The Republican party has been taken over by a Taliban-like alliance of women-haters, gay-bashers and religious extremists. Santorum's attack on women, birth control, gays, public schools and freedom gives us an opportunity to stick a label on the Republicans that can turn millions of women and men who love women and their rights into progressives: the New Republican Taliban.
The Republican party has been captured by an unholy alliance of extreme anti-gay, anti-women, and anti-democratic evangelical leaders and Republican politicians. Their 40-year strategy of taking over the Republican Party is now complete; democracy is their next target. To get their way, they have launched a blitzkrieg on American women and gays and have propelled their handpicked candidate, Rich Santorum, to the top of the Republican primary race.
This is an opportunity for Progressives to insert a simple concept into the political conversation: NRT - New Republican Taliban, a shorthand term for the anti-woman and gay religious extremists now running the Republican Party and the House. The NRT have launched the Republican War on Women in the Congress and the states and Republican-supporting interest groups have launched murder and mayhem against abortion clinics throughout the land. They fit the definition of Taliban: ruthless, murderous and anti-women and gays.
Consider.
• In the past 30 years 8 abortion doctors and staff have been murdered, 17 more have been victims of attempted murder, 175 clinics have been firebombed or victims of arson, and there have been 400 recorded death threats against doctors and staff.
• The first 3 bills the Republican House introduced attacked women’s rights, restricted their health care and their ability to work outside the home.
• Personhood USA, a Republican-connected interest group, is working in all 50 states to pass bills and initiatives outlawing abortion and birth control. They have lost in most states, but their donors pay them to keep trying. They have succeeded in two states and Republicans have introduced “Personhood” bills in the Congress.
• Republicans in 2 states have passed a State-Mandated Rape law (SMR) that required doctors to vaginally violate women without their consent just because they ask for a legal abortion. Virginia is set to pass a similar State-Mandated Rape law next week, 11 other Republican state legislatures are now moving SMR legislation.
• 24 states, all with Republican majorities, have filed bills to ban insurance coverage of abortion in private insurance; 15 Republican dominated states have passed these bills.
• 474 anti-choice bills have been filed by Republicans in state legislatures.
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• Republicans refuse to support the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act,
• Over the last 15 years, Republican states have enacted 600 anti-choice laws
• 47 states allow doctors and hospitals to refuse to provide women family planning and abortions and referrals for religious reasons in violation of their Hippocratic Oath
• 87% of Americana counties now have no abortion clinics
• Planned Parenthood has been vilified, attacked and threatened by Republicans in Congress, statehouses, and by Republican interest groups.
These are the words and deeds of the New Republican Taliban, a domestic terror organization with a political arm. The Republicans have deflected attention from the NRT with hysterical warnings of Muslim terror, while the real terrorists have been killing doctors, bombing clinics and taking over our political system.
Rick Santorum is trying to be the leader of the Republican War on Women and the has become the model for the leadership of the NRT. His entire political career in Pennsylvania, until he was thrown out by a 16-point margin, was based on opposition to women’ rights, especially their constitutional right to an abortion. Now, we find that he is against birth control, women working outside the home, public schools, consensual sex in your own home and single moms and gays. He is the symbol of the complete takeover of the Republican party by the New Republican Taliban.
Consider:
• Rick Santorum told a religious broadcaster that birth control is evil and lets people do things sexually that are not normal
• Rick Santorum wants to remove pre-natal testing from insurance coverage.
• Rick Santorum thinks the Crusades were a good thing, and not aggression.
• Rick Santorum says gay marriage is like sex with dogs and 9/11.
• Rick Santorum wants to close public schools and force women to stay home and school their children.
• Rick Santorum’s multimillionaire supporter – who is single-handedly keeping his campaign alive – told women to use an aspirin between their knees as birth control.
He has not backed down on these positions – he has double downed on them, even saying states have the right to ban birth control in spite of a Supreme Court decision to the contrary. If he gets the nomination, his evangelical billionaire backers will use every dirty trick to fool people into voting against their own interest and those they can’t fool, to prevent them from voting.
He won’t win a general election and possibly not even the primary. But his candidacy, combined with Republican vote suppression laws may help elect even more New Republican Taliban members of Congress and state legislatures and governorships.
As Progressives, we need to label Santorum and all his allies what they are, New Republican Taliban (NRT), and make sure the concept sticks. Taliban is a simple concept Americans understand; ruthless, anti-democratic, religious-based haters and persecutors of women. This describes today’s Republican Party in many ways and America needs to know that. Linking Republicans with the Taliban on women’s issues may do this; Santorum’s positions and remarks are turning off women and men who care about them, giving us an opportunity to inject the concept into the nation’s political conversation the way Occupy Wall Street introduced the 1% a and the 99% concepts. I think we have a chance to introduce the New Republican Taliban and make it stick.