Sunday, February 12, 2012

President Pwns the Religious Right

If this latest foray in the area of guaranteeing access to free contraceptives to all American women wasn’t a fully planned out trap for religious conservatives, it should have been.

In making his “compromise” to the Catholic clergy, and indeed to any religious person opposed to contraception, President Obama surely set for them the perfect trap. He forced religious conservatives to own up and admit that they were opposed to women getting contraceptives, free or otherwise, on religious grounds.

Owning up to an idea that is anathema to a majority of Americans, and a grand majority of women.

And real irony of it is that the idea is to decrease the number of abortions performed on women – a hot-button issue with the religious right – by making birth control more available, especially to the poor.

And the whole beauty about this affair, and the timing of it is just this. The typical Republican meme on the economy got kyboshed in a hurry as soon as the numbers started to improve, forcing conservatives to return to their comfort zone of social issues, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.

Sometimes Democrats get to win on social issues. Doesn’t happen often but when it does the win is a sweet one.

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