Obama's birth control mandate is shrewd political calculus

While there is much gnashing of teeth occurring among the leadership of Catholic institutions regarding the pending implementation of the PPACA birth control mandate, one must stop to admire the shrewd handiwork of the Obama administration in their rollout and implementation of this policy.

Let us count three of the ways...

1. The polity of the Catholic church is so completely divorced from its membership on the issue of birth control that provoking its leadership merely serves to highlight the church's internal dysfunction on matters of reproductive health.  It's not every day you can play the right side of a 60/40 issue that also, according to polls, makes Catholic voters less likely to support GOP candidates who are defending the position of the Catholic church.  There's a reason you don't see a lot of Catholic families with seven or eight or nine kids anymore, and it sure as heck isn't because of natural family planning.  Most Catholic women liberated themselves of the church's position on birth control years ago.

2. By going big, Obama gives himself the ability to backpedal into a position where Catholic employers are offered the ability to avoid paying for contraceptive services by using a contraceptive rider on insurance policies that employees can self-fund or have subsidized in other ways.  It'll be the insurance equivalent of the funding shuffle the federal government goes through with abortion.

3. Obama has handed the four remaining GOP presidential candidates an opportunity to further bludgeon themselves with another red meat issue that encourages pandering to the far right.  Already, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are in a contest to see who can whack Mitt Romney the hardest over his enforcement of a law requiring emergency contraception (EC) be provided to rape victims.  Of course, the EC for rape victims law is overwhelmingly supported by independent and moderate voters and 80% of women, which is the cherry on top of the sundae.