You’ve got to give Santorum credit.  He’s openly anti-sex AND anti-women.

Obama’s election as a POC has caused conservatives to be unwilling to settle for dog whistles any more.  To them, the universe is crumbling and there’s no time to pretend liberals aren’t evil.

Wow, glad it went down like this, and glad you pointed out that what Obama did was smart. I feel a little happier now.

Yup, Obama played this beautifully. My hat’s off to him.

I’ve definitely been one of those left-leaning Obama-complainers lately, but I’ve been impressed with him throughout this whole thing. I think you’re right about the new parameters of debate, though it’s embarrassing, as an American, to accept that contraception is, in 2012, a “national controversy”, but better to talk about what we’re really talking than continue to speak in code.

It’s not like squashing these twerps was ever hard to do.

Hey, I’ve got some complaints about his governing (though it’s been good lately), but let no one say Barack Obama can’t run for President. Damn.

Let me add, too: this empowers Santorum in the primary, which is a great result for Obama. Republicans who are outraged by this aren’t going to be mollified by Romney’s obvious hedging on social issues, and they’re going to run to Newt and Rick. First, it raises the chances that Romney won’t be the nominee, which helps out directly, and secondly, Obama now gets to stand back while the GOP primary lasts another round, wasting more money, energy, and goodwill.

Grin.

Let me add, too: this empowers Santorum in the primary, which is a great result for Obama.

We must all now dress and talk like pirates every day in the hope that the FSM will love us so much that Little Ricky can actually surge to the nomination. That would make Obama’s re-election such a lead pipe cinch that I wouldn’t even bother staying up on election night. Arr! Shiver me timbers!

I saw the news while sitting in my office cafeteria, with the CNN subtitles but without sound, and totally thought he caved.  Then I got back to my desk and saw what actually happened, and realized how brilliant it was.  Because it’s precisely as you say - they want to pretend that they’re talking about religious liberty to not pay for birth control.  So Obama says “fine, you won’t have to pay for birth control, but women will still have the exact same access!”.  When then forces the opponents to more explicitly state their position that what they actually want is to be able to dictate whether their employees have access/can use birth control at all, which is incredibly, overwhelmingly unpopular. 

During the 2008 election, I was constantly impressed with the Obama team’s long-game.  They wouldn’t rise to the bait of the weekly/daily/hourly news cycle that McCain kept pandering to (the “look at me, I picked a woman!/look at me, I suspended my campaign on a whim!/look at me, I’m bungee jumping with my hair on fire” gambit), and it was totally rope-a-dope. 

I’ve thought since then that their communications team generally sucked, in not highlighting enough all of the actual successes that the administration has achieved (DADT repeal, Lily Ledbetter, (sort-of) universal health care, saving the auto industry, etc. etc.), but now that they’re in campaign mode, they seem to know, again, exactly how to win the message game.  I hope.

First Komen and now this, love it. Do object to the picture though (no way are they cute puppies), the image in my head is a cartoon creature that has just run off a cliff and hasn’t realised it yet.

I copied/pasted your contraception vs. cable TV line on my Facebook page. I gave you credit! Love it.`

Anything that involves women is automatically branded “controversial.” 

Contraception?  Controversial.
Abortion?  Double controversial.
Equal rights?  Controversial.
Women in any place other than the home?  Controversial.

Women are just a big fucking headache, amirite?  Why can’t they stay home and stop upsetting everyone with their controversial desire to be treated like human beings?

Someone should tell the Bishops that restricting oneself to having sex with children isn’t sufficient contraception for the vast majority of the populace.

This is the Obama I’ve always wanted. If he keeps this up, I’m really looking forward to his second term. And yes, a Santorum nomination would be AMAZING. I still think Romney will be the likely nominee, but like @8 said, anything the draw out the GOP nomination is a good thing. The more the GOP candidates talk, the more monumentally stupid things stumble out of their mouths. Meanwhile, when was the last time you heard Obama say something that made a lot of people just shake their heads and sigh? Guess who’s coming out of this looking like an adult, and who’s not?

