They’re the dogs all right, the underdogs turned Top Dogs; the team nobody ever picks to finish first in the National League West who clinched the division Thursday night; the team with the best record in the major leagues this year (who knew?) and, basically, the best-kept secret in baseball. The team that for four straight years has been in the hunt late into September, winning the division twice, getting into a one-game wild-card playoff with the Chicago Cubs in 1998, and coming in a disappointing second to the Arizona Diamondbacks last year. The Giants have the fourth best cumulative record in the major leagues since 1997, behind the Atlanta Braves, New York Yankees and a few percentage points behind the New York Mets — and they’ll pass the Mets by the end of the season.

This year alone, they’ve already been pronounced dead twice: Once at the start of the season, when nobody picked the Giants to win the division — even the dysfunctional Los Angeles Dodgers got more respect, as they always do until they start playing — and then again at the July trading deadline, when Arizona acquired Curt Schilling from Philadelphia and suddenly its Schilling-Randy Johnson combination was more deadly than any duo since Koufax and Drysdale. They’ve been deadly, alright — to the D’backs’ playoff hopes, losing game after game since Schilling came over, although there’s much more wrong in Phoenix than a pair of great pitchers could ever hope to right.

Now the 2000 Giants have clinched the division, and are headed for the post-season, but outside of the Bay Area, nobody knows them. So here’s a crash course on the best team in baseball, the story the national media can’t tell, because they mostly haven’t been paying attention.

If I had to pick a highlight and make it a microcosm of the season it would be the bottom of the seventh in a Sept. 6 game against the Phillies. The game was tied 4-4, one out, one on, with Giants superstar Barry Bonds at the plate. He draws an intentional walk, but the sellout crowd gives a collective shrug: Whatever. Walk Bonds. Batting behind him is All Star second baseman Jeff Kent, hitting .335, who walks this time, to load the bases. And batting behind Kent is fearsome right-fielder Ellis Burks, he of the hobbled knees, the Boston Red Sox star the team gave up on years ago (that old curse of the Bambino again), who’s batting .355 for the Giants and is the team leader.

Burks smashes what seems like an inning-ending double-play grounder to Phillies Gold Glove third baseman Scott Rolen — who boots it, letting Marvin Benard (note to Baseball Tonight again: It’s Benard, not Bernard — work on that for October, OK?) score the game-winning run from third. It’s scored an infield hit, Burks gets another RBI, the Giants win 5-4, and the game proves manager Dusty Baker’s maxim: When teams are playing well, they get the lucky breaks, too.

You’ll be hearing a lot about the wit and wisdom of Baker as we head into October. Although the national media ignores the Giants as a team year after year, it makes an exception for the brilliant Baker. He only has to fly over New York for the Times’ great Murray Chass to write about him (often to make an unflattering comparison with the Mets’ Bobby Valentine, a fairly nasty old-school baseball guy who is indeed the un-Baker.) Twice voted National League manager of the year, he’s a shoo-in to do it a third time.

Now, nobody loves Baker more than I do (outside of his family, I’ll allow) but the national media’s infatuation with the Giants skipper, while at the same time disrespecting his team, has always struck me as a little condescending. It annoys Baker no end. Year after year, nobody picks the Giants to do much, and when they perform it’s all laid at Baker’s feet. His team is dismissed as a bunch of talent-challenged overachievers, Dusty’s Kids. (In 1997, to be honest, I did it myself.)

And, not to get racial when race is irrelevant, but there’s something a little patronizing about all the marveling at what Baker’s done with a mediocre team — as if the Giants are the baseball equivalent of soul food, ingredients nobody else would know how to work with, but Uncle Dusty whips up a savory meal every time. There’s something wrong with the disrespect.

So here’s the story: The Giants are a great team, period. Their talent is deep and wide. They’ve got stars — the best player in baseball, Barry Bonds, now joined by Jeff Kent, who was finally voted to the All Star team this year on the strength of Internet balloting, and closer Robb Nen, who’s being mentioned for the Cy Young award. But the heart and soul of the Giants are its role players, guys nobody’s ever heard of who hit the hell out of the ball and pitch like crazy and have the league’s second best batting average and fielding percentage (after Colorado) as well as earned run average (after Atlanta, and not by much) — and don’t make a big deal about themselves. This is a real team, where the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.

