Evaluation of 2008 Presidential Candidates against US Bishops' Criteria

If you are a pro-lifer following the US Presidential election campaign, here’s an unusual—but intriguing—system of evaluating the candidates.

I was alerted to this assessment of the candidates through a blog posting at Catholics for Ron Paul. The posting was entitled Ron Paul is Best Catholic Choice - US Bishops' Faithful Citizenship Guidelines.

Here’s the relevant portion of that posting with the link to Defend Life blogger Joe Healy who came up with this interesting and comprehensive system. There are some solid things to be learned here about qualifying true pro-life candidates. Canadian pro-lifers, please take a close look.

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Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has been rated the Best Choice for Catholic Voters, based on an independent analysis by The Defend Life blog of Maryland. The analysis used the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' criteria in Faithful Citizenship - its guide for Catholic voters - to rate the various candidate's platforms and has determined that Ron Paul's positions are most compatible with the USCCB standards.

Using a point system that gave greater weight for "non-negotiable" issues such as abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and gay marriage, the analysis lined up all the candidates to see where they stand on a broad array of issues.

Ron Paul (R) scored highest with a score of 99, with Alan Keyes (R) following with 70, and Mike Huckabee (R) third with 69. Dead last was the purportedly Catholic Rudy Giuliani (R) with -28 and Barack Obama (D) with -15. Hilary Clinton (D) scored a -11 and Fred Thompson (R) scored only a 4.