Morality! Woo!
Are you a fan of torture, but uncomfortable with women taking birth control pills? Do you like to write long memos arguing that the president has the power to ignore inconvenient parts of the Constitution, but oversteps if he goes against the wishes of particular small groups of religious leaders? How do you feel about preemptive war? Does bombing other countries seem like a less conscience-tweaking thing than the thought of your insurance company covering contraception for people who might be having sex in ways that you personally disapprove of?
Well then, good news! From the folks that brought you illegal wiretapping, invading the wrong country, indefinite detention and the president could torture children if he feels like it comes a brand new group catering to your excruciatingly narrow "religious conscience"!
A collection of prominent center-right leaders, including multiple top Bush administration officials, have founded a new advocacy group to advocate for measures exempting religious organizations from federal rules governing contraception coverage, POLITICO has learned.
Among those involved in planning the group are former presidential adviser Mary Matalin, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, former RNC Chairman and Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, former Rep. Bill Paxon, former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn and New York Rabbi Meir Yaakov Soloveichik.
Hooray! I really, really wanted to hear people like Mary Matalin and Ed Gillespie moralize to us all about their deep religious convictions and how government should never do things that religious folks might have objections to. That all-consuming desire is second only to my even deeper,
more all-consuming desire that they shut their damn lying-ass gobs already, but we all know that second one isn't going to happen. So cheap moralizing about other people's sex lives it is!
So this new organization, "Conscience Clause," will be doing unspecified things to lobby against insurance coverage for contraception if some so-and-so says it hurts their personal God-bone to provide their employees with that. This seems a bit narrow of a thing to base an entire 501(c)4 organization around, but hey, grifting is grifting.
Not yet formed, to my knowledge: a 501(c)4 organization dedicated towards getting anyone who was even remotely involved with the Bush administration to just go away. If I form that organization, I can get a huge salary for saying that on TV, right?