First, the stars. Even Barry doesn’t get the credit he deserves because, well, Barry often isn’t very nice, except to kids, and he can be especially not-nice to reporters. (He’s very nice to reporters’ kids, though, giving my daughter a high-five or a big smile when he sees her.) A writer for a local weekly did a truly funny piece about wanting to love Barry Bonds, because Barry’s the best player in baseball, and deciding to get to know the inner Barry. In the end he gave up, and decided baseball was reason enough to love Barry. He was right, but he wasted a lot of time getting there. I’ve turned down assignments to write about Barry because I do love Barry Bonds, best player in baseball, and I don’t want to be distracted by the inner Barry — the outer Barry is more than enough for me. Look at the guy.

This year may be Bonds’ best ever, and it’s poignant: At 36, it’s almost visible that he knows there won’t be many more seasons like this. There might not be any. He’s putting extra vigor and all of his considerable and underestimated intelligence into every aspect of his game — routinely robbing other teams of home runs, making spectacular diving catches, breaking his personal home run record, with 48 so far this year. The rap on Barry has been that he always gets his numbers, but not always in the clutch, but this year he’s carried the team when it needed him to. His slugging percentage is a league-leading .709. All of this bodes well for October, where Bonds’ record has also lagged behind his talent. Right now he’s the favorite for National League MVP.

Jeff Kent, too, is belatedly getting the props that befit the greatest second baseman since Rogers Hornsby. Kent’s never gotten the national attention he deserves due to a double whammy of New York media arrogance. When he was with the Mets, he failed to understand how brown-nosing the reporters was crucial to his reputation, and his prickly mien got him anointed a clubhouse cancer and a bad apple. Now he’s with the Giants, who nobody in New York cares about, so it’s taken four years for him to get the national spotlight. He’s had an MVP year, too, batting a consistent .335, with 33 home runs and 124 RBIs as of Friday. And while he’s just your average infielder, reliable but not terribly speedy, he’s second on the club in steals, one behind Benard, with 12. He just runs hard.

Star No. 3 is Ellis Burks. I stay out of the fight over whether Bonds or Kent is National League MVP, because to me, it’s Burks. On a team of stellar players, he is demonstrably the most valuable. His bad knees make everyday play impossible, especially when the team is on turf, but Baker and GM Brian Sabean say a part-time Burks is worth it. In the games he’s played, the Giants are 68-34 this year; without him they’re 23-36. Any questions? And where Bonds and Kent can both be prickly and unapproachable, Burks is a gentle, charismatic leader, smart, funny and polite.

Thursday night he was awarded the coveted Willie Mac award, named after legendary first baseman Willie McCovey (who also had bad knees) and given to the player who exhibits the most hustle. It was no contest. He went on to own the division-clinching game, hitting a game-tying two-run home run, an RBI single and scoring the winning run.

But to dwell on the Giants’ so-called stars is to miss the point. Last year five Giants had more than 20 home runs — a record they’re on pace to match this year — and nine Giants already have more than 10 homers. Each of the team’s five starting pitchers has more than 10 wins; Livan Hernandez and Shawn Estes are still battling it out for staff ace, with 16 and 15 wins respectively, and after struggling, Russ Ortiz was pitcher of the month with six wins in August.

Rich Aurilia leads the NL in home runs (19 to date) and RBIs (76) for a shortstop; J.T. Snow’s headed for another Gold Glove at first; Bill Mueller may well win one at third; platooning catchers Bobby Estalella and Doug Mirabelli have more combined home runs (20) than any starting catcher in the NL besides the Mets’ Mike Piazza. Virtually every player off the bench has contributed game-winning hits. Armando Rios, Felipe Crespo, Russ Davis, Calvin Murray: Remember their names, because all have been September heroes, and at least one of them will be an October hero.

Even Giant-haters have to grant me one thing: They have the best park in the world. Pac Bell Park is a dream come true, with its back porch on McCovey Cove and all those fine palm trees waving in the breeze. It took politics and finesse and community spirit to get it built. Now it’s a gift to the neighborhood, and the city, from the team’s stellar management. They even have the best training team in baseball, who’ve reduced days on the disabled list from over 700 in the years from 1989 to 1996 to just over 300 in 1997-2000. And so far this season Giants have spent under 100 days on the DL; the lowest number in baseball. Burks wasn’t kidding when he thanked trainer Stan Conte after he won the coveted Willie Mac award.

