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A recent poll by Siena College in New York on Feb. 1st tells us one of two things about voters in New York. New Yorkers are either haters or liars. The poll is a little weak on data, but what it does offer is very questionable. Lets start with the top line GOP primary vote:

• Mitt – 31%
• Newt – 29%
• Paul – 19%
• Santorum -13%

Party ID breakdown: 48% [48%] {48%} Democrat; 24% [24%] {24%} Republican; 25% [24%] {25%} Independent/Other. Political ideology: 41% [43%] {42%} Moderate; 28% [27%] {29%} Conservative; 28% [27%] {24%} Liberal.

The number of republicans seem low and makes me question the poll. However the very low number of people claiming to be liberal makes me question the honesty of the poll takers.

Public Policy Polling did a poll in Ohio last week, and from what we can see, Ohio is going to be dirty. Lets cut the fluff and get to the meat and potato, or as I prefer the meat and meat.

• Newt – 26%
• Mitt – 25%
• Santorum – 22%
• Paul – 11%

Four-percent separates first and third with a margin of error of 3.9%, statically this is a 3 way tie. Like with our post on Missouri the two man race question is a blow to Newt Gingrich’s theory that Rick Santorum dropping out will help him.

If Santorum were to drop out Newt would get 53% of the Santorum/Paul votes, while Mitt Romney will get 47% of the Santorum/Paul vote. In Missouri, Romney picked up 58% of the Santorum/Paul vote. While Ohio does not look as good for Mitt, it does dash Newt’s claims of picking up most of the Santorum votes, or at least enough to make him the front runner.

Some good news for Newt is that in Ohio his unfavorables are tied with Mitt at 37% and Santorum has 24% unfavorable. For Newt, these are good numbers compared to 49% in Nevada, 42% in Florida and an national average of 47%.

In keeping with the theme of this years Republican Nomination, new polls today from PPP shows two different leaders in Colorado and Minnesota. So far this year we have had three primaries and two caucuses with three different winners, and the trend of splitting delegates does not look like it’s going to change anytime soon.

On Tuesday, 76 delegates are up for grabs. We have already reported that Missouri will be holding a primary but no delegates will be rewarded, so that leaves us with Colorado (36) and Minnesota (40). Colorado appears to be following suit of neighbor Nevada and supporting Romney.

• Mitt -40%
• Santorum – 26%
• Newt – 18%
• Paul -12%

While Midwestern Minnesota is following its neighbor to the south Iowa.

•  Santorum – 29%
• Mitt – 27%
• Newt – 22%
• Paul – 19%

Both these polls show Rick Santorum on the raise as the ABR (Anybody But Romney) candidate, and Newt Gingrich on the down sloop. Tea Party numbers in these polls show Santorum leading with Newt dropping from 42% to 18% in Colorado and 36% to 29% in Minnesota.

As Race42012.com put it ”Once Gingrich loses the ABR vote, what does he have left“  Defend him all you want but be honest, a majority of those voting for him are only doing so because he is not Romney, and Santorum has not, as of yet, done well enough in the polls/media to cause people to jump to him.

On Tuesday we expect Santorum to win Minnesota and Missouri, and Romney to win Colorado.

Last year the Missouri State Legislature voted to move up its state’s primary to early February in an attempt to make the Show Me State more relevant in national politics. Like most state capitals, Jefferson City is full of well-intentioned morons!

New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Michigan also have state capitals full of well-intentioned morons. The RNC punished those 5 states by cutting half of its delegates and giving them less favorable seating at the National Convention in Tampa, FL. Fearing seats in the nose bleed section, the MO GOP chose to tell Jeff City what they can do with their primary, and will be holding a jacked up caucus in March.

This week Missouri is putting on their pointless beauty contest. Newt Gingrich will not be in this primary because, well, he just did not care enough to file. It’s that simple. Due to Newt’s decision to blow off Missouri, the polls look kind of weird, but nonetheless interesting.

