President Barack Obama’s decision to force religious-affiliated organizations such as hospitals, and schools to provide birth control as part of their health plans could cause the president to lose key battleground states and his re-election bid, according to author George Marlin.
Marlin, writing in the online forum
The Catholic Thing, said, “Obama’s assumption appears to have been that Catholics who ignore the Church’s teaching on contraception would not be offended — or at least that such offense as they might take will not matter politically.
“But that calculation appears to be profoundly mistaken. Reports from dioceses all over the nation indicate that most Catholics are appalled that the federal government is attempting to circumvent the First Amendment and restrict freedom of conscience,” he writes.
Marlin notes that the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida all have large populations of “older church-going Catholics who are not happy with Obama’s ideologically driven directive.”
“In 2008, Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, received 173 electoral votes, 97 shy of the 270 needed to win,” Marlin writes. “The Electoral College vote total of the seven battle ground states that Obama carried and have Catholic populations exceeding 20 percent of the electorate will be 110 electoral votes in 2012. And if there is a 5- to 10-percent shift in the Catholic vote to a Republican pro-life candidate in those seven tightly contested states this November, Obama loses.”
Catholics in those seven states helped the GOP pick up 20 congressional seats in 2010 and helped push other Republican Senate and gubernatorial candidates to victory in other states.
“The 2010 election results indicate that Catholics have the ballot-box power to send Obama and the narcissist elites that surround him packing in 2012,” Marlin concludes. “This November, Catholics can send the message that Obama does not have a providential role, doesn’t know what is best for the faithful, and cannot undercut the very foundations of our democracy.”
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