@13
Yeah, that in itself is depressing. Like @5 said, it’s depressing enough that we’re even having this fight, but as long as we are, the best possible outcome is that the anti-woman brigade will be forced to show their hand once they can no longer hide within the sanctum santorum [sic] of “religious liberty.”

Ordinarily, I agree with Digby’s take on just about anything (and I’m not alone, which is why so many posts on progressive blogs are are titled ‘What Digby Said.’)

However, when I read about the terms of the “compromise” itself, I thought what Amanda thought: genius on both political and policy.

Outsmarted the old foxes in Bishop’s hats, out manuevered the righties on message, and actually served the base of Democratic women.

More of that Obama, please.

As Andrew Sullivan would say:  Meep Meep Motherfuckers!

@ #9 - Steve LaBonne

Yo ho ho and a bottle-o-rum, matey!  Ye can say that agin, ‘n’ thankee kindly for the foinnnne visual - what’s a handful of aging idiots in tricorn hats, compared to an army of eyepatch-wearin’, sword-brandishin’, parrot-shoulderin’ Pandagonians?  Yarrrrr!

@#13 Oldfeminist,

You also forgot: salaries large enough to support a family where one adult can stay home? CONTROVERSIAL

Honestly, I don’t know about the whole “I hope Santorum wins the primary” thing. Sometimes I think many of us, myself included, here in the New York, tri-state, northeast, liberal, (etc etc) bubble are a little too willfully blind (ignorant?) about just how insane certain parts of this country can be. I mean, yes, I’d like to think there’s no way we’d ever elect Santorum, but…...might we?

Christ, the fucking Catholic clergy sure is johnny-on-the-spot to fight against BC.  Where the fuck were they when all those priests were molesting kids?  Are they that eager to have more cannon fodder?

Being anti-sex is unpopular and makes you look like a complete weirdo.

Especially if you’re a middle-aged single man in a silk brocade dress.

[Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but let’s face it - pretty weird.]

@9 Steve LaBonne:  Arrrrrrrh!

And a lot of women who weren’t aware of PPACA’s preventative care coverage mandate—because a lot of this stuff happens under the radar—now are, because a bunch of old men in fancy dress and sour-faced Republican men think it’s a very very bad thing.

@ 20 Seth Eag

I’m your neighbor (fellow New Yorker, anyhow), and I can understand your concern (or, more accurately, abject terror) about a possible Santorum presidency, but I really don’t think, in the long run, that. . .

(OMFG, BUT WHAT IF I’M WRONG?)

Oy gevalt, Seth, you’ve just ruined my weekend.

#20, Seth:
I do think the sheer number of reactionaries in the U.S. is underestimated, but Santorum will never win b/c he is a pure ideologue.  He will put his foot in his mouth again and again and again and again and anyone who is not as diehard as he is will quickly be driven away by his perpetual regurgitation machine.

OMFG, BUT WHAT IF I’M WRONG?

Exactly. What if? It might be almost tea party-like paranoia to talk about “ruined weekends”, but, honestly, the idea of a Santorum presidency keeps me awake at night. Perhaps this country could weather it, with the remnants of its post-enlightenment values intact, but I’m not sure…

#20, Seth,
See also.

Speaking of anti-sex weirdos, I just saw a male University of Oklahoma undergrad wearing a black t-shirt with “VIRGINITY ROCKS” on the front and “I love my wife AND I HAVEN’T EVEN MET HER YET!” on the back.

I agree, Amanda.  I’m so much happier to fighting them on this ground rather than “silent scream” b.s.

While Santorum may be able to win the evangelical vote because of his stances on gay marriage, abortion, and contraception, he’s going to have a much harder time with the non fundamentalist wing-nuts, who seriously question his credentials in the Bombing Brown People Department.

Yeah, now that the religious employers are no longer paying for birth control, they can’t claim anymore that this is about their religious freedom and not wanting to pay for stuff that disagrees with their beliefs. They’ve lost their only argument that will sway reasonable people.

No, the fact that they’re still butthurt even though insurance companies are now footing the birth control part of the bill proves that this is really about either a) hating women, b) hating sex, c) wanting to push one’s religion on other people or d) all of the above.

