After last week's North Carolina Senate debate, many watchers described Republican nominee and state House Speaker Thom Tillis' performance as
sexist and mansplaining. So how is Tillis responding to those charges?
Dismissively and condescendingly.
... in his first comments on the controversy, the Republican state House speaker was unrepentant in a sit-down interview on the campaign trail, chalking up the firestorm to Democrats playing gender politics to boost Sen. Kay Hagan.“It’s just silly,” he said during a lunch stop this weekend with supporters over barbecue, fried oysters and chicken livers. “We’re talking about the future of the greatest nation on the earth, and this is what we’re going to?”
Yes, ladies. Girls. Whatever. My disrespect for women is not a matter of substance, so stop being silly and get over it.
Tillis would, of course, have us believe that Sen. Kay Hagan has been harming women through her support for Obamacare, because heaven knows helping people get affordable health coverage and making preventive care and contraception more widely available is terrible for women. Then again, Tillis supports the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision, as well as having tried to cut off Planned Parenthood funding, so he's maybe not the most credible source on women's health. While Tillis now claims to support over-the-counter birth control pills, his whole approach to women's health, reproductive rights, and health care in general is so cynical that you can't begin to believe a word he says on the subject.
Also, it's telling that Tillis fails to get that being condescending and dismissive to any woman who opposes you politically (and we know it's not just Hagan who's gotten that treatment) actually is an issue of substance. It says something about how you'll govern, who you'll actually represent and who you'll talk down to while blowing off their issues. And that's why he faces such a huge gender gap in the polls.