Finally, the national baseball writers are right about one thing. Dusty Baker is a god among men, and we’re blessed to have him. In the end much of the Giants’ success has to come back to Baker. He’s the one who makes this a team, with a group ethic and identity you don’t see anywhere else, except maybe Joe Torre’s Yankees. He’s got his key starters, but he rotates a considerable number of players — Estalella and Mirabelli as catcher, Benard shares some time with Rios and Murray in the outfield; Bill Mueller makes way for Russ Davis when the team needs power at third base. This can be hell on a team; Baker makes it (comparatively) easy, playing no favorites, rewarding and disappointing players fairly.

Plus, nobody talks about it, but the Spanish-speaking Baker’s multiracial ease is crucial. It sets the tone for clubhouse relationships and friendships. The Giants have the best chemistry in baseball, with black, white and Latin stars, bench players and coaches. In other clubhouses — think Dodgers — the mix has been toxic over the years. In the Giants’ it mostly means you hear all kinds of music and don’t see the clustered ethnic cliques that divide other teams.

The only shadow over the Giants party is the fact that Baker doesn’t have a contract extension signed — yet — which all involved parties hate talking about, and I won’t belabor it here. I’m confident he’ll be back next year. Both sides say they want that; they’ll work out the details. I predict he’ll be well paid, but he’ll turn down higher offers to stay with a mid-payroll team he loves. (He probably already has.) On Tuesday night Tony Bennett dropped by and sang “I left my heart in San Francisco” a capella before the game, and when he clasped Baker’s hand after he finished, the glint in the manager’s eye and the smile on his face told me he’s not going anywhere they don’t play that song after ballgames (after “Who let the dogs out?” that is).

There is probably a not-so-subtle psychological advantage to the splendor of Pac Bell Park: Somehow, having the best park in baseball helped the Giants play like the best. For years their self-image was tied inextricably to Candlestick: They were a gritty blue-collar team, pegged as underdogs and overachievers, tough-playing warriors who made the best of one of the worst parks in the major leagues.

But in their first season in a park fit for champions, the Giants are playing like champions. San Francisco and the entire country are learning something crucial about Pac Bell Park at the same time: This place was built for October baseball, and we should expect to see a lot of it in the years to come.

I needn’t have soft-pedaled. Only a few hours later the bishops came out, guns blazing, insisting the only solution they would accept would be for “HHS to rescind the mandate for those objectionable services.” By any employer, for any employee in the entire country — a country where the vast majority of voters, and of Catholics, support Obama’s stand. And at Sunday Mass, bishops and parish priests throughout the nation read aloud the stunningly political letters about the controversy they already had planned. Now, with the bishops’ blessing, Republican are hard at work on legislation that would force HHS to strip the contraceptive coverage requirement for all employers, not just religious employers. Sen. Roy Blunt would allow employers to decline to cover any service they deem objectionable; Sen. Marco Rubio would restrict the legislation to contraception coverage.

I have a couple of reactions to the bishops’ extremism. First of all, as someone raised Catholic, I wonder why they’ve never read letters about any of their social justice priorities: universal healthcare, increased protection for the poor, labor rights, or action to curb climate change? Why does this topic  – not even the morally challenging issue of abortion, but the universally accepted practice of birth control – merit such a thundering reaction from the pulpit?

Second, as an American, I also wonder: How do they continue to demand tax-exempt status when they’re railing in their churches about blatantly political – and divisively partisan – public concerns? As the first writer on my remarkably sane Catholic tribalism letters thread remarked, their public support for the extremist GOP position makes me think they should register as a Republican political action committee rather than remain a tax-exempt religious institution outside the bounds of politics.

Even as the bishops became more shrill and extreme, the debate over contraception coverage became smarter and calmer last week. Major Catholic organizations supported Obama’s Friday move, including the Catholic Health Association, Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and Catholic Charities USA. Before the president’s announcement, famed attorney David Boies did the most to usher in the new tone by framing the HHS rules as a matter of labor law. Boies doesn’t believe, by the way, that HHS is in any way required to provide the exemption for churches it wrote into its regulations even before the compromise. If the church is employing people, whether co-religionists or not, it has a responsibility to comply with employment law. He proved that even the administration’s initial regulations, exempting churches, was a strong attempt at accommodating anti-contraceptive religious groups.

