Thinking of Republican presidential candidates makes Current TV's Brett Erlich ... well, badly in need of a drink. 

And since it's St. Patrick's Day, what better way to drink away the ails those rethugs could bestow than with a fine pint of ale? 

Extending this Irish theme even further, Brett makes up his own St. Paddy's Day drinks in honor of each one. 

Erin go blaaaaaahhhhh.....

(snagged from Current TV's website)

And in a personal (Irish, even) side-note to those Republican figures - imeacht gan teacht ort!

Voters may typically support politicians with whom they share something in common, and chiefly on topics that can be classed as social issues. But that’s not the case for one particular presidential candidate. 

A recent study by Pew Research Center found Catholic voters are less likely to support Rick Santorum, the Republican who’s a member of their same church, than they would Mitt Romney in a general election.  

According to the survey, 44 percent of Catholic voters said they would support Romney if he faced Obama in November. Only 39 percent of these same voters said they would support the Catholic Santorum, however.  

President Obama took a majority of Catholic vote in both cases.  

Through most of his political career, Santorum has regularly cited his Roman Catholic faith as key to particular platform positions, including his opinion that contraception is immoral.

The Church itself professes this restraint against all types of birth control, too, even by coitus interruptus.

This topic gathered much attention recently with Santorum’s statements that companies should be able to deny coverage of birth control from their employees’ insurance policies, and his public criticism of Romney’s assumed stance on this same issue.

While no one may know exactly why these Catholic voters disassociate themselves with Santorum, a “Voter Guide” produced by the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good may lend some insight.

CACG’s guide (subtitled “The Common Good in America Today”) doesn’t specify or even allude to any candidate platforms, but it does list nine key political standings of Catholics.  And Santorum doesn’t uphold many of them – not even in full on its pro-life tenet.

Take labor, for example; CACG’s guide states “the Catholic Church has explicitly affirmed the rights of workers to organize themselves into unions and to collective bargaining since 1891.”

During his 11-year term in the U.S. Senate, though, the highest rating Santorum received from the AFL-CIO was a mere 21 on a 100-point scale, indicating a notable distance between him and this CACG principle of workers’ rights.

The “Voter Guide” openly supports the Affordable Care Act and other healthcare programs, too. “We believe that the ACA, Medicare and Medicaid give concrete expression to the biblical belief that we are our brothers’ keeper,” the guide reads on the topic of health care.

Santorum, however, includes repeal of ACA as a key category in his campaign. He also declares significant changes to Medicare, which could change to a status CACG fears most: “a voucher program that would leave the elderly to the mercy of the insurance companies.”

On foreign policy, CACG’s guide states belief that “statesmen should heed what is known as Just War Theory, not least because that theory insists that war must always be a last resort.”

But Santorum has already threatened air strikes against Iran, and includes funding of rebel overthrow of its government in his platform.

At least he aligns with CACG on the topics of birth control and abortion – but not in full, unfortunately.

On the pro-life topic, the guide reads “Those who share our commitment to the unborn must be challenged to embrace programs that provide affordable health care to the elderly,” an embrace that Santorum fails to provide due to his proposals to slash Medicare budgeting and remove federal oversight that protects its users.

So do these issues mean a lot to Catholic voters? Apparently.

Remember, the Pew study found they favor Romney – whose Church of Latter Day Saints refers to Catholics as a “whore of Babylon” in its writings – five percent more than they do Santorum. 

As the Republican presidential primary race continues to progress, so do the odds that Pres. Obama will defeat whoever finally wins the GOP nomination.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center finds the president has a 12-point lead over Mitt Romney, and leads Rick Santorum by 18 percent.

The 54-42 lead over Romney is a notable improvement in the last six months. A September/October study on the same topic found the president tied with the former Massachusetts governor (48-48).

Obama’s large lead over Santorum is also rapidly improving, according to the study.  The 57-39 advantage over the former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania was only a 10-point difference of 53-43 one month ago.  

The Pew study found national public support improving for the Democratic Party overall, as well, and in practically all demographic categories.

In the last 12 months, the favorable-to-unfavorable reception of Democrats improved to 49-43, while negative reception of the Republican Party grew from 48 percent to 56.

Included in the demographic categories of voters who favor Democrats much more substantially than Republicans are women (16 percent difference), voters under 30 years of age (20 percent) and college graduates (24 percent).

The only group that regards the Democratic Party with more disfavor than favorability is upper-income households, the study finds. Only 47 percent of voters who earn more than $75,000 regard Democrats favorably, while 50 percent find the party unfavorable.

This same group of upper-income voters have even higher disregard for the GOP, though; 58 percent of them regard the Republican Party with disfavor, while only 40 percent favor them.

In other words, upper-income voters are still more likely to support Democrats than Republicans.

This demographic group is small, too. Less than a third of all American households (31.6 percent) earn more than $75,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

While the Pew study was conducted nationally, its results do raise questions in the Palmetto State.  Neither of the currently-leading candidates did well in the South Carolina primary, with Romney taking 27.9 percent and Santorum only 17, trailing Newt Gingrich’s 40.4 percent of the vote.

Romney won two delegates in that Jan. 21 contest, they coming exclusively from the state’s first congressional district, which includes Horry County and parts of Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester and Georgetown counties.

Winner Gingrich took 23 delegates, leading in 43 of the South Carolina’s 46 counties, and Santorum won no delegates.

Today, however, Gingrich ranks a distant third in total number of delegates accumulated, holding only 131 in comparison to Romney’s 495 and Santorum’s 252.

A CNN exit poll conducted on the Jan. 21 South Carolina primary election found that only 36 percent of the state’s participating Republicans would openly support Romney. About half (51 percent) said they would have reservations supporting him, while 13 percent of those active Republicans in the state would not support Romney at all, they said.

Pew Research conducted its survey on Mar. 7-11, and the full results are available for downloading.

A nonpartisan think tank based in Washington D.C, Pew Research Center regularly conducts studies on politics, elections, domestic policy, economics, demography, religion and social trends, amongst other subjects.