Conventional wisdom dictates that today I should be writing the conservative movement's obituary.
On November 7th, it was well-understood by the chattering classes that (1) the intellectual conservative movement was scattered and moribund; (2) the Republican party was on its death-bed; and (3) the Democratic party and its progressive allies were fulfilling their destiny and the preordained triumph of liberalism was a historical truism. But on November 8th, we were reminded that history is not composed of inexorable laws that obviate free will and human choice. Our history is what we make of it. On election day, Americans "stood athwart history yelling stop."
Much has been made over the failed prognostications by pundits and pollsters this past election at the presidential level. One particularly fascinating epic "miss" was predicting how the "Catholic Bloc" would vote. The results of the 2016 election reveal, if anything, how difficult it is to measure the depths of voter sentiment — especially religious fervor — in a complex, continental country of 320 million Americans.
On August 30, a Washington Post story, "Donald Trump Has a Massive Catholic Problem," showed that Democrat Hillary Clinton was leading among Catholic voters by a margin of 27 percentage points (61 percent to 34 percent) over Republican Trump.