But maybe the best argument on behalf of the Obama administration’s position comes from a very unlikely source, as Jay Bookman points out: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In two different decisions, the conservative Catholic Scalia has sided with the court majority in finding that religious teachings can’t justify religious employers – or employees — failing to comply with labor law. In the 1990 Employment Division v. Smith decision, regarding an employer’s ability to fire a Native American employee who used peyote, despite the employee’s claim that using the drug was a religious rite, Scalia wrote:

“We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition.” In an even more directly relevant 1982 decision holding that Amish employers must comply with Social Security and withholding taxes, though their faith bars participation in government support programs, Scalia wrote:

Respondents urge us to hold, quite simply, that when otherwise prohibitable conduct is accompanied by religious convictions, not only the convictions but the conduct itself must be free from governmental regulation. We have never held that, and decline to do so now.

I’ve written repeatedly that my inability to quit the Catholic Church entirely comes from the fact that its social teachings formed my social conscience, and to this day some of the people doing the most good for the poor and the excluded are devout Catholics. But the bishops are impossible to defend. Today, they are working on behalf of the Republican Party. “They have become the Pharisees,” says Andrew Sullivan, a conservative practicing Catholic. “And we need Jesus.”

I’ll be discussing the bishops’ GOP politicking on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” at 8 pm ET.

But the new agreement makes it possible for women’s groups and some liberal Catholic leaders to maintain a truce on hot-button social issues while working together around issues of women’s health and universal access to healthcare. Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America are happy with the solution, and so is Sister Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association, who endured withering heat from the bishops and their right-wing allies over the ACA. Kristen Day of Feminists for Life likewise backs the deal. Even New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan called it “a step in the right direction,” though he demanded more time to examine the fine print and suggested “legislation will still be required” to protect the church’s right to discriminate against women.

The bishops and the entire 2012 GOP field will continue to fight their culture wars, but the White House apparently believes the non-compromise will win them the middle ground and make the 24-7 cable news show wailing and hand-wringing – even by some liberals – go away. We’ll see.

But what just happened? Why did we spend 10 days listening to prominent Catholics, including even some liberals and Democrats, insist that the White House had overreached and trampled on “religious freedom” – in this case, the “freedom” of the Catholic hierarchy to impose rules that even most Catholics don’t live by?  The great E.J. Dionne led the charge, but Catholic Democrats like Sens. John Kerry and Bob Case and Virginia’s Tim Kaine joined in, and occasionally, liberal TV hosts like MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell and Chris Matthews seemed inclined to depict the controversy as being about the church’s right not to violate its own values. Vice President Joe Biden was said to be the leading voice within the administration warning Obama away from the issue.

“This has struck a tribal nerve in Catholicism,” conservative Catholic scholar George Weigel said to Chuck Todd on “The Daily Rundown” last Monday. “The Catholic Church has been beaten up over the last 10 or 11 years and I think Catholics are tired of the government and others beating up on the church.” His liberal co-religionist on the panel, E.J. Dionne, agreed. I found that fascinating, especially because most of us consider tribalism a bad thing in a multi-ethnic democracy.

Still, while I didn’t share that reaction, I recognized it. It amazes me sometimes, the extent to which Catholics still see themselves – ourselves — as outsiders. There’s a vestigial impulse to circle the wagons and protect our right to practice our persecuted religion (even if it’s no longer persecuted, and many of us don’t practice very much of it anymore). Where does it come from? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this lately, because the importance of Catholics to the old New Deal coalition, and their ongoing status as key swing-voters in key swing states, makes understanding them – us – important. This same old tribalism leaves many Catholics receptive to GOP blathering about out-of-touch “elites” who supposedly disrespect their religious freedom. It helped shift many white working-class Catholics to the Republican Party in the ’60s and ’70s.

