Catholic brains & evangelical brawn?

Dan Gilgoff at “U.S. News & World Report” makes a provocative generalization about the Christian right while reflecting on the death of Father Neuhaus. From Richard Neuhaus’s Death and the Catholic–Evangelical Tension in Politics:

Neuhaus’s death also reminds us that Catholics remain the brains of a conservative movement built on evangelical brawn. This played out during the Bush years in Supreme Court nominations. John Roberts, Bush’s first Supreme Court appointment, was embraced by conservative evangelicals, largely because his Catholicism assured them that he was a pro-lifer at heart, despite his thin judicial record.

Bush’s second nomination, Harriet Miers, was initially backed by evangelicals because of her evangelical Christian faith, but nearly every other constituency on the right, including many conservative Catholics, rejected her as an intellectual lightweight. Many conservative Catholics were appalled at the way conservative evangelical leaders like Focus on the Family’s James Dobson appeared to rely on her faith background as the sole basis for their support. The moment threw a light on the split between the social conservative movement’s Catholic head and evangelical heart. . . .

Yes, the Catholic-evangelical alliance that Neuhaus helped broker has created a mighty political force. It has been one of the seminal political developments of the past 30 years. Let’s just not forget that that marriage has some tensions that are also worth watching. After all, the split between evangelicals, who voted for John McCain by 3 to 1, and Catholics, who broke for Barack Obama after supporting Bush in 2004, is one reason Obama is the president-elect.

Do you buy this analysis? Isn’t it odd that evangelical Protestants would let themselves be led by Roman Catholics? How do you account for it? Does the Christian right, as it has been, show evidence of some Roman Catholic tendencies that are in conflict with the Protestant political heritage? Or is this just a matter of Rome already having a tradition of Christian political thought grounded in the natural law that evangelicals–or anyone else–can learn from?

HT: Terry Mattingly at Get Religion . See also what he has to say about this.