“The controversy over the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation’s decision to eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood—and subsequent reversal— continues. Catholic leaders are blasting the health reform requirement that insurance plans to cover contraceptives. Commentator Mark Shields joined other liberals in blasting the provision, saying it could have “cataclysmic” fallout for President Obama come November.

Numerous pundits have predicted that the requirement —and its narrow exemption for churches — will be a political liability for Obama. 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.

And that could explain why the White House, alongside the Obama campaign, has engaged eagerly on the issues. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was in USA Today earlier this week, praising the new provision. The Obama campaign meanwhile hasn’t been shy either, drawing up an infographic praising the new regulation. While there are some signs of a potential compromise for religious groups, the White House has made it pretty clear it plans to stand firm behind the current regulation.

But while Catholic leadership has blasted the new regulation, polls show that a majority of Catholics are actually more supportive of the provision than the rest of the country. A poll out Tuesday from the Public Religion Research Institute finds 52 percent of Catholic voters agreed with the statement, “employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost.” That’s pretty much in line with overall support for the provision, which hovers at 55 percent – likely because Catholics use contraceptives at rates similar to the rest of Americans.

A majority of Catholics – 52 percent – also agree with the Obama administration’s decision to not exempt religious hospitals and universities from the provision. “Outside the political punditry, most Catholics agree with the administration on the issue,” says one Obama campaign official, explaining the view that this could be a political win.”

Only one issue involved is the PPP polling that fueled the White House thinking on the issue. Flawed – most polls are. Rasmussen polls, most reliable of polling over the last five years has different numbers, testing registered likely voters, and decidedly so.

“The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the government should require a church or religious organization to provide contraceptives for women even if it violates their deeply held beliefs. Fifty percent (50%) disagree and oppose such a requirement that runs contrary to strong beliefs, while 10% more are undecided. [...]

Sixty-five percent (65%) of Catholic voters oppose this requirement, as do 62% of Evangelical Christians, and 50% of other Protestants. Most non-Christians (56%) support the Obama Administration ruling.”

You see when the question is properly worded the results are different. Fact is just like Obama has overplayed his hand throughout his presidency, he’s done so again. But even more he’s revitalized the religious right and even the religious center, not for, but against his mandates and policies, specifically with the contraceptive ruling.

That’s why Rick Santorium absolutely shocked the pundits, the pollsters, and the GOP establishment Tuesday night as he won three consecutive states over the huge pockets and momentum of Mitt Romney.

The religious right has been slumbering of late in America, still active but beneath the surface. The leftwing machine thought they had successfully nullified their effect. But Obama woke up the spirit of the religious right and as I drove around south Florida this last weekend church billboards showed their distain for the law and christian radio stations firing up the troops.

As I said over and over again, Americans’s are not far left, but right of center. Have been, always will be. Barack Obama has shoved his last far left policy down their throats and they’re about to let him know just how not like him they are.

“Rick Santorum won his second and third voting contests of the Republican primary Tuesday night, breaking Mitt Romney’s winning streak and denying him the image of an unstoppable front-runner.

Based on ABC News projections, Santorum won the Missouri primary and the Minnesota caucus. Romney came in second in Missouri, though he didn’t do as well in Minnesota, where as of late in the night he was in a race for third with Newt Gingrich.

Ron Paul placed second in Minnesota and third in Missouri. Gingrich wasn’t on the Missouri ballot.

Voters in Colorado also made their picks in a caucus. Santorum held an early lead there with just a few precincts reporting their vote tallies.

At a victory rally in Missouri, Santorum predicted that Romney would be denied his oft-noted massive campaign organization come the fall. And he said of his own supporters’ cheers that “in Massachusetts, they were heard particularly loud tonight.”

“We doubled ‘em up here and in Minnesota,” Santorum said to cheers he hadn’t heard since his resurgent finish in Iowa a month ago.

Romney, the undisputed front-runner after wins in Florida and in Nevada, had expected strong showings in Minnesota and Colorado; he won both states’ caucuses in 2008. Trailing in Colorado, he is in danger of losing both states tonight. His campaign had already tried to lower expectations by arguing that no candidate can win them all.

