Republicans’ new birth control platform not finding any fans among the “religious right”

The religious right is not happy, not one bit, with the growing list of Republicans who are trying to blunt the edges of their War on Women with their embrace of an over-the-counter Pill. While these candidates recognize that they have to live in the 21st century to win a general election, their formerly staunch supporters feel betrayed, and pissed.

Watching Republican candidates push over-the-counter birth control has left some social conservatives fuming.

Some on the Religious Right see the plan as backtracking on conservative ideals, and they worry the ambiguity of the proposal would make pills too easy to access. […]

The strategy is also resulting in political fracturing, with some on the Religious Right feeling they have been marginalized more broadly by their party.

“Republicans have historically had an uncanny knack for doing whatever it takes to lose their numbers in the polls; this would be the latest,” said [Connie Mackie, president of the Family Research Council Action Pact]. “It’s a political strategy. They should stop shopping around for things that appeal to liberals and stick to their core beliefs of life, courage, religious liberty, defense, and economic reform…. [But] they get these political advisers or contractors that come in and give the wrong advice.”

It’s an interesting world in which they live. One where the 64 percent of sexually active women who use prescription birth control are perfectly willing to give it up. Where these women will all care a lot more about religious liberty, defense, and economic reform than the ability to actually decide when to have children. What an inconvenience for the religious right that women who prioritize self-determination vote, and so candidates—even Republican ones—have to at least recognize that fact.

By Joan McCarter at http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Joan McCarter/