It’s been a topic of speculation as to why Obama is pushing the contraceptive mandate on Catholic institutions. Why pick this fight? There’s one school of thought that says President Obama is like the scorpion riding on top of the frog. He knows that killing the frog dooms him but he can’t help it, he’s a scorpion. I think there’s some truth to that. Liberals believe in the magical healing powers of contraception. They think it cures everything including overpopulation, deficits, and education.

But there’s another line of thinking as well that says Obama picked this fight with Catholics simply because he thinks it will help him win the election. To look at the last few weeks of media spin, you’d have to say that he might just be right.

Or is he?

Up in Massachusetts, Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has pushed all chips into the middle of the table on the contraception issue.

The Weekly Standard reports:

Ever since President Obama’s announced a so-called “accommodation” to Obamacare’s new contraception and abortifacient mandate on February 10, Democrats have believed the issue is a surefire winner for them–especially in liberal Massachusetts. In radio ads, op-eds, and interviews, Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren cast Republican senator Scott Brown as an extremist for supporting a conscience exemption to the mandate. “She revamped her entire campaign for the last three weeks to orient it around this issue and took on the mold of a social warrior,” a Brown campaign official tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The mandate dominated news for the month of February, but polls show that Warren’s contraception war hasn’t worked out as planned.

Brown still leads in polls. Is is possible that folks are seeing through this charade by the Obama administration and seeing it for the drastic government overreach that it is? I’ve seen polls that show mutually exclusive results so I honestly don’t know what to believe.

But if the framing of this issue in people’s minds is the religious liberty angle and not “mean ol’ Republicans denying women access to reproductive healthcare” angle then it’s due to one thing. Let’s face it, the Republican presidential candidates haven’t really broken through the media cloud on this issue. So you’d have to say, it’s been the bishops’ efforts to frame this issue despite the media’s best efforts in concert with the Democratic party. This might just be a hopeful sign for the bishops that they don’t have to go through the filter of the Obama friendly mainstream media.

I’ve got to admit I have this secret dream that many of the bishops finally realize that cheering on the expansion of government, no matter the good intentions, eventually and inevitably threatens the Church. We’ll see what happens.