President Obama’s policy fumbles over imposing a birth control mandate on religious insurance providers has done something few policies and politicians have ever been able to do: unite the normally politically-divided Catholic population.
Obama, who won 54 percent of the Catholic vote in 2008 despite his strong support for abortion, has seen that backing shrink dramatically. Now only 39 percent of Catholic voters approve of the way he’s doing his job, according to a weekend memo from pollster Scott Rasmussen. And that drop in support was before the latest controversy.
The policy flub, which Obama failed to fix with a tweak Friday that did not satisfy Catholic bishops, was a potentially catastrophic misread of Catholic voters, who historically have been hard to pigeonhole into a tight category. Famous for disagreeing with church teachings, even on abortion, Rasmussen found that Catholics agree on one thing: Nobody, not even Uncle Sam, can order church institutions like hospitals to offer services that are in conflict with church doctrine, as the bishops say the birth control insurance mandate will do.
“Among Catholics, only 28 percent believe religions organizations should be required to implement rules that conflict with church doctrine. Sixty-five percent are opposed. This is true even though many Catholics disagree with church teachings on birth control,” said Rasmussen.
“Perhaps,” he adds, “some strategists thought that Catholics would welcome government help in battling the church on birth control. But Catholics who disagree with the church deal with the situation in the privacy of their bedroom. They don’t need federal help. In fact, it is hard to imagine any person of faith wanting the federal government to have any say in church doctrine and how Holy Scripture should be applied.”
Worse for Obama is how the whole episode threatens to blow up his recent surge in approval ratings charted by Rasmussen. The pollster, for example, reveals that the public is starting to feel better about their position in life and Obama’s handling of the war and some of his spending policies.
