Memo To GOP: “Slut-Shaming” Is Not A Winning Strategy
In Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren has already hit Scott Brown for his vote on the execrable Blunt Amendment:
Senator Brown took sides with Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and the right wing of his party, against the people of Massachusetts, who in tough economic times rely on insurance to get the health care they need.
To repeat a point from yesterday, the ultimate outcome of Mitch McConnell’s vaunted practice of securing party discipline is this: a group of vulnerable GOP senators with clear votes on deeply unpopular policies, from Paul Ryan’s budget to this plan to give employers a veto over the private lives of their employees.
I’m amazed that Republicans are still on this road; as Amanda Marcotte points out, the initial compromise was an out for them. They could claim new ground as defenders of religious freedom, sow dissent among Democrats, and give the Obama administration a bad week of press. It was win-win for them. But like a novice chess player who confuses aggression with strategy, the GOP couldn’t stop its assault on the administration, and continued to escalate its attacks. In escalation, Republicans revealed the extent to which this fight isn’t actually about religious freedom—it’s about sex and the women who have it.
As far as I can tell, the GOP has fully committed itself to the proposition that women who have sex should be punished by their employers, a fact underscored by Rush Limbaugh’s cruel and hateful attack on Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University Law School student who testified before Congress about the problems that come with inadequate access to contraception. If you’ve been on the internet in the last 24 hours, you’ve probably heard Limbaugh’s misogynistic rant:
“What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.” […]
“So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch,” he said.
The most important thing about this? Not a single Republican lawmaker has condemned Limbaugh for this vitriolic nonsense. Limbaugh isn’t just a radio host; he’s one of the most influential people in conservative politics, with millions of followers and regular praise from elected Republicans. The silence from GOP lawmakers isn’t evidence of agreement, but it’s certainly a sign that they fear the consequences of opposition.
With that in mind, here is a tip for the Republican Party: In 2008, nearly half of independents were women. You might think otherwise, but restricting their health care and calling them sluts isn’t a winning strategy.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, March 2, 2012
“Not Gonna Take It Anymore”: Hold This Between Your Knees, Rush Limbaugh
I thought I’d lost my capacity to be disgusted by Rush Limbaugh. He lives for that; why give him the satisfaction? But he crossed into new territory with his attacks on Sandra Fluke, who used to be a private citizen working toward a Georgetown University law degree, until the Catholic bishops meddled in American politics and in her personal life, and she decided to tell her story.
Fluke tried to testify on behalf of President Obama’s contraception coverage requirements at Rep. Darrell Issa’s Inquisition; excuse me, his hearing on the regulations, which featured an all-male panel to lead off. But she was denied permission, on the grounds that Issa was interested in threats to religious liberty, not women’s lives. That was bad enough. After the GOP congressman shut her down, she told her story to House Democrats as well as journalists. Limbaugh called her a “slut” and a “prostitute,” and promised to buy Fluke and Georgetown women “as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want. We are paying her for having sex. We are getting screwed. So Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal: If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is: We want you to post the videos online, so we can all watch.”
I’m not making this up. I’ve been attacked by Limbaugh before; it’s an honor for liberals. But his remarks about Fluke are unbelievable. Literally. I had to hear it twice to believe it’s what he said. (After I wrote this, President Obama called Fluke to commend her courage and tell her that her parents should be proud of her.)
Limbaugh’s behavior is just the far-right edge on a continuum of conservative misogyny that’s gone beyond trying to outlaw abortion, moved into the once-unimaginable realm of contraception, and mocks women in a way we haven’t heard since my childhood, I think. His “joke” is based on the remark by Rick Santorum’s moneyman Foster Freiss, on the same day as Issa’s “hearing,” recalling the days when gals didn’t need birth control because they put aspirin between their knees. But it’s not just for fun: The entire GOP presidential field has endorsed a “personhood” amendment that could outlaw most non-barrier forms of contraception. On Thursday, Sen. Roy Blunt’s shameful attempt to give employers the right to deny health insurance coverage for any treatment they didn’t approve of – targeting but not limited to contraception – was tabled in the Senate, but not before it got 48 votes, including every Republican except the departing Olympia Snowe, plus three cowardly Democrats, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey.
