The Obama administration recently ruled that churches and other religious organizations who provide health insurance to their workers at their non-church businesses must include free birth control, as indeed all health insurance plans are now required to do. This decision does not affect the churches themselves, but instead such satellite operations as hospitals and universities. The churches still have a "conscience clause" which allows them to choose not to provide contraceptives to church or other religious employees, and the new federal rule mirrors laws already on the books in 28 states. Even so, the new policy has engendered a huge debate from the pulpit, from politicians, and from the media. The real glaring omission from the media reports, however, is the lack of the voices of women who work for religious hospitals and universities -- in other words, those directly affected by the new rule.

Pro and con, the people I see being interviewed and otherwise weighing in on the debate are not the ones directly affected by it. I have no idea why this gaping hole in what should be a basic journalistic assignment exists, personally. As I've been watching the debate rage, I see a lot of older men debating women's sexual morals. I see a lot of celibate priests and bishops being interviewed. I see old, male lawmakers weighing in. To be fair, I also see a lot of women being interviewed, usually from either a pro or con advocacy group. I've even seen some doctors and health policy officials of both sexes offering up scientific reason and logical advice.

You know what I have yet to see either on television or in print? A poll of the workers affected. Maybe that's too tough a thing to ask for -- polls are time-consuming, after all, and the debate hasn't been raging all that long. But I have also yet to see in the media even a single woman interviewed who actually works for a religious hospital or university. Not a single "woman on the street" interview, not a single union representative who speaks for these women, not a single spokesperson for the women themselves. Not one. No nurses, no janitors, no administrators, no security guards... nothing.

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Today is the first multi-state event in the 2012 Republican primary schedule, and I am shocked -- shocked! -- that the punditocracy has miserably failed to come up with a cutesy-poo name for today's voting.

Back in 2008, for instance, we had events such as the "Crab Cake Tuesday" (my favorite) in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Now that's a tasty name we can all sink our teeth into!

But today? Nothing. Maybe I'm reading the wrong news sources or something... somewhere, somebody's got to have dubbed today "[fill-in-the-blank] Tuesday," right? Well, heck, we can do something about it if we put our minds together here... let's see, we've got Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri all on the slate today. Hmmm... that's a bit tough, because it's hard to run a connecting thread through such diverse states. How about "MinneMizzouRocky Tuesday"? Well, a bit tough to say, I'll admit. Or maybe we could go with state nicknames... the "Show Me The Rockies And 10,000 Lakes Tuesday"... well, maybe not.

I throw it open to the readers in the comments, somebody's got to have a better idea than either of those, right? With that out of the way, let's take a crack at predicting the races.

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I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor -- we have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich -- they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90 to 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling. ... I'm not concerned about the very poor that have a safety net, but if it has holes in it, then I will repair it.
--Mitt Romney, in an interview with CNN's Soledad O'Brien

Mitt Romney's gaffe last week (reproduced in full, above) is going to wind up the "gaffe that keeps on giving" for Barack Obama and the Democrats in this election cycle. Because the more Romney's comment is examined and dissected, the worse it looks for him. This could, in fact, be the defining moment for Mitt Romney as a national political presence. That phrase is often bandied about in politics, but I use it here in the full literal sense of "defining moment" -- a point in time which absolutely cements an image in the public mind of who you are and what you stand for as a politician. The image, quite obviously, is not a good one for Romney.

The statement caused an initial media frenzy, which almost exclusively focused on the sound bite -- "I'm not concerned about the very poor" -- which was being spliced into Democratic ads before the sun had even set. Even Newt Gingrich piled on that part of Romney's statement, fulminating that anyone running for president should have the good sense to be concerned with all Americans (or at least say so in public, for Pete's sake). This is Politics 101, folks, and the fact that it took Newt Gingrich to point it out to Romney was highly amusing to Lefties everywhere.

Romney desperately tried to spin his statement, and wound up floundering: "You've got to take the whole sentence, all right, as opposed to saying -- and then change it just a little bit, because then it sounds very different." Um, well, that would be true of just about any political gaffe, wouldn't it? If you got to go back and re-edit your own words in such a manner, then gaffes wouldn't even exist. Unfortunately for Mitt, they do.

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UPDATE:

Whoops! Nearly forgot, tomorrow's a caucus day in Nevada. So, very quickly, I'm picking Mitt Romney to win big (perhaps even breaking 50 percent for the first time), but I'm going to call an upset for second place -- Ron Paul will squeak by Newt Gingrich. The polls don't back me up on this, so call it a gut feeling. Santorum will finish in fourth, far back in single digits.

I ran the board with my picks for Florida, so my numbers are improving:

Total correct 2012 primary picks so far: 8 for 12 -- 67%.

Well, that was a pretty good week, at least seen from the Democratic perspective.

Mitt Romney, frontrunner for the Republican nomination, announced he wasn't too worried about poor people. Maybe it would be fun to see Romney debate Joe Biden, just because nobody would know what to expect from either of them. Heh.

Later in the week, Romney squirmed under the spotlight when he was forced to accept the endorsement of Donald Trump, which Trump offered just to boost the ratings for the upcoming season of his reality show. To Mitt's credit, he did manage to look sheepishly embarrassed by the whole spectacle.

