“Egregious” and “Unprecedented,” Says Former RNC Chairman and Vatican Ambassador About Dems’ Anti-Catholicism

Is Nero running the Harris Campaign? After all, Team Kamala-and-Tim is fiddling with sex podcasters and chugging beer on late-night television shows even as their own campaign burns. And, like the notorious Roman Emperor in the time of St. Paul, the Harris Campaign seems set on attacking Christians, particularly Catholic Christians, in the most obnoxious and vile manner.

It’s gotten so bad that Jim Nicholson, who formerly held the posts of Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Republican National Committee chairman, and Ambassador to the Vatican, is now speaking out about the pervasive anti-Catholicism of the current Democratic Party, which he calls “egregious” and “unprecedented.” Echoing another Republican leader, Newt Gingrich, who, he noted in an interview, “is calling Kamala Harris the most anti-Catholic presidential candidate in 150 years,” Nicholson asked, “What are Americans to think except that the Democratic Party is deeply troubled in mind and spirit about Catholicism?”

Nicholson’s comments are not the kind of non-story to which Americans are used. No “Always Trumper” or surrogate for the campaign simply saying what everyone knows he’d say, Nicholson has been involved in politics while largely staying out of the limelight since his time serving in George W. Bush’s cabinet from 2005-2007. A Vietnam veteran, Nicholson is not in that category of political figure about whom people joke that the most dangerous place is between him and a TV camera. This Iowa native is a man who has not sought out his own glory but instead his duty. And that is why he is speaking.

Though he has supported Trump in the past, Nicholson did not so do earlier this year. But that’s where the duty comes in. He feels a duty to speak: “I didn’t support President Trump in the primaries, but I believe this November’s election is existential.”

When he says “existential,” he means it literally. “Between the economy and all the international danger we are seeing, voting for Trump is an act of national survival.” But as a Catholic, he’s also both horrified and offended by the fact that the Democratic Party seems now to condone the most brazen acts of disrespect to his Church: “How does the first party to nominate a Catholic for the presidency and then elect a Catholic president end up having one of its most prominent governors mocking the Eucharist?” He was referring to Michigan Governor Christine Whitmer’s bizarre ad depicting her putting a Dorito on the tongue of a kneeling young girl in the manner of a Catholic priest giving Holy Communion.

Nicholson’s worries didn’t begin with a viral Tik-Tok, however. The reason he is so outraged now is that Whitmer’s mockery comes at the end of a string of actions over the last fifteen years. “And before that, you have 23 States Attorneys General (including Kamala Harris at the time) persecuting the Little Sisters of the Poor and then Democratic senators (including Harris at the time) suggest in a hearing on a federal judgeship the Knights of Columbus were an extremist group and then try to establish a religious test for federal office in violation of Article V of the Constitution—a step that brought protests from the Presidents of Princeton, Notre Dame and the Anti-Defamation League.”

These subjects might seem old hat to some, but Nicholson sees them as precursors to today’s blatant Democratic attacks on human life—attacks that make clear that Christianity is the enemy: “And what about the Democratic Party extremist position on abortion that Senator Vance mentioned in the VP debate? Or the Biden administration deliberately sending out a Transgender message in place of an Easter Sunday proclamation.”

“And then,” he adds, “Kamala Harris turns down the Al Smith dinner.” One might say that this action, though less egregious than the others, was symbolic of the dark turn Democrats and Harris have taken. The Al Smith Dinner, begun in 1945 to raise money for needy children in the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and honor the one-time Catholic governor of New York and presidential candidate for whom it is named, was described already in 1960 by historian Theodore H. White as “a ritual of American politics.”

Rejecting this ritual seems to betray something deep in the American spirit. That Kamala Harris is happy to appear on a podcast on which the host regularly discusses the most intimate sexual acts with no reverence but cannot even engage in pleasantries with Catholics to raise funds for underprivileged kids shows a deep discomfort with and readiness to offend a significant portion of the American public—characteristics not shown even by Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. Though, perhaps significantly, Walter Mondale also skipped the dinner.  

“The Democratic Party,” Nicholson observes, “seems to have a militant hostility towards Catholicism and as Cardinal Dolan of New York noted a few years ago the party that was once home to so many Catholics is acting as if it is trying to drive them away.”

Nicholson is speaking up about the anti-Catholicism because he thinks not enough GOP figures have. “Republicans have a duty to bring this issue up.”

One Republican has been bringing this issue up. That’s the candidate for president who has already served one term. Donald Trump may have his flaws, but Nicholson is aware that Trump is a superior candidate on the economy and foreign policy—and also one who bears no trace of this pernicious anti-Catholicism. Far from it, he was in the forefront of protecting their rights along with all other religious Americans.

“I would also emphasize,” Nicholson added, “no one has been stronger on defending Catholics. During his year in office he invited the Little Sisters of the Poor, who dedicate their lives to caring for the elderly and are admired by Catholics all throughout the country, to a Rose Garden event and brought them to the podium. His White House stayed in touch with the Knights of Columbus who are part of countless parishes and do wonderful work like taking care of kids with disabilities. And who can forget the Trump speech in Warsaw, where he invoked the spirit of Pope John Paul II and the historic moment when all of Poland chanted, ‘We Want God.’ He even visited the shrine of John Paul II in Washington when he was president.”

Nicholson believes Democrats need to be beaten for all of the above-mentioned reasons. And he’s glad to see that both Trump and others in the GOP universe are pushing back. He refers specifically to the ads produced by Frontiers of Freedom SuperPac that have been running in both the Southwest and the Rust Belt states where there are a lot of Catholic voters. “The Republican party needs to get behind those Spanish language ads that are being used against Senate Democrats. Because if Hispanic voters especially women—who make up crucial voting blocs in all the swing states—ever see that two-minute TV spot with all those verified charges of anti-Catholic bigotry they are going to be appalled.”

The ads are no doubt working. They may have helped trigger the hasty decision not to go to the Al Smith Dinner. But Harris and the Democrats have continued demonstrating the truth of the ads. On Friday, pollster and political analyst Patrick Ruffini posted on X results from Pew surveys showing that though Catholics narrowly supported Joe Biden in 2020 (50-49), Donald Trump is now beating Kamala Harris with this group (52-45) by about the same margin with which he beat Hilary Clinton in 2016 (52-44).  

Twentieth-century political writer Peter Viereck said Catholic-baiting was “the anti-Semitism of the liberals.” What with Democratic condoning of regular anti-Semitism, hatred towards Evangelicals, and the pervasive anti-Catholicism going on now, Americans are seeing a party that is busy rejecting both halves of the Judeo-Christian heritage. It’s ugly, strange, and a blot on our nation. Democrats shouldn’t be surprised to find out that by alienating the groups that made for their success over the last century, they have burned down their own electoral chances.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X @davidpdeavel.