Notre Dame speech key for Barack Obama with Catholics

[snowdays]

Source: Politico




http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22605.html


Notre Dame speech key for Barack Obama with Catholics


By CAROL E. LEE & JONATHAN MARTIN | 5/17/09 9:47 AM EDT


The speech could have lasting impact on his relationship with Catholic voters.
The White House knows that Obama’s majority support among Catholics helped him get elected, and officials have stepped up their efforts to reach out to them since the controversy began in March.
...............

It’s not just the few dozen graduates boycotting Obama’s 20-minute commencement address to protest his support for abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research. Or the bus loads of protestors driving in from Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit, activists who might never have voted for Obama in the first place.


..............

Obama courted Catholics by keeping the focus on bringing pro- and anti-abortion rights groups together to reduce the number of abortions. He talked of depoliticizing a divisive issue that was at the heart of the “culture wars” Obama sought to avoid.

His stance helped him win over more religious Catholics, too, who liked his policies on issues such as the economy and health care, and saw him as moderate enough on abortion that they were comfortable supporting him.

But some of Obama’s policy decisions and appointments since take office have upset some in the anti-abortion community – and could put him in a situation where renewed disagreement on this one issue sours support from Catholics that was based on his broader platform.

The White House knows that Obama’s majority support among Catholics helped him get elected – he beat Sen. John McCain 54 percent to 45 percent among Catholic voters — and officials have stepped up their efforts to reach out to them since the Notre Dame controversy began in March.

But if the White House once hoped the speech was another way for Obama to reach out to this key constituency, the address instead is likely to be overshadowed by the public outcry, and in a state that Obama carried in the fall, Indiana....................

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22605.html#ixzz0Fm3zfFMA&B


Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22605.html

---

[onehandle]

1. Actually, most Catholics, especially the plurality that voted for him, will shrug and move on.

Don't let Politico paint this a bigger deal than it is.

[JerseygirlCT]

17. Yes. This is not the huge concern that some media would

like to portray it as.

The right is clinging to any possible opportunity to make a scene. I don't think most regular people think this is anything important at all.

[high density]

2. Not buying it.

I wish the press would stop with trying to have a never-ending campaign season.

[OKNancy]

3. I can guarantee some people here won't like what he says

He will probably be conciliatory and play a little smart politics. Heaven forbid Obama should be a politician.

[Liberal Veteran]

4. Now now. Don't tease the Purity Police.

:D

[No Elephants]

11. Can't anyone pretty much guaranty that both the perennial cheerleaders and the perennial critics

will take their usual respective positions on almost any controversy involving Obama?

[krabigirl]

5. What is wrong with this country?!?!

Why is the media even focusing on this? Hmmm, because they wanted a Republican in office who would represent their interests?

And these fucking losers "praying" about this. I didn't see them in such agony when we had a very pro-war, pro-death penalty president giving speeches everywhere and saying God spoke to him.

Fuck these people.

[Joe Bacon]

15. The Republican Press Whores are whipping this up!

The Republic Party has two power bases left--the courts and the asskissing stenographers masquerading as "journalists" like 19th Century Fox, and their print members like Broder, Cohen and their ilk. The same Press Whores who pitched tents over teabagging...

[boomerbust]

6. Golden Domers

Epic Fail

[indypaul]

7. President Obama should tell the Catholics the same

thing Thomas Paine told the Quakers in 1776:

"And here, without anger or resentment I bid you farewell.
Sincerely wishing, that as men and Christians, ye may always
fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious right;
and be, in your turn, the means of securing it to others; but that
the example which ye have unwisely set, of mingling religion with
politics, may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America."

[No Elephants]

8. In this case, a chasm is likely to separate what Obama "should" say and what

he is likely to say.

[indypaul]

10. As if no such chasm exists presently between the

zealots who loudly protest and the many who remain silent
but fervently oppose abortion personally and would continue
to support it as a decision between the individual, their
physician and their God.

[No Elephants]

9. How do you find common ground with people who don't want a right to condoms or "The Pill?" Nothing

anyone can concede is ever enough for some people. They are not going to be happy until the US goes back to pre-Griswold v. Connecticut on "choice" issues and the government subsidizes religion even more than it does now.

[anonymous171]

13. Because all Catholics believe the same thing. nt

[OHDEM]

14. Not true. nt

[Union Yes]

12. Religion-Undoing humanity since we learned to walk upright.

[tj2001]

16. Contrived bullshit

Every Catholic I know thinks George W. Bush is a destructive idiot and Republicans are greedy assholes. The abortion issue is an issue only because CNN and Fox News are using the Notre Dame thing to whip it up.

[bemildred]

18. Pretentious Bullshit.

This is why newspapers are going bankrupt, and politico.com is not even a newspaper.