There may be an element of remorse involved when liberal Catholics defend their faith, especially among those who defy the church (rightly, in my opinion) on its most blinkered teachings in the realm of women’s rights, gay rights and sexuality. For some it may be guilt: OK, I might not listen to the bishops, but I think we ought to demand that they’re respected in the public sphere. And for some it may be grief: We grew up with a rich tradition of social responsibility and spiritual meaning that’s unfortunately been warped by leaders who worship worldly power and have odd views about sex as well as women. While the child abuse scandal makes most Catholics sick, sometimes even I wince when non-Catholics judge the whole church by the corruption of a comparative (though very powerful) few.  I have cousins and uncles and aunts who’ve joined religious orders (though, truthfully, most of them left). I don’t like seeing all of them considered perverts or pedophiles, or people who cover up for predators.

How Catholics work out their complex feelings about the church matters beyond the tribe, if only because they’re crucial to the 2012 election. One in four voters is Catholic, and Obama won a majority in 2008, while Republicans won them back in 2010. Obama lost white Catholics, however, although he won among those who say they aren’t regular churchgoers.  I think Catholics remain an important, not always predictable constituency at least partly because of their own unresolved, unpredictable feelings about their religion, and their status as Americans.

I found myself thinking a lot about my own complicated feelings about my heritage as I watched Catholics grapple, not always rationally, with the contraceptive controversy. Even when I didn’t agree, I empathized.

- – - – - -

I grew up in a huge Irish Catholic clan on Long Island, but as an adult, I put away childish things (in the words of St. Paul, though not as he intended them) and became a secular feminist liberal Democrat. The first time I remember feeling anything like tribalism was after Sept. 11.

Many liberals around me criticized the overt religiosity of the public mourning for those killed that day, all that talk about God, which struck me as reflexively and needlessly anti-religion at a time when many Americans — dare I say most — found comfort in their faith. Then, after a benefit for survivors’ families turned a little rowdy, with one cop taking to the stage to say “Osama bin Laden can kiss my royal Irish ass,” the heavily Irish and Catholic cops and firefighters in attendance were roundly derided as right-wing tribalist rubes. That bothered me, too: Who did we think died trying to rescue those trapped in the World Trade Center, Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore? Members of my own family had worked in the rescue operation after the towers fell. I wasn’t down with the mockery.

A lot of my belated tribalism was a class thing: I’m not workin-class, but my parents and aunts and uncles were, and some of my cousins are still part of that ill-defined and disappearing demographic. There’s clearly an element of snobbery in the way the white working class is routinely run down as backward, racist, narrow-minded yahoos, and I’ve grown to resent it.

Yet in general, Catholics are doing pretty well for themselves. We’re well represented in certain segments of the American elite, especially elite punditry, it seems.  It’s understandably hard for some people to imagine, in a world so striated by race and class, how Catholics could feel like oppressed outsiders. Yet it’s also true that while we’ve only elected one black president, we’ve only elected one Catholic president as well. I’m not trying to equate the struggles of black people and Catholics. In fact, it’s especially when you understand how relatively privileged Catholics have been, compared to African-Americans, that having only one Catholic president stands out, and makes you wonder: Why?

It’s hard not to conclude that some residue of the religious nativism that persecuted and stigmatized Catholics in the 19thcentury, defeated Al Smith in 1928, and forced John F. Kennedy to promise he wouldn’t take orders from the pope in 1960 persists to this day. So even if we haven’t personally experienced anti-Catholic prejudice, and I can’t say I have, there’s an atavistic memory, something bred in the bone, that forces many of us to defend our once-persecuted church, even when we profoundly disagree with it.

But it wasn’t until I debated the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins on “Hardball” this week that the craziness of the right-wing Catholic alliance with conservative evangelicals became particularly obvious to me. They’ve locked arms with some of the very forces that once persecuted their ancestors – some of whom still despise Catholicism to this day. On “Hardball,” Perkins posed as a defender of the Catholic bishops’ position on Obama’s contraception rules. But he’s also been an ally to virulent anti-Catholics like Rev. John Hagee, who called the church “the great whore” and a “false cult.” And Rev. Robert Jeffress, who likened the church to Satan and labeled Catholicism a “fake religion.” Like Zionist Jews who’ve made common cause with right-wing evangelicals over Israel, some Catholics are lining up, in the name of religious freedom, alongside folks who want to wipe out their religion. I’ve heard some liberals express disdain for some of the church’s teachings, but I’ve never heard anyone compare it to Satan or call it a whore.

