The GOP’s Hypocritical War on “War”

Ok, so here comes some spokesman for the RNC, some Sean Spicer, absolutely outraged about Democrats accusing Republicans of a “war on women.”  He says it’s an insult to our veterans:

“I find it offensive….  It’s not only bad, but it’s downright pathetic they would use a term like ‘war’ when there are millions of Americans who actually have engaged in a real war.  To use a term like that borders on unpatriotic.”

Um, Sean, maybe you haven’t noticed, but the Republican presidential candidates have been accusing President Obama and the Dems of waging a “war on religion.”  Are your candidates unpatriotic?

And every year, we have to hear the folks at Fox News whine about the “war on Christmas.”  Are all those GOP cheerleaders at your propaganda arm unpatriotic?

And does anybody recall the RNC calling Nancy Reagan unpatriotic for her “war on drugs?”  Anybody?

Must Read from Frank Rich on the GOP and Women

Frank Rich has an excellent article, “Stag Party,” in New York Magazine, available at nymag.com.  He writes about not only the GOP’s current war on women, but also the history going back to the Nixon Administration, after years of Republicans supporting women’s rights.   Some excerpts:

“At the very top of the Washington GOP Establishment, however, there was a dawning recognition that a grave danger had arisen — not to women, but to their own brand.  A month of noisy Republican intrusion into women’s health and sex organs, amplified by the megaphone of Limbaugh’s aria, was a potentially apocalyptic combination for an election year.  No one expressed this fear more nakedly than Peggy Noonan …on ABC’s This Week.  After duly calling out Rush for being ‘crude, rude, even piggish,’ she added:  ‘But what he said was also destructive.  It confused the issue.  It played into this trope that the Republicans have a war on women.  No, they don’t, but he made it look that way.’

“Note that she found Limbaugh ‘destructive’ not because he was harming women but because he was harming her party.  But the problem wasn’t that Limbaugh confused the issue.  His real transgression was that he had given away the GOP game….  That’s why his behavior resonated with and angered so many Americans who otherwise might have tuned out his rant as just another sloppy helping of his aging shtick.  It’s precisely because there is a Republican war on women that he hit a nerve.  And surely no one knows that better than Noonan, a foot soldier in some of the war’s early battles well before Rush became a phenomenon.

“GOP apologists like Noonan are hoping now that Limbaugh and Limbaugh alone will remain the issue — a useful big fat idiot whom Republicans can scapegoat for all the right’s misogynistic sins and use as a club to smack down piggish liberal media stars.  The hope is that he will change the subject of the conversation altogether, from a Republican war on  women to, as Noonan now frames it, the bipartisan ‘coarsening of discourse in public life.’  That’s a side issue, if not a red herring.  Coarse and destructive as sexist invective is — whether deployed by Limbaugh or liberals — it is nonetheless policies and laws that inflict the most insidious and serious casualties in the war on women.  It’s Republicans in power, not radio talk-show hosts or comedians or cable-news anchors, who try and too often succeed at enacting punitive measured aimed at more than half the population.  The war on women is rightly named because those who are waging it do real harm to real women with their actions, not words.”

 

Women Rejecting Mitt Even More Than They Fled McCain

Back in 2008, Obama beat McCain by 12% among women.

A new Gallup/USA Today poll among registered voters in 12 swing states shows Obama beating Mitt by 18% among women.  That gives Obama an overall 9% lead.

Karl Rove is probably trying to figure out a way to repeal the 19th Amendment.

 

Mitt’s Already Lost

In 2010, the gender gap that had plagued the GOP for about 30 years disappeared.  Women and men voted about the same.  But I believe that in 2012, the gender gap will be back, and with a vengeance.

In a presidential election, voters who are not part of either party’s base, look not just at the candidates themselves, but at whether the far left or the far right looks scarier for that particular cycle.  It’s about where the pendulum has swung since the last election and moving it back toward the middle.

For women, the far right will look scarier.  Even if they don’t mind Mitt personally, he will lose votes because of the baggage his base brings on birth control and abortion rights.  They have stirred the pot too much since 2010 both at the state and national level, and the atavistic rhetoric during the presidential primary has only exacerbated the outrage and sense of backsliding, the visceral sense that the GOP is bad for women.

The far left won’t look very scary because we’ve already had one term of President Obama, and we don’t have a hammer and sickle on our flag.  The mansions on the Upper East Side haven’t been broken up into apartments for “the people,” and the estates in the Hamptons haven’t been turned into summer camps for workers.

There are five segments in the electorate.  There are the two segments who always vote R or D.  For them, campaigns are more about entertainment than edification, since their minds are made up.  There are the two segments who “lean” R or D, some of whom register in that party and some of whom register as Independents.  Then there are the people who truly are Independents, who don’t lean consistently and who pretty much start at square one for each presidential race.