I was worried that Obama was going to cave, too, but it seems like he just made an appearance of caving and actually trolled the crap out of the anti-birth-control douchecanoes. This is the Obama I elected - glad to see he’s back!

I’m not sure I get it, what about when the catholic church is the insurance company? (As was the case at a Catholic hospital I interviewed at) Then does it essentially end up being that they must offer additional outside insurance just for those “demanding” women who want contraception? Or some kind of supplementary insurance only for birth control (not sure how that would even work)? They were already upset enough about the possibility of referring women to “evil” in the Hawaii plan, not sure how this is going to work out that much better.

Tenya,

Then they can get the hell out of the insurance business if they’re not willing to provide, you know, insurance.

Tenya, I’ve heard that complaint from devoted leftist Obama-haters who are determined that he can’t do anything right, but haven’t seen a shred of evidence to support it. Can you show me a link to a hospital or university that has in-house insurance instead of contracting with an actual insurance company? I don’t think you can even legally do that.

For instance, I had someone claiming at me on Twitter that Notre Dame owns an insurance company, and that they directly cover their employees and students instead of contracting with an outside company. Since that would be a massive operation, I was incredibly skeptical. I was right to be; Notre Dame contracts with Aetna.

Honestly, I don’t know about the whole “I hope Santorum wins the primary” thing. Sometimes I think many of us, myself included, here in the New York, tri-state, northeast, liberal, (etc etc) bubble are a little too willfully blind (ignorant?) about just how insane certain parts of this country can be. I mean, yes, I’d like to think there’s no way we’d ever elect Santorum, but…...might we?

I admit that I feel the exact same way.  After all, we did actually elect Dubya the second time around.  I’d rather Santorum just go as far away from this election as possible, just in case.  Romney is an ass, but he has flip-flopped plenty and if he did manage to get elected I can at least hold out hope the he would flip back to his pro-choice, pro-healthcare ways.  I am pretty sure that Obama will win no matter what, especially because he’s the incumbent.  But I’d rather not even have the minuscule chance of Santorum getting elected.

FWIW, a fair number of large employers are self-insured, which basically means they do pay for their employees’ healthcare from premiums (and presumably bear the risk if costs exceed their income, although there’s probably separate insurance against major losses).  The insurance companies are third-party administrators that manage the coverage and payments, and pass along their networks & discounts, for a fee.  I would imagine that a self-insured organization wouldn’t get very far if they tried to customize their coverage to avoid compliance with HHS requirements—it would be a huge hassle for the TPA insurers if not completely illegal, and healthcare providers would be pissed as well.

bananacat; IMHO, Romney’s chances of flipping on pro-choice again are nil.  Who would he need to get re-elected?  His very spinelessness assures that he’ll remain the abject and craven servant of his base.  He, after all, has no principals that would get in the way.

@NBarnes,

You misunderstood me.  I think Romney would be a terrible president and I wouldn’t expect him to do anything progressive.  But Santorum would be even worse, because at least with Romney there’s a teeny chance that he wouldn’t be quite so far right as Santorum would certainly be.

Romney’s unabashed cynicism is sort of comforting. Santorum will do crazy harmful shit in every situation whereas Romney would only do it to advance his own image, so at least if something good was in his best interest, he would probably do it where as we don’t stand a chance with santorum.

The fun part of this is that Obama just pulled a fast one on Republicans. He drew this out for two weeks, letting Republicans work themselves into a frenzy of anti-contraception rhetoric, all thinly disguised as concern for religious liberty, and then created a compromise that addressed their purported concerns but without actually reducing women’s access to contraception, which is what this has always been about.

This is a pretty laughably cosmetic “compromise.” Insurance companies are not going to hand out contraception free of charge. They are simply going to raise overall premiums to cover the cost, so religious organizations will still be paying for said contraceptives indirectly.

Does Obama really believe religious institutions are so dumb as not to recognize this?

Rnwd - except that its cheaper to hand out contraceptives to women they insure than cover the cost of care for their pregnancy and birth.  So insurers won’t charge anything for it because its in their best interests for women not to get pregnant.