•  Santorum – 45%
• Romney – 34%
• Paul – 13%

Santorum is expected to walk away with Missouri’s nonbinding primary, awarding him no delegates. Now, the March 17th caucus is a different story. The caucus will be awarding 52 delegates (more than Florida’s 50 delegates) and will include Gingrich; however, his snub of the primary appears to be hurting him in the latest PPP poll.

•  Newt – 30%
• Santorum – 28%
• Mitt – 24%
• Paul – 11%

Now that poll looks close, so expect Missouri to heat up as the top three continue to split delegates. As with every poll, the most interesting nugget of information is never reported and buried in the data. Questions 19 and 21 were the ones that really peaked my interest.

Bear with me here; this is a bit confusing at first but trust me, it will make since. The question was asked:

If the Republican candidates for President were just Candidate X and Candidate Y, who would you vote for?

The answers were as follows:

•  Mitt – 42%
• Newt – 43%

and:

Our ever increasing government presents a second concern, however, that we as conservatives should find equally alarming:  President Obama’s assault on the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.

On January 20th, Obama’s Health and Human Services (HHS) director Kathleen Sebelius, issued a ruling that religious organizations would not be exempt from provisions of Obamacare that require employers to pay for sterilizations, contraception, and even “emergency contraception” in the form of “Plan B” and other abortifacient drugs as “necessary health care.”  The President personally called New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, to deliver the news–  thus we know that this was not a random decision by the liberal HHS department head, but instead a directive that came straight from the Oval Office.

The Catholic Church, through its hospitals, universities, primary and secondary schools, child welfare agencies, etc., employs tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people in the United States, and this decision will affect nearly ALL of them.

But why should anyone who isn’t Catholic care about whether the Catholic Church has to pay for contraception, sterilizations, and early abortions??

Sister Jane Marie Klein, who is the chairperson of an alliance of 13 Catholic hospitals said, “This is nothing less than a direct attack on religion and First Amendment rights.”  She is completely correct.  The issue at hand concerns religious freedom at its most foundational level.  If the government can trample on the sincerely held beliefs of Catholics, it can trample the beliefs of ANY religion.  The right to act within one’s own conscience was the whole purpose of putting the Free Exercise clause into the First Amendment.  As James Madison said, “Conscience is the most sacred of all property.”

The HHS decision has HUGE repercussions for First Amendment freedoms.  Obama has spoken for years about the need for a “reasonable” right of conscience.  But who is to determine what is “reasonable?”  Should government be making that decision, or should it be left to the churches to decide what it is that they believe?  If the long held dogma of the Catholic Church isn’t “reasonable” what is?  Even in deciding Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the United States Supreme Court took for granted that the right of conscience would continue to play an important role in American jurisprudence, favorably citing the rights of doctors and a resolution put forth by the American Medical Association House of Delegates that stated, “Neither physician, hospital, nor hospital personnel shall be required to perform any act violative of personally held moral principles.”  Ever since Roe, Congress has protected the right of conscience through the Church and Coats-Snow Amendments.

Obama’s decision to force religious groups morally opposed to abortion to provide abortifacient drugs to its employees free of charge completely ignores the law and instead tries to impose an arbitrarily chosen standard of “reasonableness” on a right that should be unencumbered:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

What hasn’t been discussed in the media coverage thus far is that there is no way the Catholic Church will ever comply with the Obamacare mandate.  As we have already seen here in Illinois, the Catholic Church will close its operations rather than go against its own teachings.  Catholic Charities of Illinois no longer exists because of our state’s mandate that Catholic Charities place children for adoption by same sex couples.  Many nay-sayers said it wouldn’t happen, but it did, just like it happened in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.  Now the operation–  indeed, the very existence– of every single Catholic hospital, university, and school in our country is at stake.

