Chess Master or Pawn?
Convinced that President Obama’s contraception battle with the Catholic Church is not a “short-term tactical blunder” but yet another example of the president’s “strategically shrewd” long-game, conservative-turned-Dem-loving-ratiocinator Andrew Sullivan this week dabbled in a potentially promising career as a conspiracy theorist with a column at The Daily Beast that shocked Washington insiders and rubes, Democrats and Republicans, Obama-bots and Birthers alike.
The more Machiavellian observer might even suspect this is actually an improved bait and switch by Obama to more firmly identify the religious right with opposition to contraception, its weakest issue by far, and to shore up support among independent women and his more liberal base….And if this was a trap, the religious right walked right into it.
Not only did the right-wing establishment walk right into it, their constituents turned out en masse to vote on it, handing three presidential primary victories to the rigidly conservative and proudly orthodox Catholic Rick Santorum.
Is it therefore impossible to assume that President Obama expected that such a hot-button issue would effect turnout among conservatives, and therefore timed the contraception ruling in order to boost Santorum’s odds of besting the only candidate with even a remote chance of beating Obama in November, presumed nominee Mitt Romney?
