http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,127872,00.htmlBush Appeals to Texas Catholics for Support
WASHINGTON — President Bush is making a fresh appeal to Roman Catholic voters and fattening the GOP's campaign war chest in Texas on Tuesday, the start of three days of campaigning in the nation's midsection.
In Texas, a Republican National Committee (search) fund-raiser awaited Bush in Dallas. The RNC has raised at least $217 million this election cycle and started July with $78 million left. The Democratic National Committee (search) has collected about $125 million and began July with roughly $63 million on hand. Journalists are barred from Tuesday's fund-raiser. Later in Dallas, Bush delivers a speech to the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men's benefit society.
Aides said Bush's remarks will focus on administration programs that encourage the mentoring of prisoners' children and increase access to recovery programs for drug addicts. Bush also will promote his efforts to expand religious groups' ability to participate in government-funded social service programs.
The president will promote actions he has taken that his advisers think will appeal to Catholic voters: He signed a bill last year that banned the procedure known to doctors as intact dilation and extraction, but called "partial-birth abortion" by abortion rights opponents; in April, he signed into law new protections for the unborn that made it a separate federal crime to harm a fetus during an assault on the mother.