Thursday, February 9, 2012

BI: FORGET JOBS: The 2012 Election Is About The Culture War

Michael Brendan Dougherty

excerpts:
  • what gets Americans really fired up is the culture war
  • the 9th Circuit Court overrule the popular referendum in California that banned gay marriage
  • The nation and its media had a week-long freakout over a minuscule $700,000 grant from the Komen Foundation to Planned Parenthood.
  • Obama Administration and the Catholic Church are in open conflict over whether religious institutions should be dragged into the bedroom to pay for their employees' contraceptives of choice
But Obama sees an opportunity here... ( Washington Post)

excerpts:
  • But where Shields sees “cataclysmic” fallout, the White House sees something quite different: a chance to widen the reproductive health debate beyond abortion to issues like contraceptives, winning over key demographics of independent voters in the process.
  • it may well be about the demographics that are most supportive of this particular health reform provision: young voters and women
  • “If President Obama woos the vast majority [of his independent voters] back, he can be reelected.”
  • when the conversation moves away from abortion to contraceptives - as it has this week - the intensity gap flips
How does that play out politically?
  1. Boehner Vows to Block Abortifacient Mandate, Somehow  ...  "In order to spare women the costs of having to shell out twenty bucks once or twice a year (and that would be a lot, wouldn't it?), Obama's determined to run roughshod over religious liberties."
  2. Santorum wins big, has something changed?
Comment:

If you can link up the issues of the economy and government overreach in the culture war, you may get a decisive decision at the polls in November.  The government has too much power, is out of control, and this latest overreach is proof of it.

Update:

Does this mean that Obama has screwed the pooch on this issue?

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