By David Horsey
Los Angeles Times<\/p>\n
President Obama is trying to accommodate Catholic bishops on birth control, but at CPAC, Republican presidential candidates still ranted about his assault on religion.<\/p>\n
At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Friday, Newt Gingrich warned that Obama would \u201cdeclare war\u201d on the Catholic Church if he were reelected.<\/p>\n
Mitt Romney, who in recent days has been decrying Obama\u2019s \u201cwar on religion,\u201d pledged that he would \u201creverse every single Obama regulation that attacks our religious liberty and threatens innocent human life in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rick Santorum said the proposed mandate requiring all employers, including religious organizations, to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives is the kind of coercion that threatens religious freedom. Santorum\u2019s remarks were restrained compared to what he had to say at a gathering in Texas on Wednesday. There, he accused progressives of trying to \u201coppress people of faith.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are taking faith and crushing it.,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what\u2019s left is the French Revolution. What\u2019s left is the government that gives you rights, what\u2019s left are no unalienable rights, what\u2019s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you\u2019ll do and when you\u2019ll do it. What\u2019s left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we\u2019re a long way from that, but if we follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.\u201d<\/p>\n