“Of course, there is no way for any nominee to win first place in every single contest — John McCain lost 19 states in 2008, and we expect our opponents to notch a few wins too,” Romney’s political director Rich Beeson, wrote in a memo for reporters.”

Remember that Rasmussen over the weekend showed Santorium besting Barack Obama by a couple of points. Via Hot Air, who quotes Nate Silver who tries to pour cold water on the wins:

“The results, nevertheless, will provide an important test of how robust Mitt Romney’s coalition is on less favorable terrain than in states like New Hampshire or Nevada. And they could potentially revitalize the campaign of one of Mr. Romney’s opponents, Rick Santorum.

Nor should one go too far in dismissing the results. The process that Minnesota and Colorado use, holding separate votes for presidential preference and delegate selection at their caucuses, is essentially the same one that was used in Iowa. Missouri is a more debatable case, but as the first primary of any kind held in the Midwest — perhaps Mr. Romney’s weakest region — it may tell us something about how states like Michigan and Ohio are likely to vote when they hold key primaries on Feb. 28 and March 6, respectively.”

A couple of weeks ago everyone was talking about Newt and Mitt. Newt in finishing about last in these two races and frankly hasn’t really shown any campaign strength since South Carolina. It’s not New and Mitt, it’s all about Santorium now baby.

Rick Santorium

“Newt Gingrich’s post–Nevada caucus speech included about three minutes of inspired moments about issues and ideas in his usual imaginative and intellectually robust style. So why does he not just stay with that — given that he often seems more dynamic and glib than Romney in his attacks on Obama, and not long ago gained ground despite the attacks against him? Instead, he now turns ad nauseam to the tired reasons why he loses — yes, including lots of Mormons in Nevada — and ends up as Richard Nixon not going to get kicked around any more.

But whether he knows it or not, Gingrich is becoming a caricature of petulance: no concession in Nevada, no call to Romney, no awareness that his inability to raise money at levels of a political rival or to match a competing campaign organization is not necessarily unfair. That’s politics, and Gingrich knows it. I don’t understand why he thinks now losing to Romney in 2012 is solely due to Romney’s innate deviousness in a way McCain beating Romney in 2008 was not — given that Romney was about the same in both 2008 and 2012. Gingrich seems oblivious to the fact that McCain’s style and history gave him advantages over Romney’s money and hardball in ways Gingrich’s own proven liabilities apparently do not.

Gingrich should carefully play a tape of his post–Nevada caucus performance, and then he would quickly grasp that it was little more than a litany of excuses, whining, and accusations — characterized by stream-of-conscious confessionals and rambling repetitions. And, I think, will hurt him more than anything yet in the campaign.

Verdict? Gingrich is going to have to stop the accusations now, turn attention away from himself, stop complaining about the mechanics of the race, stick with critiquing Obama, and at least seem a good sport when he loses. Romney is wise to focus on Obama, ignore his rivals, and get prepped every day by staff who press him on his wealth, in efforts to inoculate him from self-inflicted, offhand remarks about the poor, money, class, etc. Gingrich’s stabs about a supposedly out-of-touch aristocrat are kid’s play compared to what will come from Obama’s $1 billion dollar Chicago hit team.”

I agree. Gingrich needs to stop blaming the media, the Romney campaign and whoever because he keeps losing. The fact is that he’s not selling and frankly that’s because he’s been in the spotlight for so many years he simply doesn’t inspire enough of a following and the whining is getting old.

However I was reminded of a movie character that kind of sums up Gingrich at this point.

Newt Gingrich Election 2012 Nevada Primary

“Las Vegas (CNN) — CNN projects that Mitt Romney will win the Nevada Republican presidential caucuses based on results and entrance polling.
With 10% of the results in, Romney had about 48% of the vote while Rep. Ron Paul and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were in a tight race for second with 21% and 20% of the vote, respectively. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who had largely bypassed the state, had 11% of the vote. Those numbers were gathered from vote counters at caucus sites across the state.

With a win in Nevada, Romney will be the first GOP candidate in this cycle to score back-to-back wins. The former Massachusetts governor appeared to win in the Iowa caucuses but the contest was later awarded to Santorum when the vote was certified. Romney scored a big win in New Hampshire but was then stunned in South Carolina by Gingrich. Romney scored a 14-point victory over Gingrich and the rest of the field in Tuesday’s Florida primary and entered Saturday’s contest with a sizable lead in polls.

