Showing posts with label Catholic Church contraception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholic Church contraception. Show all posts

Monday, February 13, 2012

RELIGION: How will evangelicals affect the vote in November 2012?


Thou shalt not not conceive

If the Catholic Church outburst over President Obama’s healthcare bill order for religious companies to provide birth control protection, joined now by evangelicals across the country, is any indication of the level of their impact on 2012 voting, it would appear that the White House and Democrats have a fight on their hands.  Add to this the fact that Rick Santorum is not only a Catholic but also an evangelical. 

The question remains just how much reaction there will be from voting religious beliefs if they aren’t necessarily good for the country.

California megachurch pastor Rick Warren said "I'm not a Catholic but I stand in 100% solidarity with my brothers & sisters to practice their belief against govt pressure."  I hate to break this to both Warren and the Pope but 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women practice birth control and those same figures apply to evangelicals and other Protestants.  This comes from a recent report by the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit sexual health research organization.

What it appears the Obama administration is trying to do is keep certain factions from taking away a right for women who opt for contraception, not simply exert government pressure.

The following Bill Maher video is hilarious:



Southern Baptist minister Phil DaCosta from Atlanta says, “I vote on Jesus first.”  He is a Tea Party member whose priorities are Israel, abortion and marriage.  As a TPer he does want lower taxes and smaller government.  But these people invariably miss the point completely when their emphasis is based on their religious beliefs with no outright concern for the economy and its problems like the jobless, foreclosures, Afghan war, the state of U.S. education and the pitiable Congress some of which the religious right stuck us with.

Jaweed Kaleem, writing in the Huff Post, says DaCosta is just what Ralph Reed, a political strategist and former Christian Coalition director, is looking for.  Reed’s new organization, Faith and Freedom Coalition, wants to “…unite under his relatively new organization that aims to fuse the Bible-based value voting of traditional social conservatives with the grassroots momentum of the Tea Party to form a bloc of voters big enough to influence state and national elections.”

Ralph Reed buddy Jack Abramoff
According to Wikipedia, “in 1996, the Christian Coalition's chief financial officer, Judy Liebert, ‘went to federal prosecutors with her suspicions of overbilling by Ben Hart, a direct-mail vendor with close ties to Reed, then the coalition's executive director.’"  Ralph Reed resigned later during an investigation.  Reed wasn’t charged but the Christian Coalition later sued Hart's firm. 

In June 2005 it was revealed that Reed secretly accepted payments from Jack Abramoff to lobby against Indian casino gambling and oppose an Alabama education lottery.  Abramoff pled guilty to three felony counts in federal court.  So you have to wonder why the Tea Party would want to get mixed up with Reed unless you consider the fact that the Tea Party itself is a fraud.  The Huff Post exposes the “ugly underbelly” of the tea party movement” and the deceit of its stands on taxes and government tyranny.

Rick Santorum branded "Loser"
According to a survey from Reed’s faith and Freedom Coalition, “…32 percent of all voters in 2010 were Christian conservatives, and 72 percent of them voted Republican.”   They helped the GOP gain 63 seats to control the House.  Reed himself asks, “So it is that a presidential campaign that is largely about the economy is nevertheless deeply shaped by issues of faith and morality.”  He adds that the evangelical vote made up 44 percent of Republican primary voters in 2008.

Now enter Catholic evangelical Rick Santorum who appears to have put Mitt Romney on the defensive with his recent wins in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado.  The comment was made that Santorum made them “swoon” at the Conservative Political Action committee (CPAC) meeting recently, even though Romney also delivered an outstanding speech. 

But one political analyst says Santorum won’t survive and the conservative crowd will eventually end up falling in behind Romney.

The GOP may very well end up tossing a coin for the nomination.

UPDATE: Romney wins Maine caucuses and CPAC straw vote.

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