In what some (including me) are calling “The Year Of The Woman”, which is also an election year, the GOP is throwing everything they’ve got at what they perceive as the poor defenseless females.
Why on earth—did I say this is an election year?—what they be doing this? Witness these assaults:
Rush Limbaugh calls an average young woman both a slut and prostitute on his national radio show. And the hits just keep on coming.
The attempt in Virginia to push transvaginal ultrasound probes up a pregnant woman’s woo-woo.
The Blunt Amendment which would allowed employers to not cover birth control services and medications in their health plans if it offended their moral or religious sensibilities (corporations are people too, my friend).
The Tennessee anti-abortion bill that would make public everything an anti-abortion terrorist would need to know about where to find the evil doctor and patient who committed the dastardly act.
The Arizona anti-birth control bill—sponsored by a Republican woman legislator who obviously loathes herself for being a Repubican woman legislator and is taking it out on others of her gender—would force female employees to prove to their bosses that they need contraception for medical conditions. The men’s version of this legislation is surely to follow anon.
These are just the ones that quickly come to mind; the nation is awash right now in Republican introduced and passed legislation that tells women their bodies are not their own but belong to the Man—literally.
So, this raises the question-did I mention that this is an election year?—why is the GOP placing women’s rights in a killzone when it’s women who will determine who will be (re-)elected President this year? I mean, if you’re running for Homecoming Queen, do you tell all the girls to vote for you because they’re too ugly to win anyway? If you’re competing to become a cooking show star, do you tell the judges that they’re not competent to judge the imaginary food at your 5-year-old daughter’s tea party? If you’re Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul and you’re running for President, do you tell women that not only abortion but birth control itself is immoral and shouldn’t be paid for by federal tax dollars? You say that to a group making up over 50% of the electorate? Women both register to vote and actually vote in larger numbers than men.
In other words, in all these situations, do you piss off the very people you need to vote you into the job you want? For Republicans, the answer to this question is an emphatic yes. But why? This is obviously a nationally coordinated attack on women because there aren’t enough smart Republicans in all those states to come with bills like these on their own. This hasn’t been confirmed, but if I shine the special secret fluorescent light on all this legislation, the fingerprints of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) are all over it because ALEC’s stock in trade is setting the national agenda for the Republican Party to be implemented at the state level. But, and I repeat—why?
One theory is that the Republicans see this as The Year Of The Republican Party since they’ve worked so hard to foster hatred and dissent against everything that is President Obama, including President Obama himself. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told the American public that holding Obama to a single term is Job One for the Republicans. He doesn’t want to be made out a liar in public, does he? That would tend to make the American Public mistrust anything and everything a Republican says. His old Kentucky home might not even re-elect him next time around.
In this Year Of The Republican Party, goes this theory, they see this year as their best shot to recapture The White House and get all this women’s rights-trampling legislation enacted into law. They’re betting their entire wad on one roll of the dice. It’s “Guys and Dolls” time and the Party is Sky Masterson.
Problem is, the dice are loaded. At this point in the Republican Presidential Candidate Comedy Cavalcade, NO ONE likes ANY of the candidates. Mitt Romney remains the front runner, a position he’s doing his damnedest to lose. Rick Santorum is like a runner attempting to use “drafting” to stay right in back of Romney in a track race, only someone (like himself) keeps moving the finish line further away from him. The remaining two are like punch-drunk prizefighters out on their feet but not yet fallen to the canvas for the down and out count.
So, this is the War Of The Year Of The Republican Party Against The Year Of The Woman. The casualties are mounting on the Republican side, mainly because they didn’t figure on The Woman forming a coalition with the Democrats and Independents. Do provide support for the Woman’s side in this War, we might have to dust off the old Southeast Asia Domino Theory that was employed to sell the Vietnam War. If we allow women’s rights to fall, it will be followed by the fall of everyone’s rights to government-funded medical care, Social Security, unemployment benefits, education, environmental regulation, fraud protection, voter protection, civil rights protection—a whole bunch of protections.
Women’s rights is the beach head the Republicans have chosen to land on and attempt to secure. It’s a good thing they always get their history wrong. They’re not the Allied Forces, and women are not the Third Reich. If anything, it’s the other way around.
2:57 PM PT: updated tag