The Anchoress has a post well worth pondering

Are our Ideologies our Idols?

“Ideas create idols; only wonder leads to knowing.”
– St. Gregory of Nyssa

Once upon a time I might have agreed with the statement that the left is all about “feelings and emotions” while the right was about thinking and issues. I’m not entirely sure I would, anymore. Both left and right are doing their share of emoting.

The even scarier thing for conservatives is that the left is doing their share of thinking. The case that undermined McCain from the Catholic perspective was a calculated case. The knee-jerk cries of racism were not effective. Way too much time was spent pointing fingers and saying "ha ha look how irrational". Meanwhile leftist Catholics sought to appeal to reason. You can say it was based in irrationality. You can say that theirs is an "argument that deserves to met, not with engagement, but with contempt" all you want, but apparently it worked.

Its up to Republicans, in the future, to not only undermine that case but make it completely inarguable. Or, as St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises stated:

Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved

.... "all this is clearer if you say it first in a positive way."