Most of the caucuses were completed at 5 p.m. (8 p.m. ET), except for one site in Las Vegas, which was to start after sundown to accommodate Orthodox Jews, Seventh-day Adventists, and others who can’t vote until after their Sabbath is over.

The caucuses are open only to the state’s more than 470,000 registered Republicans. Nevada’s 28 delegates will be awarded proportionately based on the statewide vote.

Gingrich and Paul vow to fight on but the fix is in. Romney is cruising to the nomination which means once again the GOP establishment will nominate a Rockefeller republican to try to win the White House.

Visit Hot Air for more on the results. I’m too sick to my stomach right now.

“In a potential Election 2012 matchup, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is at 45% while President Obama earns 44%. This is the first time in any poll that Santorum has led the president. Several other GOP challengers have led the president a single time in the polls including Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich. Each man briefly held the lead while they were surging in the polls, only to fall quickly. It remains to be seen what will happen to Santorum’s support. [...]

Only one GOP candidate has led the president in more than one poll and that’s former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. At the moment, however, he is behind. The latest daily numbers show President Obama at 47% and Romney at 43% (see tracking history). These matchup results are updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update).”

Santorium is showing amazing resiliency despite overwhelming odds, but the effort is well worth it as he’s the most genuine conservative in the race right now and genuine conservatism is exactly what we need in America right now.

“WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has spent time with around 25 wealthy donors who paid $35,800 each to talk with him behind closed doors at a Washington hotel.

The hourlong fundraiser Friday afternoon at the upscale Jefferson Hotel near the White House was closed to press coverage.

Obama has been courting donors large and small as he revs up his re-election campaign in anticipation of a tough general-election campaign once Republicans settle on their nominee. The president raised more than $220 million for his re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2011.

“In Catholic churches across the country, parishioners were read letters from the pulpit this weekend from bishops in their diocese about the mandate from the Department of Health and Human Services giving Catholics a year before they’ll be required to start violating their consciences on insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs. But not in the Army.

A statement released this afternoon — which happens to be the 67th anniversary of the sinking of the USS Dorchester, on which four chaplains lost their lives – from the Archdiocese for Military Services explains:

On Thursday, January 26, Archbishop Broglio emailed a pastoral letter to Catholic military chaplains with instructions that it be read from the pulpit at Sunday Masses the following weekend in all military chapels. The letter calls on Catholics to resist the policy initiative, recently affirmed by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, for federally mandated health insurance covering sterilization, abortifacients and contraception, because it represents a violation of the freedom of religion recognized by the U.S. Constitution.

The Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains subsequently sent an email to senior chaplains advising them that the Archbishop’s letter was not coordinated with that office and asked that it not be read from the pulpit. The Chief’s office directed that the letter was to be mentioned in the Mass announcements and distributed in printed form in the back of the chapel.

Archbishop Broglio and the Archdiocese stand firm in the belief, based on legal precedent, that such a directive from the Army constituted a violation of his Constitutionally-protected right of free speech and the free exercise of religion, as well as those same rights of all military chaplains and their congregants.

Following a discussion between Archbishop Broglio and the Secretary of the Army, The Honorable John McHugh, it was agreed that it was a mistake to stop the reading of the Archbishop’s letter. Additionally, the line: “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law” was removed by Archbishop Broglio at the suggestion of Secretary McHugh over the concern that it could potentially be misunderstood as a call to civil disobedience.

The AMS did not receive any objections to the reading of Archbishop Broglio’s statement from the other branches of service.

So not only were chaplains told not to read the letter, but an Obama administration official edited a pastoral letter . . . with church buy-in?

Didn’t people flee across an ocean-sized pond to be free of this kind of thing?”

