Obama makes a dumb move in an election year.
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The Administration’s decision to require Catholic charities and universities to provide free birth control through employee health coverage is several weeks old, but the maelstrom of dissent it’s created is widening. Republicans, who charge that the measure violates such organizations’ religious freedoms, have allied with Catholic groups in opposition, and in recent days a handful of high-profile Democrats have joined their ranks in calling on the Administration to broaden exemptions from the rule.
On Wednesday, Tim Kaine, the former Obama-picked Democratic National Committee chairman who is now running for Senate in Virginia, told a radio interviewer he had “grave concerns.” “I think the White House made a good decision in including a mandate for contraception coverage in the Affordable Care Act insurance policy,” he said, “but I think they made a bad decision in not allowing a broad enough religious- employer exemption.” Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey and Connecticut Representative John Larson, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, expressed similar criticisms. All three are Catholic. (As Amy Sullivan writes at The Atlantic, many of the people lobbying the White House for a broader exemption are longstanding allies.)
Conservative backlash has been much fiercer. Speaker John Boehner took to the House floor on Wednesday to condemn the ruling and pledged to draft legislation to block it. “If the President does not reverse the attack on religious freedom,” he said, “then the Congress, acting on behalf of the American people and the Constitution we are sworn to uphold and defend, must.“