This is a pretty laughably cosmetic “compromise.” Insurance companies are not going to hand out contraception free of charge. They are simply going to raise overall premiums to cover the cost, so religious organizations will still be paying for said contraceptives indirectly.

Does Obama really believe religious institutions are so dumb as not to recognize this?

Well, they’re dumb enough to believe in an imaginary sky-fairy, so maybe…

As for worrying about a possible Santorum presidency if he gets the Republican nomination, I’d rather see Santorum get the nomination instead of Romney. Conservatives have been complaining since at least 2008 that they lost then because they didn’t have a “true conservative” in the running. Remember, they thought McCain lost because he was a moderate and the true die-hard conservatives think that Romney is a RINO who will lose in November. They’re convinced what happened in 2008 is happening again now. If they really want to run a true, right-as-right-wing-can-be, wingnut conservative, I say let them.

They’re completely convinced that when they run on right-wing conservative principles, they win. McCain, G W Bush and Dole allow them this delusion because McCain and Dole lost while refusing to be hardcore firebreathers (Dole never excited the Republicans and McCain, while he became more of a wingnut in 2008, at least refused to play the race card against Obama when Palin was desperate to play it) and Dubya they disavow as a conservative now (or just refuse to mention him outright) because 1) his presidency was so disastrous and 2) in 2000, he ran as a moderate “compassionate conservative,” thereby giving the Republicans the flimsy excuse that he wasn’t a “real conservative” after all.

If Santorum gets nominated, they won’t be able to fall back on the excuse that they lost because they nominated a moderate. If conservatives see once and for all how badly a right-winger who wants to ban abortions AND contraceptives, who wants to reinstitute DADT, who wants to start a war with Iran and who wants to reinvade Iraq and stay in Afghanistan, will lose in the general election, then maybe, just maybe, they’ll start to reform into a political party with some sanity.

Then again, the Republicans may be beyond all hope and even a trouncing of Santorum by Obama won’t prevent them from blaming fictitious electoral fraud (or any other convenient excuse) as the reason why they lost in 2012. I’m not hopeful for any chance of the Republican Party getting rid of its crazies anytime soon.

But at least it will show independent voters in the middle once and for all how truly batshit crazy the Republicans are, so even if a massive Santorum loss in the general doesn’t force the Republicans to reform, the permanent loss of independent centrist voters will consign the Republicans to the wilderness for years to come, and the overall effect will be the same.

The chance of a President Santorum, while obviously not pleasant to think about, is so remote that I’m not worried about it. I don’t believe the Republicans (or at least the elite of the party) are so stupid as to nominate Santorum over Romney. Amanda is convinced that Romney is going to get the nomination regardless of what Gingrich, Paul and Santorum do and I thought the same way until very recently. With multi-millionaires now funding Gingrich and Santorum with Super PACs, and with Gingrich deflating as Santorum is rising with three recent wins in the Colorado-Minnesota-Missouri trifecta (cosmetic though they may be as no delegates in at least one of those contests were awarded), Santorum just might have the funding and the momentum to take on Romney and win the Republican nomination as the last Not-Romney standing, despite the wishes of the Republican Party leaders.

And if Santorum is the nominee, Obama will crush him in the general because all Obama will have to do is expose Santorum’s wingnuttery by quoting his own words.

So if they do nominate Santorum (a major upset if it happens but this primary has already been anything but predictable), I’ll be celebrating until November and beyond.

(Apologies for the long post.)

Oh, and while we did elect Dubya twice, both times it was because the Democrats had a mediocre candidate (Gore and Kerry). In 2000, people were (wrongly) convinced that there was no difference between Gore and Dubya and in 2004, we were at war and people didn’t want to switch horses midway through the Iraq War. Both of those considerations are not at all in play in 2012 and Obama is a far better campaigner than either Gore or Kerry.

Unless something massively unexpected happens, I just can’t see how Obama can lose in November, especially after the Komen controversy and Obama just now punking the Republicans on contraceptives.