Zealous right-wing Catholics are in the minority, even if blowhards like Bill Donohue sometimes make the most noise. In the end, I think the contraceptive flap forced a lot of Catholics to reckon with the gulf between what they practice and what their church preaches.  The truth was always there, if we wanted to find it, not merely in polling data that said 98 percent of sexually active Catholics have used birth control, but that solid majorities of Catholic voters supported Obama’s contraception regulations applying to large Catholic institutions, like hospitals, charities and universities, that employ non-Catholics. I loved the fact that students at Catholic universities held a press conference Thursday to support the president, and that organizations like Catholic Democrats and Catholics for Choice were active and vocal in standing up to their own bishops.

There are a lot of outstanding questions about the implementation of the administration’s non-compromise. But I have to disagree with Esquire’s Charles Pierce – I’m not sure that’s ever happened before – and say I don’t consider this any kind of cave on the president’s part or victory for the bishops. I prefer the interpretation of Frances Kissling, founder of Catholics for Choice, who wrote on Friday that the “accommodation” made the bishops the “losers” and women the winners. ”When the White House cares more about what a simple Catholic sister, [Sister Carol Keehan], thinks than about what the bishops think, Catholic women can applaud. Perhaps the crack in the patriarchy is becoming a deep canyon.”

I can’t go that far – especially after seeing this Think Progress report that documented what we all knew: that men dominated the debate over the controversy on cable news. It’s also a little sobering that so many of the liberal Catholic voices questioning the president were male, while most of the liberal voices backing him were female. But between this and the victory for Planned Parenthood in the Komen mess a week ago, I see evidence that we’re reaching a new place in the battle over gender. At the very least, being a woman is no longer a preexisting condition, as the Catholic Nancy Pelosi likes to say.

I’ve tried to make the same points: What if Catholics didn’t believe in child labor laws? Would we let church-run agencies flout them? Boies used the example of a religion that believed people shouldn’t work after age 60: Could they legally ban older people from employment? Of course, they could do neither. This is indeed an issue of religious freedom: the freedom of non-Catholics not to be bound by the dictates of the Catholic Church in the workplace.

But Boies, fresh off his 9th Circuit victory defending gay marriage, brought the legal knowledge. Watch below.

Of course, the very same night, the re-surging Rick Santorum offered the most shrill and hysterical reaction to the White House ruling, and in a week of shrillness and hysteria, that’s saying a lot. Santorum actually said that President Obama’s contraception ruling meant we are “headed down [the] road” to the French Revolution and the “guillotine.” That’s below, too.

If you watch the entire seven-minute clip, you’ll understand why, despite Santorum’s latest surge, I do not believe that even today’s Republican Party, though it’s been hijacked by the ultra-right, is capable of nominating him for president. Like so many right-wingers, he absolutely mangles what the Founders believed about religion. He says one problem with the French Revolution is that its slogan of “liberty, equality and fraternity” substituted fraternity, or “brotherhood,” for “fatherhood,” a reference to God the father, but also his right-wing belief in the centrality of male control to family and national stability. But his absolute craziness is best displayed in his remarks about the guillotine:

They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.

Although Santorum said we’re “a long way from that,” he insisted that with the Obama presidency “we are headed down that road.” But watch the whole thing. Boies first, then Santorum. Reason before crazy. I’ll be talking about all of this on MSNBC’s “Hardball” today at 5 p.m. ET.

Reason:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now crazy (h/t Crooks & Liars):

Predictably, the GOP presidential candidates are whacking Obama on the issue; fittingly, Rick Santorum is surging again, as this latest battle in the culture war rages. As always, the biggest hypocrite is  Mitt Romney, who is attacking the president’s decision even though he went along with the same regulations in Massachusetts. And when the state enacted the universal health insurance law he used to be proud of, it covered the same “family planning services” as the new HHS regulations.

I knew the president’s decision would be controversial, but I underestimated the firestorm he would face. Since 98 percent of Catholics practice forms of contraception forbidden by the church at some point in their lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control, I assumed many of them would speak out in favor of the new regulations. How could they expect the president to follow church teachings if they did not?

