The birth control debate: The Right wing’s selective support of Catholic teachings

St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican. Photo courtesy of Idealinthewest.com

 

Juan Cole at Informed Comment calls to account Rick Santorum and others on the Right for their selective support of Catholic teachings:

The right wing Republican politicians who have been denouncing the requirement that female employees have access to birth control as part of their health benefits as an attack on religious freedom completely ignore the church teachings they don’t agree with. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are both Catholics, and wear their faith on their sleeves, but they are hypocritical in picking and choosing when they wish to listen to the bishops.

1. So for instance, Pope John Paul II was against anyone going to war against Iraq I think you’ll find that Rick Santorum managed to ignore that Catholic teaching.

2.The Conference of Catholic Bishops requires that health care be provided to all Americans. I.e., Rick Santorum’s opposition to universal health care is a betrayal of the Catholic faith he is always trumpeting.

3. The Catholic Church opposes the death penalty for criminals in almost all situations. (Santorum largely supports executions.)

4. The US Conference of Bishops has urged that the federal minimum wage be increased, for the working poor. Santorum in the Senate repeatedly voted against the minimum wage.

5. The bishops want welfare for all needy families, saying “We reiterate our call for a minimum national welfare benefit that will permit children and their parents to live in dignity. A decent society will not balance its budget on the backs of poor children.” Santorum is a critic of welfare.

6. The US bishops say that “the basic rights of workers must be respected–the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions…”. Santorum, who used to be supportive of unions in the 1990s, has now, predictably, turned against them.

7. Catholic bishops demand the withdrawal of Israel from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Rick Santorum denies that there are any Palestinians, so I guess he doesn’t agree with the bishops on that one.

8. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops ripped into Arizona’s law on treatment of immigrants, Cardinal Roger Mahony characterized Arizona’s S.B. 1070 as “the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law,” saying it is based on “totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources.” He even suggested that the law is a harbinger of an American Nazism! Santorum attacks ‘anchor babies’ or the provision of any services to children of illegal immigrants born and brought up in the US.

9. The Bishops have urged that illegal immigrants not be treated as criminals and that their contribution to this country be recognized.

10. The US Conference of Bishops has denounced, as has the Pope, the Bush idea of ‘preventive war’, and has come out against an attack on Iran in the absence of a real and present threat of an Iranian assault on the US. In contrast, Santorum wants to play Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove and ride the rocket down on Isfahan himself.

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Newt Gingrich’s role in Congress’s all-time low approval rating

December 22, 1995, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton meet at the White House to reach a compromise that will reopen the U.S. Government. Photo courtesy of CNN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Down in Florida today, the latest poll by Real Clear Politics shows Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich by 13 percentage points. If the story in the Nation today, “How Newt Gingrich crippled Congress,” is accurate, we should all be relieved if Romney soundly defeats Gingrich.

The Nation’s Alex Seitz-Wald tells us:

How much Americans hate Congress has become cliché. Congress’s approval rating is at an all-time low, and it’s not hard to see why: the institution is broken. Plenty of structural forces have contributed to Congress’s dysfunction: the increasing flow of money in politics, the emergence of the 24/7 cable news cycle, the increasing polarization of the electorate. But perhaps no single person bears as much responsibility as Newt Gingrich.

“I spent 16 years building a majority in the House for the first time since 1954,” Gingrich said during NBC’s Florida GOP debate Monday night, referring to the Republican takeover of the House in 1994. Over those sixteen years of personal and partisan striving, Gingrich invented or perfected many of the things that Americans dislike most about Congress. “I think I am a transformational figure,” Gingrich said before the 1994 election. “I am trying to effect a change so large that the people who would be hurt by the change, the liberal Democratic machine” will fight it, Gingrich explained.

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Gingrich takes South Carolina

Photo courtesy of newtgingrich360.com

Here’s the tally with 26 percent reporting (NY Times):

Gingrich    60,572      40.7%

Romney    39,261      26.4   

Santorum  26,672      17.9   

Paul           19,590     13.2   

Jim Rutenberg at the NY Times has the story:

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Surprising his rivals and upending the highly unpredictable Republican race for the presidency, Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary on Saturday, just 10 days after a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire left the impression his candidacy was all but dead.  

Mr. Gingrich rode to victory by winning a plurality of voters among a wide swath of important Republican voting blocs, outperforming the rest of the four-person field among evangelical Christians and Tea Party supporters, men and even women, who had been expected to vote by comfortable margins in favor of Mitt Romney, the man who was presumed to be the front-runner as of just a few days ago. 

Mr. Romney’s defeat is sure to raise new questions that have dogged him from the start of his campaign over whether he could win over the many conservatives, Tea Party adherents and religious voters who have viewed him with suspicion over his Massachusetts health care initiative and past support for abortion rights. 

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Huntsman hits his stride in NH

Photo courtesy of Real Clear Politics.

Just hours ago, in my two previous posts, I was lamenting our media’s ignorance in essentially excluding Jon Huntsman in its coverage of the Republican primary. I found it necessary to point out that Huntsman was obviously the best qualified of the Republican candidates to assume the presidency.

As the polls opened in NH this morning, however, the media’s tune had changed, and a potential Huntsman surge is adding excitement in a race hitherto assumed to be all Romney, all the way.

Richard Benedetto at Real Clear Politics is measured in his expectations of where Huntsman will finish in NH, but he summarizes well Huntsman’s newly energized campaign:

KEENE, N.H. -- If today's New Hampshire Republican presidential primary produces a surprise, it could be Jon Huntsman.

The photogenic former two-term governor of Utah and ambassador to China in the Obama administration has a long-shot chance at finishing third behind Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

That would be a shock. Huntsman has been campaigning in obscurity for the past six months, choosing to make a do-or-die stand in New Hampshire, but gaining little steam.

However, as the pre-voting days in this no-snow winter capital dwindle to the end, the low-key Huntsman seems to be hitting his stride. Although he continues to bill himself as an “underdog,” his crowds are bigger, his smile is wider, his voice is stronger and his step has an extra spring.

“New Hampshire loves an underdog!” he shouted to a cheering crowd of about 500 Sunday night at Keene State College.

Buoyed by the cheers, he still resisted the siren song of the grandiose prediction. That would be uncharacteristic of a man who has built his reputation on modesty. “We’re going to do well here” was as far as he would go.

His wife, Mary Kaye, who has been campaigning at her husband’s side and making speeches for him for months, was a little more optimistic, though not too much. “Every day the energy gets stronger and stronger. We’re going up, not down,” she declared in the tradition of Huntsman restraint.

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