Karen Handel
The pack of loons vying for the Republican nomination in Georgia's Senate race met in their sixth of seven debates (one for each candidate). The event seems to have been a disappointment as far as Rep. Paul Broun saying anything to equal his earlier contention that evolution and the big bang are "lies from the pit of hell," but the lone woman in the race did take a shot at
the key move from the GOP's ladies' playbook:
The name of Michelle Nunn, the likely Democratic nominee, wasn’t mentioned until the final three minutes of the 90-minute debate — symbolic of where the GOP’s focus still is in the race to replace retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. Former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel first uttered the Nunn name in her closing remarks, as she portrayed herself as the most electable conservative on the stage.
“I would just love to see Michelle Nunn try to drop the ‘war on women’ on me,” Handel said.
Karen Handel is a woman! Therefore, she is completely immune to Republican problems with women voters. Honest to goodness, she assures us.
There's just one small thing. Prior to her run for Senate, Handel was last seen trashing the reputation of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, pushing the organization to cut off funding for cancer screening to Planned Parenthood, because Planned Parenthood spends other money unrelated to the Komen Foundation on abortion. Handel was quickly forced to resign, but the damage she'd set off didn't stop there: Komen's president and two of its board members also ultimately resigned, and employee morale was reportedly "in the toilet"—and no wonder, when the political decision to defund Planned Parenthood cancer screenings had come despite a staff recommendation to continue the funding.
So Handel's position that she can't be accused of participating in a war on women would seem to be based only on the fact that she herself is a woman. Because the record clearly shows that she used her role at a women-oriented foundation to attack cancer screening for low-income women and in so doing, managed to seriously damage the foundation that employed her.
In sum, I, too, would love to see Michelle Nunn "try to drop the 'war on women'" on Handel. Although possibly not as much as I'd love to see her drop it on Paul Broun or fellow Rep. Phil Gingrey, who joins Todd Akin in drawing a distinction between legitimate rape and non-legitimate rape, his particular distinction being that bitches be liars. The Republican Georgia Senate primary is a target-rich environment when it comes to the war on women and general sanity, is the point.