Sometimes a wide space between rhetoric and policy can be covered up by a single page of newsprint.

A front page article in this morning's Wall Street Journal reported that Mitt Romney's recent Republican primary victories over Rick Santorum “sent a wave of relief” and left GOP leaders hopeful the campaign “now will be able to focus more steadily on economic issues.”

Meanwhile, a page two article reported on the efforts of GOP leaders to actually focus on social issues through legislation letting employers pick and choose what health services their employees can access*:

The Obama administration's decision requiring that employers, including large Catholic institutions, provide contraception coverage without out-of-pocket costs in their insurance plans has prompted calls by bishops to overturn the regulation. The Senate is set to vote Thursday on a proposal to effectively reverse the decision.

At issue is an amendment to a transportation bill offered by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), which goes well beyond birth control and which opens the door for employers to deny coverage for a litany of health care services. Mother Jones' Adam Serwer explained just how extreme the Blunt amendment goes:

Blunt's proposal doesn't just apply to religious employers and birth control. Instead, it would allow any insurer or employer, religiously affiliated or otherwise, to opt out of providing any health care services required by federal law--everything from maternity care to screening for diabetes. Employers wouldn't have to cite religious reasons for their decision; they could just say the treatment goes against their moral convictions. That exception could include almost anything--an employer could theoretically claim a “moral objection” to the cost of providing a given benefit. The bill would also allow employers to sue if state or federal regulators try to make them comply with the law.

If Republican leaders get their way and Blunt's bill becomes law, a boss who regarded overweight people and smokers with moral disgust could exclude coverage of obesity and tobacco screening from his employees' health plans. A Scientologist employer could deny its employees depression screening because Scientologists believe psychiatry is morally objectionable. A management team that thought HIV victims brought the disease upon themselves could excise HIV screening from its employees' insurance coverage. Your boss' personal prejudices, not science or medical expertise, would determine which procedures your insurance would cover for you and your kids.

While it's difficult to see how this policy is compatible with the rhetoric of focusing on the economy, it's easy to see how conservatives are helped by splashing “focus on the economy” on page one, page-two evidence to the contrary.

A recent New York Times - CBS News poll found that voters would overwhelmingly prefer candidates to talk about the economy and jobs rather than issues like religious values or abortion. That same poll found that 66 percent of respondents support a requirement that private health insurance plans cover birth control.

At a campaign stop in Ohio Wednesday, Romney struggled to navigate the space between economic rhetoric and actual GOP policies, when he first said he opposed the Blunt amendment, saying: “the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a women, husband and wife, I'm not going there.”

Romney later turned the page and expressed his support for the amendment.

*Altered from original