So Republican rhetoric about the Democrats' having adopted a "religious test for office" is not true. It is true, however, that the Democrats have adopted the next best thing. They have a viewpoint test for office that has the effect of screening out all Catholics faithful to their church's teachings on abortion. The fact that the test screens out a lot of Protestants, too, makes the problem worse, not better. It really is true that faithful Catholics "need not apply" as far as most Democrats are concerned. A Catholic can win their support only by ceasing, on the decisive issue, to be Catholic — by breaking from his church's teaching, as Senator Durbin has done. (It is rather disgraceful for a man who went in six years from supporting the Human Life Amendment to supporting partial-birth abortion to keep carrying on about the extremism of people whose beliefs have been less supple.)

The Democrats are not prepared openly to say that their litmus test excludes Catholics and evangelical Protestants. That's why they will continue to squeal even if Republicans make the argument in the most precise, rhetorically clean way possible. And why Republicans should not flag in doing exactly that.