Most of today’s New York Times story about the fight for Catholic votes among the presidential candidates consists of warmed-over God-o-Meter posts from recent weeks.
But the piece does include a warning to John McCain from Deal Hudson, George W. Bush’s chief Catholic outreach liaison:

In fact, some conservatives worry that the war in Iraq, opposed by the Catholic Church from its inception, is hurting the Republican Party among Catholic voters — just as it is with other independent and swing voters.
“There’s one big question mark hanging over the Catholic vote, and that’s the Iraq war,” said Deal Hudson, an informal adviser to Mr. McCain and a longtime adviser to President Bush on Catholic matters.

Opposition to the war was one factor in conservative legal scholar Doug Kmiec’s recent decision to back Obama. Could it turn enough Catholics off to seriously dampen McCain’s trademark appeal to swing voters, many of whom are Catholic?

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