President Barack Obama has selected a replacement for pro-abortion Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who vacated his position to run for mayor of Chicago.
Obama replaced Emanuel with another Chicago political insider who favors abortion — former commerce secretary William Daley, who, along with his brother, is part of the big Democratic political machine in the Windy City.
But the decision is meeting with criticism from pro-life advocates like Thomas Peters of CatholicVote, who says Daley is another abortion advocate who divides Catholics.
“The President has given Catholics an unsavory present today, on the traditional feast of the Epiphany,” he said. “Why unsavory? Well, for one thing, Daley believes in reprimanding bishops in his free time.”
During the scandal involving Obama’s appearance and receipt of an honorary degree from Notre Dame, Daley wrote a column entitled “Cardinal George, you’re dividing your Church” criticizing the pro-life Catholic leader for speaking out against Obama’s appearance and award.
“I believe that Cardinal George’s stand is an embarrassment to Chicago Catholics, and furthers the divide between the church, its members and the rest of America,” Obama’s new top advisor wrote. “The fact is that American Catholics are divided over the difficult moral issues of stem-cell research and abortion.”
“To imply that the president should not be invited to speak at Notre Dame because he disagrees with the church on two specific issues promotes a very narrow view of what constitutes morality,” he added.
Daley’s piece continued: “Beyond the specific case of the Notre Dame commencement, Cardinal George’s position continues a worrisome pattern in which the Catholic hierarchy in America is mixing religion with politics. It has seemingly lost sight of the difference between a moral nation and a religious one. The United States is not a theocracy, and does not hold one religion above the others.”
That’s enough for Peters to tag Obama’s decision to name Daley his top staff one that goes against pro-life Catholics.
“Once again, the President has elevated a dissenting Catholic to the highest level of his administration. As I’ve said before, in the President’s mind, the only Catholic is a “bad” Catholic – one who publicly disagrees with the teaching and bishops of the Church,” he responded. “At least, that’s the only sort of Catholic he trusts with significant power.”
Obama didn’t wait 24 hours after his 2008 election before making his first decision to promote abortion as the President-elect. In Emanuel, he chose a White House chief of staff with a 0 percent pro-life voting record according to voting records from the National Right to Life Committee.
In July 2007, Emuanel voted against an attempt to stop taxpayer-funding of the Planned Parenthood abortion business that brings in over $1 billion annually by doing 25 percent of the abortions in the United States.
As a Congressman, Emanuel voted against upholding state parental involvement laws allowing parents to know when their daughter is considering an abortion. He voted for making Americans pay for abortions at U.S. military base hospitals, and voted for funding a United Nations agency involved in the forced-abortion one-child family planning policy in China.
Emanuel also repeatedly voted against the ban on partial-birth abortions and opposed the bill to protect pregnant women and their unborn children, like Laci and Conner Peterson, from violence.
The White House chief of staff is a key policy position with an advisory role that often equals or surpasses that of the vice president and offering the position to Emanuel and Daley confirms Obama will continue to promote abortion as president.