It falls to a Reuters analyst, David Sloan, to inject a cautionary note:

January’s non-farm payroll with a 243k increase was sharply above a consensus increase of 150k with positive if undramatic back month revisions. The breakdown looks positive almost across the board with manufacturing at +50k particularly impressive. Workweek data was improved, sustaining an upwardly revised December level, though hourly earnings with a 0.2% rise merely met consensus. The unemployment rate saw another significant fall, by 0.2% to 8.3%, when the consensus was for no change, with the fall due to increased employment not losses in the labor force. The broader U-6 measure of labor market slack, after three straight 0.4% plunges, saw only a modest fall of 0.1% to 15.1%, but there can be no doubts over the positive nature of this report. There is only one obvious significant caveat, an unusually mild winter restricting the number of seasonal layoffs, which are always heavy in January. Unadjusted, January payrolls still fell by 2.689 mln.

We’ll see if this continues, or whether it plateaus as the CBO expects. If it continues, Barack Obama might start seeing his approval numbers sliding upward again.”

We’ll see. Dusting off my calculator my figuring has to have unemployment at 7.5 percent or lower for it to help Obama at this point. I doubt it improves that much.

UPDATE: As I suspected. Subtract a record 1.2 million people out of the workforce and you’ll get that Obama Math every time.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Barack Obama Economy

“The White House said Thursday it has no plans to reverse course on its decision to require that all employers cover contraception in their insurance plans, despite a wave of criticism from Republicans and Catholic leaders.

After a bruising week for health officials on the issue, the White House arranged a conference call with reporters to address what it called “confusion” over the policy. It also put up a blog post by Cecilia Munoz, director of the House Domestic Policy Council, pointing out that “no individual health care provider will be forced to prescribe contraception” and “no individual will be forced to buy or use contraception.”

And White House press secretary Jay Carney said at Thursday’s afternoon briefing that there was “not a debate” over reversing the decision. “The decision has been made, and it was made after careful consideration,” he said.

The new rule, released nearly two weeks ago, will make nearly all health plans cover women’s preventive services, including FDA-approved forms of contraception, without co-pays or deductibles. Catholic hospitals, schools and charities had hoped to get an exemption on the grounds that the Catholic Church opposes the use of most forms of birth control. The rule, however, allows only a few religious employers — mostly places of worship – to opt out of the requirement and says that other faith-based employers have until August 2013 to comply.

Perhaps nothing in recent history has stirred Catholics to action more than this action. Catholic Vote has a list of 180 Bishops (Almost 80% of Dioceses) who have Spoken Out Against Obama/HHS Mandate. Tina Kobe at Hot Air notes:

“You can bet this wouldn’t be so cut-and-tried if the political calculus didn’t work out so perfectly in Barack Obama’s favor. The president thinks he can afford to thumb his nose not only at Catholic voters but at any voters concerned by the president’s perpetual power grabs because women and young voters will make up for their loss.”

Let’s look at those numbers.

Pew noted of the 2008 election:

“In Obama’s victory over Republican nominee John McCain, the Democrats’ largest gains (eight percentage points) were seen among those who are unaffiliated with any particular religion; fully three-quarters of this group supported Obama. This group was also a big part of the Democratic coalition in the previous two presidential elections, 61% having supported Al Gore in 2000 and 67% having supported Kerry in 2004.”

Catholics went to Obama by a 55 to 45 margin over McCain. It wasn’t young people and women that got Obama elected it was this margin of voters of faith. If Romney becomes the nominee he’s likely to quickly erase that advantage. As Romney leads Obama in most head to head polls it’s little wonder that the odds makers are already seeing the writing on the wall for Obama.

This blunder all but seals the deal.

Barack Obama Election 2012 Catholic Vote Contraceptive Mandate

At the annual prayer breakfast this morning, President Obama suggested that his proposed tax increases on the wealthy are in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ. No, really.

Fact is that nothing in the New Testament record supports a point that Jesus supported heavy taxes, much less the support of the poor, or the lazy or the crazy on the backs of those who worked hard to make a success of their life. The verse Obama would likely use is.

“”Render therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God those things which are God’s”

However, Jesus wasn’t making a specific statement on taxes. In fact he deliberately failed to pay the temple tax in the account that led to this saying. He provided the basis by saying “So that they won’t take offense”, but after a question in which the obvious answer was that “the sons are free (from the tax)”.

Of course Obama spent 20 years listening to Jeremiah Wright who’s theology is heretical at best, so what would he know anyway.

“