The religious right feels betrayed by Obama

Um, he wasn't your candidate, and he doesn't represent your views. So tell me again how he has gone back on his word.

He called for reducing abortions and seeking common ground on one of the nation’s most divisive issues — promises that led some on the right to think maybe, just maybe, Barack Obama was a different kind of Democrat.

But no more.

A series of decisions in the past two months — capped by an announcement Monday that he’s abolishing Bush-era limits on embryonic stem cell research — has led to a reassessment of Obama by some Christian conservative and other religious leaders, who now charge him with inflaming the very cultural divisions he once pledged to heal.

They really are good, the Republicans. Whether it's House Republican Whip Eric Cantor claiming that rescinding Bush's stem cell ban "distracts" us from the economy, or the religious right now claiming that lifting that particular ban somehow breaks some promise Obama made during the campaign. Basically, they won't be happy unless Obama becomes a Republican. And in the case of the Republican party and the religious right, they won't be happy - period.

The danger here is that the religious right, including Catholic activists, are playing Obama. They know he wants to be loved by the right, and they know that he went particularly out of his way to woo religious conservatives. The hope is that by whining about how much he's betrayed them, perhaps they can get Obama to veer more to the right on "culture war" issues.

Interestingly, the media seems to already be buying the bull. This from Politico:

And at a time when Obama’s bid to seek greater bipartisanship on Capitol Hill already has run into serious obstacles, Monday’s decision seemed to put even greater distance between himself and top congressional Republicans.

Yes, Obama's position on stem cell research, which was clearly laid out during the campaign, a campaign that he won a hearty mandate with, only NOW puts him at odds with Republicans, and in fact, it's Obama's fault that Republicans won't find his policies the same as, say, John McCain's or Rush Limbaugh's.

Why does Obama insist on wrecking bipartisanship by being a Democrat?