In an addendum to yesterday's Wall Street Journal article about conservative Catholics being swing voters in '08, FoFPL and Catholics United exec. director Chris Korzen stopped by the Huffington Post to remind us of something the media had long forgotten: conservative Catholics have always been in play:

Contrary to popular belief, Bush didn't win Catholics in 2004 because of his positions on life and marriage. He won because of the Kerry campaign's inability to articulate a coherent message to Catholic swing voters, and because of an astoundingly sophisticated media and grassroots operation on the part of the Republican Party and allied "Catholic" organizations. As the party worked the phones and the doors, Catholic League president Donohue peppered Kerry with holier-than-thou invective (a cursory look at the Catholic League's 2004 press release headlines dispels any lingering doubt that the organization has become a front for the GOP), and an obscure group called Catholic Answers somehow found the money to distribute millions voting guides and full page USA Today ads advancing the manufactured theological notion that five "non-negotiable issues" trumped all the others at the polls.

The issues? Abortion, same-sex marriage, stem cell research, human cloning, and euthanasia. Never mind war, poverty, the death penalty, or that whole loving your neighbor thing. Of course, none of these groups have any formal authority to speak on behalf of the Church institution - which, by the way, refused to endorse the right's message. But - with the help of a small handful of renegade or perhaps unsuspecting bishops - these partisan operatives nonetheless managed to fool a sizable bloc of Catholics into thinking that a vote for Kerry meant certain eternal damnation.