Conservatives shrug at Obama rewrite

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's political shifting over contraception coverage has united conservative Republicans in protest even as they split over which GOP presidential hopeful should face him in the general election.

The candidates themselves, campaigning for votes in the Conservative Political Action Conference's straw poll Saturday, competed to present themselves as most opposed to Obama's health care law. It includes a requirement that most religious-affiliated employers cover birth control costs regardless of their beliefs.

On Friday, after three weeks of controversy that pitted the nation's Catholic bishops against the White House, Obama retreated. Instead of requiring employers to cover contraception, the policy would now require insurance companies to provide free birth control coverage in separate agreements with workers who want it.

Conservatives scoffed.

"It's an accounting trick — the employer still plays the insurance," said Mike Gonzales of the Heritage Foundation. "Do (White House officials) think people are stupid?"

The controversy, several said, is a natural outgrowth of what they consider the overreach of Obama's health care mandate.

"My problem is the coercion" in the broader overhaul, said Washington real estate agent Bruce Majors.

Many shrugged off Obama's rewrite.

"It's not like they said, 'We were wrong," said Spencer Larson, an investment adviser from Moraga, Calif. "They said, 'We can't afford this politically.'"

"Nothing in health insurance is free," agreed Cherylyn Harley LeBon, a lawyer. "The cost is going to be passed on" to employees of religious organizations and everyone else, she said.

The whole debate over government health insurance has cost Obama plenty. His party lost the House majority in 2010 in part because of a backlash over the new law's demands on private industry and individuals.

The resentments erupted anew after the Obama administration on Jan. 20 announced that religious-affiliated employers, except houses of worship, had to cover birth control free of charge as preventive care for women. These hospitals, schools and charities were given until August 2013 to comply.

Under the revision, women will still get guaranteed access to birth control without co-pays or premiums no matter where they work, a provision of Obama's health care law that he insisted must remain. But religious universities and hospitals that see contraception as an unconscionable violation of their faith can refuse to cover it. Insurance companies will then have to step in to do so.

A Fox News poll released Friday showed a large majority, 61 percent, of Americans approve of requiring employer health plans to cover birth control for women. Thirty-four percent disapproved. The nationwide survey was conducted by telephone among 1,110 registered voters Feb. 6-9 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, the network said.

The furor was part of a recent resurgence of social issues, including gay marriage and the funding of Planned Parenthood, in the political discourse. For Obama, the uproar risked his clout with independents, women and Catholics in battleground states from Pennsylvania to across the Midwest.

Republicans, meanwhile, roiling over a presidential nominating contest that shows no sign of settling, pounced on the issue. From the House and Senate to the presidential campaign trail this week, they cast the contraception controversy as an assault on the freedom of religion. It was a battle cry the divided party could bellow in unison.

At the CPAC convention Friday in Washington, the political candidates made contrasting appeals to conservatives but vowed to repeal all or parts of what they call "Obamacare."

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, who swept three nomination contests earlier in the week, said that with the health care law, Obama "is telling the Catholic Church that they are forced to pay for things that are against their basic tenants and teachings."

"It's not about contraception," said Santorum, a Catholic. "It's about economic liberty."

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Mormon who in the past supported abortion rights, vowed to reverse "every single Obama regulation that attacks our religious liberty and threatens innocent life."