to roll back the hard-won rights of American women"?

Why did he proclaim that "on this fundamental issue, I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield", boasting of his opposition to the GOP and the Bush administration?

Why does he warn his supporters that “With one more vacancy on the Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a woman’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe versus Wade and that is what is at stake in this election?”

Help me out, because it seems that much as Catholic Democrats want to assure us that the efforts of pro-life conservatives -- to provide legal recognition and protection to the life of the unborn; to ban the flow of federal funds to agencies which promote abortion; to fund crisis pregnancy centers; to place judges on the courts who view Roe v. Wade for the travesty of justice that it is -- has been utterly in vain and accomplished nothing, they seem to be having a difficult time convincing their own party.