Republican political strategist Karl Rove Thursday accused Caroline Kennedy of mounting a direct attack on the Catholic Church over abortion in her speech to the Democratic National Convention, in which she declared: “As a Catholic woman, I take reproductive rights seriously, and today they are under attack.”
At the same time, Rove also told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that voters would have a hard time accepting former President Bill Clinton’s message that Obama just needs more time to fix the nation’s economy, which he delivered in a speech to the convention Wednesday night in Charlotte, N.C.
“I’m not certain a lot of people buy that message. People’s patience is wearing thin,” Rove said. “They want to know . . . why aren’t you getting better at it.
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“He did what Obama wanted him to do by saying: ‘OK, it’s going to take longer. Nobody has ever gotten this done quickly,’” Rove told O’Reilly. “But the reflection of the difference between Obama’s record on the economy and Clinton’s record on the economy make it difficult for the Democrats to say, ‘You know what, this guy is doing the best he can.’”
Rove reserved his harshest criticism of the convention for Kennedy, the daughter of former President John F. Kennedy, calling her comments on Republican efforts to restrict abortion rights nothing short of “an attack on religious liberty that’s masquerading as an expansion of . . . choice.”
“I mean, it’s going out of her way to say I disagree with the values of my church," Rove said of Kennedy’s speech Thursday night.
“No one is seriously talking about ending abortion,” Rove declared. “What [Republicans] are talking about is the administration’s effort to expand the realm of choice by — for example, requiring churches to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees — regardless of the fact that it violates the deeply most-held tenets of that faith.”
O’Reilly also expressed “stunned” disbelief at Kennedy’s comments.
“She’s evoking her Catholic faith, which clearly condemns abortion, and using that as some kind of springboard into criticizing the restrictions on abortion that many states have passed," he told Rove. “Maybe I'm wrong on this, but that made my head snap back.”
Rove agreed.
“It’s gratuitous when people of any faith go out of their way to basically say: I’m a . . . Catholic and I’m telling you that I disagree deeply with the Catholic Church’s opinions, and I’m going to do so in a political sphere in order to make it easier for people who share my particular faith to, you know, disregard the teachings of our church,” Rove said.
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