I was wrong. Too many Catholics are insisting that while they may personally disagree with the church on contraception, they defend the bishops’ opposition to the HHS moves as a matter of “religious liberty.” Others are silent. But silence lets the most right-wing forces of reaction prevail. It’s time for the 98 percent to speak up.

This is indeed a matter of religious liberty – the liberty of non-Catholic women who work for Catholic employers to have the full spectrum of healthcare coverage, regardless of what the church believes.

Twenty-eight states already require church-run agencies to cover contraception in the health insurance they provide employees. Catholic Charities sued to oppose the regulation in New York, and lost. The world didn’t end; Catholic agencies in New York and those 27 other states now cover contraception. And they should: Women who have access to family planning services have lower infant mortality rates and healthier babies than those who don’t. Others take the birth control pill to deal with endometriosis or other reproductive system issues. Contraception has to be part of comprehensive healthcare for women.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday, Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod left the door open to a compromise with the bishops. That sounded dangerous. The worst move for the administration would be to take a courageous stand, rile up the right wing and Catholic bishops, and then cave and demoralize the women’s health advocates who are mobilizing to support the president. Later on “Daily Rundown” liberal Catholic E.J. Dionne suggested possibilities for compromise on the issue, while ultra-conservative George Weigel shot him down. There will be no “compromise” that leaves everyone happy. Either this is a matter of equity and the right approach to women’s health, or it’s not. And Catholics who ignore the church’s teaching on this issue have a special duty to speak up.

Karl Rove heard echoes of Obama’s rhetoric too, and implicit optimism about the direction of the country, and cried foul.

“I was, frankly, offended by it,” Rove said on Fox News Monday. “I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.”

Rove wasn’t the only Republican who tried to cast the Chrysler ad as essentially payback to the president for supporting the bailout that kept the domestic auto industry alive. Michelle Malkin tweeted her horror Sunday night: “Agh. WTH? Did I just see Clint Eastwood fronting an auto bailout ad???”

Now, Clint Eastwood is no Democrat – he voted for John McCain in 2008, has been a Republican for most of his life, and now describes himself as having “libertarian” leanings. It’s hard to imagine he’d lend his name to an openly and intentionally pro-Obama ad. Chrysler has denied any political motive behind the Eastwood ad.

The flap over the ad confirms the GOP’s serious branding problem: The problem for Rove and the rest of the GOP is that their party’s narrative has become relentlessly negative, pessimistic and uninspiring. They’ve left the language of optimism and resilience, higher ground and common ground, to the Democrats, and lately President Obama has grabbed every opportunity to employ that language.

Rove is essentially complaining that anyone using rhetoric of resilience and tenacity, or suggests “we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one” sounds like a gosh-darn … Democrat.  That’s good news for Democrats. There’s more good news in recent polls showing that Obama is winning back at least some white working-class voters with his feistier message of economic populism. The president’s approval/disapproval ratings have been dismal with whites who make less than $50,000, with his approval dropping into the low 30s and disapproval up in the mid-60s regularly over the last two years.

Now those numbers stand at 43-54, about where they were when Obama was elected. He may not carry that cohort, but holding the share he had in 2008 will make his reelection chances much better. There’s also good news with those same voters in some Rust Belt states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and, yes, Michigan, home of Chrysler.

Karl Rove is angry because he sees the numbers, too, and he’s got to explain them away with dark allusions to “Chicago politics.” But the fact is the president saved the auto industry at a time when Republicans, most notably Mitt Romney, urged him to let it die. If he gets credit for that unpopular decision, that’s because he deserves it.

And if Clint Eastwood sounds like a Democrat when he talks about American ingenuity and optimism, that’s because increasingly it’s Democrats who sound that way – and Republicans who don’t. Ronald Reagan co-opted buoyancy and hopefulness for a generation, painting Democrats from Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis through Al Gore and John Kerry (with a break for Bill Clinton) as Negative Nellies, whiners and complainers always finding fault with America.

Now it’s Republicans who bad-mouth the American people, warning that lax morals and laziness are behind the problems of the poor and working class (including whites), and who paint scary dystopic pictures of America under its Kenyan anti-colonialist socialist black president. Karl Rove’s hissy fit over the Chrysler ad underscores exactly how bleak his party’s vision has become.

I’ll be on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” at 8 p.m. ET to discuss Rove and the angry GOP.