Mitt is going to lose many women who lean R and  many women who are true Independents, and therefore he will lose the election.

It’s seven months till the voting, but for me, the election was over at the debate when George Stephanopoulus asked Mitt if he thought states could ban birth control.  From the look on Mitt’s face, I think he knew it too.

Obama Winning Key Swing States

Since 1960, no one has been elected president without winning at least two of these three states — Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.  A new Quinnipiac poll shows President Obama leading both Mitt and Santorum in all of them.

The economy and unemployment are still the top issues in all three, and President Obama wins among women (the gender gap) in all three, with margins between 6 and 19%.

In Florida, Obama beats Mitt 49 to 42%.  He beats Santorum 50 to 37%.

In Ohio, Obama beats Mitt 47 to 41%.  He beats Santorum 47 to 40%.

In Pennsylvania, Obama beats Mitt 45 to 42%.  He beats Santorum 48 to 41%.

 

Mitt Delusional Over Women’s Vote

Romney surrogate Bay Buchanan (Pat’s sister — nuff said) believes that Mitt will do fine with women voters and argues that the Republican party “hasn’t made its case yet with women.”*

I would say the GOP has made its case loud and clear, and it’s one that’s going to lose by huge margins, a gender chasm rather than a gender gap.   Don’t probe me, Bro!

*  “Romney surrogates say GOP can win with women in November,” Emily Schultheis, Politico

The War of the Waiting Periods

As states now seek to increase waiting periods for abortions from 24 hours to 72 hours, I was thinking today that the people who are demanding these restrictions are the exact same people who oppose any waiting periods for gun purchases.  God forbid, that someone who wants a gun shouldn’t be able to get one immediately.

I believe a 72-hour waiting period for an abortion is unconstitutional.  In many parts of the country, especially in the south and the mid-west, there aren’t many abortion providers, so women have to travel far from their homes.  These waiting periods mean long trips back and forth; missing work; arranging child care; extra expenses for motels, buses, gas.

If  a woman isn’t absolutely sure she wants to terminate a pregnancy, she waits and reflects until she is certain one way or the other about this most personal of decisions.  Once a woman makes an appointment for the procedure, she’s sure, her decision should be respected, and she shouldn’t have to wait any longer.

Ann Romney Condescends As Well As Mitt

Here’s something cringe-worthy from Ann Romney campaigning in Illinois today:

“And I love it that women are upset, too, that women are talking about the economy, I love that.  Women are talking about jobs, women are talking about deficit spending.  Thank you, women.  We need you.  We all need you in November, too.  We have to remember why we’re upset and what we’ve got to do to fix things.”

Wow, women are worrying their pretty little heads about deficit spending.  Can you imagine?  It must be all that “college” they’ve been going to, you know the place where they hand out birth control pills.  Some of the sluts must be reading economics textbooks in between one sex partner and the next.

I’m guessing the same person wrote this who wrote that tone-deaf crap Mitt spouted in Puerto Rico.  That person shouldn’t be fired, he or she should be shot.  Don’t you just feel as if you’ve been patted on the head, as if you’re five years old?

Don’t worry, Ann, I’ll remember why I’m upset.  And I’ll be hearing so much more from the GOP between now and November to remind me.

The Taliban Are Here

As part of the GOP’s war on women, Republican-controlled states (Oklahoma, Kansas, Arizona) have, or are moving towards, outrageous laws destroying the doctor-patient relationship.  These laws say that if a doctor withholds information about known birth defects in order to prevent you from having an abortion, you can’t sue him for malpractice!  So you can’t trust your own doctor to tell you what he knows about your pregnancy.  It’s none of your business!

Even though early tests are now available, if there’s devastating news, you won’t discover it in time to exercise your constitutional right to terminate, you’ll find out in the delivery room.  Surprise!  Who needs science, when we have religion?

We’re so busy fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan that we don’t seem to realize we have our own Taliban problem here at home.

Frum Sounds Santorum Alarm

 

 

“The Santorum candidacy pushes Republicans toward an election in which the issues are religious, cultural, and sexual, not economic.  It’s a candidacy that pushes the party away from metropolitan areas, away from areas of growing population, and re-bases the party everywhere that is not dynamic, not growing.  The concerns of hard-pressed America are deeply worthy of attention and respect.  They call for responses and solutions.  That’s not what a Santorum candidacy offers. … Instead, a Santorum candidacy offers an airing of resentments and grievances.  Is that really where party conservatives want to go?”

David Frum, “Conservatives:  Do You Really Want to Do This to Your Party?,” The Daily Beast

Interesting that Frum, a former speechwriter for Bush 43, says “your” party, not “our” party.

My caption for the above photo:  “I think this is how long that transvaginal ultrasound wand should be.”