I can’t speak for all conservative niches but the view from within my red state doesn’t speak well for a Santorum win. This time eight years ago, new campaign Dubya stickers were on every other car, but bumpers are looking pretty bare these days. A lot of it is probably the failure of the overlords to signal the chosen candidate; non-standard sizing in modern political stickers makes it harder to assume you can cover Newt with Romeny post-convention. The base isn’t excited and there are a lot less of the greatest generation voting early, often, and conservative. I think the left just needs to turn out and Obama will have this in the bag.

“Conservatives have been complaining since at least 2008 that they lost then because they didn’t have a “true conservative” in the running. Remember, they thought McCain lost because he was a moderate and the true die-hard conservatives think that Romney is a RINO who will lose in November. They’re convinced what happened in 2008 is happening again now. If they really want to run a true, right-as-right-wing-can-be, wingnut conservative, I say let them.”

The fallacy here is that they will accept a Santorum loss as an indicator that their political philosophy is too radically “conservative”.  Wrong.

As Digby and others have said for years, “conservatism” cannot fail, it can only be failed.  If a conservative candidate doesn’t win, it’s because they weren’t a Real True Conservative.  If Santorum got the nom and was rejected in a landslide in November, it would be proof to them that he was some sort of closet liberal, much like Bush Jr’s failed 2nd term proved he was only pretending to be a Real Conservative (and now they even pretend we skipped directly from Clinton to Obama and erased Moron Bush from history altogether.)

Just as Libertarians will always claim their political philosophy has never been given a chance because evil liberal forces hold down brave men like Ron Paul, diehard conservatives will claim the same of their toxic philosophy.  Logic and reality cannot pierce their rock-hard skulls.  They will not give up the fight until America becomes another fascist state like Italy in the 20’s, or Germany and Japan in the 30’s. 

Of course, in the wake of moronic books like “Liberal Fascism”, they believe Mussolini, Hitler, and Tojo were all flaming liberals too…sigh…it never ends…

If Santorum won the primary but lost the general election, most conservatives would just blame it on his being Catholic, not on conservatism being too extreme.  After all, the only Catholic so far in the White House was JFK, who was a Democrat.  Conservatives are better at hatred than they are at logic, so if you think that they’ll wake up when a “true conservative” loses to Obama, you’re giving them way too much credit.

I do think that neither Romney nor Santorum could beat the President, but I’ve been tragically wrong before.
But presuming they lose, I agree that they will blame the candidate for not being far enough right, or massive electoral fraud, rather than admit they are too far right.

Seth Eag @ 20 - I have the same fear.

Santorum is himself so profoundly stupid and uncharismatic that saying that any loss he endured didn’t prove anything isn’t even a rationalization.  He’s just not qualified for the office, in a way that’s impossible to rationalize.

I really did think Obama caved. But I hopped on the White House conference call and realized as soon as it was over that Obama punked the Republicans.

Thanks for this, Amanda - in an age when smug cynicism is all too common in the leftosphere, not everyone is so quick to admit things weren’t how they thought, and they’ll be happy to Explain why they were right all along.

Women are just a big fucking headache, amirite?  Why can’t they stay home and stop upsetting everyone with their controversial desire to be treated like human beings?

It’s not that we don’t WANT to treat women as people, OF, but that we don’t want to upset a bunch of Catholic Bishops in doing so.  I’m sure you understand the difficult position this leaves us in.

Oh, and we will also be removing pork and bacon from any menu offered at school, lest we offend Muslims.

Funny, the Catholic Bishops aren’t lying down and waiting to be punked.  I’m astonished.

I think people overstate how much Romney would be better than Santorum. I think if Romney wins, John Boehner and maybe Mitch McConnell come with him. Romney doesn’t give a shit about who has sex with whom, but the idea that he’d stick his neck out and buck his own party on conservative sex panic issues? I doubt it. Romney with a Democratic congress, sure.

Also, Santorum can win if he gets the nomination. It’s a two-party system and voters are not well-educated about issues, by and large. They’ll fool themselves into thinking Santorum isn’t so rightwing, with the help of the so called liberal media.