More than the practical risk to Americans who would lose choices in healthcare and education, not to mention the loss of jobs created by Catholic employers, is the even greater risk to our Constitutional freedom.  This is an impingement of mammoth proportions upon the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of conscience, tantamount to tyranny in its most blatant form.  If the federal government can do this to Catholics, it can limit the freedoms of every single American who has a set of moral principles to which they adhere.

This is not the first time the Obama Administration has attempted to quash religious freedom.  In the recent case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, Obama’s EEOC tried to eliminate the “ministerial exception” that has long been recognized by our courts.  In its oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the EEOC claimed that the “government’s interest in this case is . . .  to tell the school that it may not punish its employees for threatening to report civil wrongs to civil authorities.  That is an interest that overrides the burden on the association’s religious message about the virtues of internal dispute as opposed to court resolution.”

That’s a little tricky to follow, so let’s think about it for a minute:  a church, which operates a school, ordains a religious education teacher as a minister in that church.  One of the church’s sincerely held tenets is that, when someone has a dispute with the leaders of that church, the dispute must be taken up with church leaders FIRST, before turning to civil remedies in the courts.  The Obama administration argued, however, that employment regulations set by the EEOC should “override” the church’s religious teachings.

Are you noticing a pattern here??  In Hosanna Tabor, we have a government agency (the EEOC) setting a policy in an attempt to circumvent the First Amendment and dramatically limit the free exercise of religion.  In the assault pending against the Catholic Church, yet another government agency (HHS) has set a policy that is a direct assault on the right of conscience protected by the Free Exercise Clause.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court upheld religious freedom in Hosanna-Tabor, but the Obama administration has now set its sights on Catholics and Evangelicals.   Obama’s current assault is merely the next step in this administration’s march toward total annihilation of the First Amendment.  Conservatives of ALL religious affiliations must take a stand and vehemently advocate for the protection of our Constitutional freedom because the words of Edmond Burke, the father of modern conservatism, are just as true now as they were when he said them more than 200 years ago:

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Chapin Rose for the 51st district state senator.
Representative Rose has been a consistent conservative, serving in the
110th district, and it is the firm belief of the organization that he will continue to
be a principled leader as a state senator.

“Chapin has been a strong conservative voice and has provided his district with
real, positive leadership in the short time he has been in Springfield,” Illinois
Conservatives President Zach Oltmanns said. “He is going to help provide a
bright future for the state.”

Rose has taken many strong, conservative stands in his six years as a
representative, including serving on the Special Investigative Committee that
impeached former Governor Rod Blagojevich, voting against un-balanced
budgets, voting against the largest tax increase in state history and sponsoring
and voting for conceal and carry legislation. His pro-second amendment stances
even named him a past NRA Legislator of the Year. Prior to being elected to the
General Assembly, Rose was a prosecutor that helped lead the crackdown on
welfare fraud.

Receiving this endorsement will provide Rose with support from the Illinois
Conservative members. This support includes grassroots assistance, outreach to
younger votes, and additional volunteers to augment his campaign, something

that should prove valuable as we approach Election Day.The Illinois Conservatives, a leading conservative grassroots organization in

Illinois, believe in conservative ideologies and supports political candidates who
share in those beliefs for the betterment of the State of Illinois.

Today Illinois Conservatives announces its endorsement of Cliff Surges in the race for Illinois’ 33rd Senate District.

Mr. Surges has been a successful small businessman for nearly two decades, and will use his business expertise in Springfield to help solve the fiscal catastrophe looming in our state.  Surges is a respected member of his community, and has served as a former Village Trustee in Gilberts, where he has resided with his wife and children since 1990.

Illinois Conservatives is confident that Mr. Surges will bring the right combination of conservative policies, both fiscal and social, to Springfield, and we are glad to endorse his candidacy for the Illinois Senate.

“This is the time for Illinois leaders to show fiscal responsibility coupled with strong ethics.” Surges said. “I am pleased that Illinois Conservatives endorses me as such a candidate.”

-The Leadership Team