The Obama re-election team: Brilliant strategists...

In a three-page Washington Post article, Ann Gerhart endeavors to answer the question "Birth control as election issue?  Why?"

Gerhart notes:

This might seem a bewildering turn of events, particularly when polls consistently show that (a) voters place jobs and the economy atop the list of their concerns and (b) large majorities of Americans of all faiths support the use of birth control, the most commonly prescribed drug for women between 18 and 44, and have done so for years.

In her article, Gerhart mentions the usual villains (political and religious conservatives as well as the nation's Catholic bishops and those lining up lockstep behind them) and the usual victims (poor women).  When Gerhart states the villains' objective, The Motley Monk would opine, she hits the nail on the head:

Repealing Obamacare, as Republicans call it, is a central pledge of all the men who want to be the Republican presidential nominee.

In the opinion of The Motley Monk, the reason birth control is an issue in the 2012 presidential election is because the Obama re-election team in Chicago has purposely made it an issue.  Their polling indicates that the majority of voters are against abortion (except for the cases of rape and incest), so pushing that as an issue won't gin up the vote.

But, having the Catholic Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, mandate that every employer must provide access to insurance that includes birth control and abortofacients at no cost enabled the Obama re-election team, using Gerhart's words, to make the 2012 election a way of stimulating "national conversations---often unwieldy ones."

With what outcome?

According to Gerhart:

Now you have a group of inflamed, enraged and constantly provoked women,” says Clare Coleman, who heads the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association.

Just what the Obama re-election team wanted: Divide the Catholic vote and conquer the eventual Republican nominee.

The Obama re-election team devised a brilliant political strategy to keep women beholden to them and to make more Catholic women beholden to them.  The strategy was first unveiled when, during the ABC News/WMUR TV New Hampshire Republican Presidential Debate, George Stephanopoulos asked Mitt Romney out of the blue about birth control.  That was no honest inquiry but a beautifully executed set up, even if the audience didn't like it.  Upon seeing Romney stumble and fumble around, reporters took the signal and ran with it right to Rick Santorum who, during subsequent weeks, has been more than happy to provide all of the sound bites the Obama re-election team needed to demonize the villains.  And then came the "aspirin" comment.

Of course, those women who are beholden to the Obama re-election team wouldn't quite see it that way.  They are liberated, self-determining women who exercise their inalienable right to do with their bodies as they wish.

But, as Gerhart points out in a rare moment of candor for the Washington Post, it was in the late 1960s' when U.S. Representative G.H.W. Bush (R-TX) said:

We need to take sensationalism out of this topic so that it can no longer be used by militants who have no real knowledge of the voluntary nature of the program but, rather, are using it as a political stepping stone.  If family planning is anything, it is a public health matter.

In 1970, Representative Bush successfully sponsored and President Richard M. Nixon signed Title X, which to this day continues to fund family planning for the poor.

Politically, the irony is that the so-called "victims" don't realize who their real allies are.


Let the discussion begin...




To read the Washington Post article, click on the following link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/birth-control-as-election-issue-why/2012/02/17/gIQASW6kPR_story.html