A previously-well-loved charity for women's health interjected itself into the political arena, and faced a backlash of enormous proportions for cutting off their funding to Planned Parenthood. This made Planned Parenthood look good all week, and today forced the other charity to reverse itself in a desperate bit of damage control. Good luck with that, as the damage may be deeper and longer-lasting than they think.

Barack Obama was in the news for reminding people, at a prayer breakfast with religious leaders, that Jesus said a whole lot of stuff about those poor people Mitt isn't concerned with. Afterward, some of these religious leaders said they were shocked that the president had the temerity to repeat what is (supposedly) one of the core messages of their faith, even quoting scripture to make his point. Jesus, after all, had precious little to say about the woes of high taxes for hedge fund managers, instead concentrating much more on how we treat the poor. But -- somehow, for some reason -- this became news.

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Every so often I write an article which is nothing more than the sheerest of speculation, based not on any solid factual foundation but rather on the shifting undercurrents and vagaries of the American political consciousness. Of course, when I do indulge the urge to take such a stab in the dark, I like to identify it as such beforehand, out of respect for my readers' intelligence, and my own sense of journalistic ethics. This is one of those articles -- you have been warned.

The thought which keeps flitting through my mind is whether the Republicans are going to face their own "PUMA" problem this fall. For those who don't remember the term from 2008, PUMA stood for "Party Unity, My Ass!" and was the rallying cry of the non-existent hordes of pro-Hillary Democrats who were reportedly going to cause major disruption at the Democratic National Convention, and then throw the election to John McCain in the fall.

As you may recall, neither event actually took place. Which makes building a case for a similar thing happening on the Republican side pretty tough to do, I fully admit. But it's not entirely beyond the range of possibility, so here goes.

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More Good News For Obama

President Barack Obama continued a three-month upward swing in the polls in January, with his average job approval rating for the month ticking up 1.2 points, and his disapproval rate falling by exactly the same amount.

For both approval and disapproval, this adds up to a 2.9 percent improvement since October. Which clearly shows in this month's chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

January, 2012

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[Program Note: Sorry for the short column today, busy researching, and also putting together tomorrow's Obama Poll Watch column. Wanted to wait until Florida returns were in, as well.]

Mitt Romney, after having a good week, also had a very good night in Florida tonight. With most of the ballots counted, it looks like Mitt will score roughly a 15-point victory over Newt Gingrich. Romney is being described in the media once again as the "frontrunner" and he moves into the February primary calendar riding a real wave of "Mittmentum."

OK, sorry about that, but I just couldn't resist.

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As we wend our way through the Republican primary season, at times predicting the outcome of a single state's race is very hard to do. At other times, it is actually pretty easy. Florida looks to be one of the latter.

One short week ago, the Florida political landscape was decidedly different. Newt Gingrich was riding a big wave of momentum from his overwhelming victory in South Carolina, and Mitt Romney appeared to be on the ropes. Two debates were scheduled, which was seen as helpful to Newt, since debating is supposedly his strong point.

What a difference a single week can make, though! Mitt turned in two debate performances that were feistier than anything we've seen yet, and Newt was the one getting pummeled on the ropes. The best description I've heard yet of what happened is: "When you punch a bully, he doesn't know what to do -- it confounds him." That was Newt -- getting verbally punched, and looked stunned and confused about what was happening to him. His story is now that he finds it hard to debate someone who keeps throwing factual inaccuracies at him -- well, welcome to the Democrats' world, Newt, ever since your reign in the House.

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Well, that was an eventful week in politics, wasn't it?

On the Republican side, we've endured two more of a seemingly-unending series of televised debates between the candidates. Newt Gingrich did not physically attack either Mitt Romney or a member of the media, for which we can all be thankful. The deep and pressing issue-of-the-day seriously discussed was putting a manned base on the moon -- which will come as a relief to the legions of voters who have been clamoring for this crucially-important subject to be adequately debated in public.

Sigh. Seriously, you just can't make this stuff up, folks. I guess it's an improvement over arguing over ex-wives. I guess.

To the amusement of Democrats everywhere, the Republican establishment woke up last week and realized Newt Gingrich is now a serious contender for their party's nomination. This led to a blistering broadside from all parts of the conservative media and political universe, who are collectively shuddering in fear of Newt at the top of the ticket this fall. This onslaught has seemed to be effective, so far, as Romney's poll numbers have risen in Florida while Newt's surge seems to have crested. But it's still too close to call, and people vote next Tuesday, so next week will be just as eventful, one assumes.

Over on the Democratic side, we had our annual State Of The Union message from the president, and a successful raid on some thugs in Somalia who had taken two people hostage.

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Newt Gingrich may win the Florida Republican primary.

This thought is sending frissons of fear throughout Washington -- but not from Democrats. Instead, the Republican Party establishment (and their minions) are out there dumping truckloads of mud on Newt in the hopes that some of it sticks -- and fast -- as far as their base voters are concerned.

Some conservative news sites, led by the Drudge Report, have gone to an "all Newt-bashing, all the time" format, it seems. From these depths to the rarefied heights of the party elite, the ranks are closing against Newt.

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