Somewhere between the New Hampshire primary in 1992 and the release of “The War Room,” James Carville became the Descartes of modern electoral warfare, as “it’s the economy, stupid” became the cogito ergo sum of political knowingness. Inside the Obama White House, it is a given that foreign-policy successes—from the elimination of Osama bin Laden to the withdrawals from Iraq and (soon) Afghanistan—will matter hardly at all in November. The election, the President and his aides acknowledge, will rest almost entirely on the economy—unemployment figures, the state of foreclosures, debates over bailouts, banks, deficits, taxes, income disparities, and, yes, “class warfare.”

Well, perhaps. In recent weeks, the Republican candidates, cognoscenti, and congressional leadership have all made it increasingly plain that the culture wars have not been relegated to the days of the Reverends Falwell and Robertson. Mitt Romney is tweeting furiously about the Administration’s “attacks on religious liberty.” Speaker John Boehner said on the floor of the House that Obama is forcing Catholic hospitals and charities to “provide services they believe are immoral”—i.e., an “attack on religious freedom.” Rick Santorum called Obama “hostile to people of faith, particularly Christians, and specifically Catholics.” Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, wrote in the Washington Post that “radicalism and maliciousness” has led the Administration to issue an “edict delivered with a sneer.” Gerson concluded, “The war on religion is now formally declared.”

This “war on religion” concerns a new rule requiring health-insurance plans—including those offered by Catholic schools, charities, and hospitals—to pay for contraception. (As Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has tried to point out, there’s an exemption for places of worship.) The Administration, under attack by a range of Catholic bishops, conservative candidates and columnists, and many others, is now backtracking and trying to defuse the potential crisis with meetings and possible compromise. “We’re going to look for a way to move forward that both guarantees women that basic preventative care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions,” David Axelrod, who left the White House to work on Obama’s reëlection campaign, said.

There is no doubt that the Obama team knows it has stepped into a fearsome riptide, but as Irin Carmon, a consistently intelligent reporter and columnist on feminist issues, writes in Salon, “We should be talking about real women affected by this policy, like the unnamed Georgetown law student with polycystic ovarian syndrome featured in the Times, who lost an ovary after falling prey to the ‘pro-life’ insurance compromises at her institution. Or why the millions of women who get their insurance through a Catholic institution and use birth control should be subject to different rules than their fellow citizens. One Catholic bishop insisted, with no sense of irony whatsoever, that ‘people of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.’ Apparently women are another story.”

The context for the Republican rhetoric about a “war on religion” is broader than the new contraception debate; it ranges from implicit White House support for gay marriage (and the triumphs and near-triumphs registered in New York, California, Washington state, and elsewhere) to the dust-up over the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer charity’s decision (now happily revoked) to break its financial ties with Planned Parenthood.

Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum are intent on fanning any ember of cultural anxiety, fear, or resentment that can be found. The more the economy shows signs of life—however slight, however deceptive in many ways—the more the Republicans, and their media champions, are likely to resort to the kind of battles outlined in Bill O’Reilly’s 2006 book, “Culture Warrior,” which posited a country divided between decent, hard-working people of faith and pernicious secular liberals—a small but powerful Soros-funded minority that knows only contempt for “traditional American values” and wants to mold the country into “the image of Western Europe.” (Note how, in the Republican debates, the word “Europe” is made to sound like the embodiment of “Soviet.”)

The clearest set of views on the Republican side belongs to Santorum. You may, as I do, find those views (on gay rights, for starters) anathema and his rhetoric abhorrent, but he is, it must be conceded, consistent. He is, alas, who he is.

Then there is Romney, who, despite his losses this week is still the odds-on favorite to win the nomination; once again, he betrays himself as utterly devoid of principle. He is a kind of moral and political vacuum, and the only convincing thing about him is that he wants very much to be President of the United States. On whose side, in defense of what—all that seems beside the point. He is a vaporous and shifting mirage. In 1994, in the Massachusetts Senate race, Romney tried to position himself to Edward Kennedy’s left on gay and lesbian issues and was almost ferociously pro-choice; he now declares himself prepared to support, in effect, a constitutional ban on gay marriage and vows to appoint Supreme Court Justices who would join Scalia, Thomas, and Alito on the right. (How can you possibly believe in a candidate who reverses himself, in late middle age, on an issue as elemental as abortion when it is so plain it is done for electoral advantage?) As governor, Romney never spoke out about state law requiring health-care plans to provide for contraception and, in 2005, he even required hospitals, Catholic-run hospitals included, to provide morning-after pills to rape victims; now he is accusing the President of waging war on faith.

It’s entirely possible that these issues will recede in the coming weeks, but only if the economic news gets worse. We will hear more about wars on religion, about post-colonial Kenyan socialism, about horrific Europe, and much else—something to look forward to.