I’m happy to say, though, that women – and the men who care about them – are fighting back as never before in my memory. We forced Susan G. Komen to rescind its decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. Despite the frothing of conservatives, the Obama administration is still requiring insurers to provide cost-free contraception. The president’s courage on the issue is bringing women back into the Democratic fold, according to recent opinion polls – and has them running away from Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.
But we have to do more. I’m putting my energy into two causes in the coming months: a grass-roots effort to turn out the women’s vote called #usethe19th – you’ve seen a lot of it on Twitter today – and helping to promote Salon Core. Salon has led the way in covering news about women, by women, since our founding in 1995. We stand out in a world where men’s voices are still dominant – after the discouraging news this week that the nation’s best magazines still overwhelmingly feature men on their table of contents page, ThinkProgress produced a list of 10 women writers they should hire – and two of them, Tracy Clark-Flory and Irin Carmon, work for Salon (and several of the others freelance for us).
Over the years we’ve featured an unmatched array of smart women; Arianna Huffington, Tina Brown, Anne Lamott and Camille Paglia as leading columnists; on the culture side, Laura Miller and my former colleagues Heather Havrilesky and Stephanie Zacharek, some of the smartest writers anywhere; Rebecca Traister is one of the bravest, clearest writers on feminism and American politics that I know. And Mary Elizabeth Williams is one of my favorite writers on everything she writes about. I couldn’t have done the work I do with total freedom and support any place other than Salon.
The only good thing about this assault on women’s rights is that the women writers I know are becoming even more active than ever before. A whole lot of people have jumped into the #usethe19th fray – join us! We need to elect better leaders. We need to tell our stories. And we need to put our money where our mouths are – behind media outlets that tell those stories, as well as politicians who listen.
Over the years Salon has often turned to its readers for support, and this year we’re developing a new membership program to support our work – and support yours, too. I’ll be out on the road during this election season covering the candidates but also meeting Salon Core readers at a new roster of events we’re putting together for our members. When my book comes out in November, we’ll have a special offer for Core. We’ll be hosting members-only chats and other political convenings through November.
Republicans like to say this is the most important election year of their lifetimes. I agree. Make noise. Lobby. Campaign. Run for office. Raise money. Write. Vote. Join Salon Core – support those who support you. And piss off that angry old misogynist, Rush Limbaugh.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, March 2, 2012
“Lessons Of A Severe Conservative”: Mitt Romney Urged President Obama To Propose Individual Mandate
Andrew Kaczynski digs up a remarkable July 2009 op-edfrom Mitt Romney in which Romney not only brags about the effectiveness of the individual mandate in Massachusetts, but urges President Obama to support it at the federal level:
Because of President Obama’s frantic approach, health care has run off the rails. For the sake of 47 million uninsured Americans, we need to get it back on track.Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America’s families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There’s a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.
And what were those lessons?
First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.
That, my friends, is the individual mandate. And Mitt was proud of it:
The Massachusetts reform aimed at getting virtually all our citizens insured. In that, it worked: 98% of our citizens are insured, 440,000 previously uninsured are covered and almost half of those purchased insurance on their own, with no subsidy.
And if President Obama had been willing to move forward without the public option (which he was), then Mitt Romney said he was ready to move forward with a national plan:
Republicans will join with the Democrats if the president abandons his government insurance plan, if he endeavors to craft a plan that does not burden the nation with greater debt, if he broadens his scope to reduce health costs for all Americans, and if he is willing to devote the rigorous effort, requisite time and bipartisan process that health care reform deserves.
And, as Mitt Romney made clear at the top of his op-ed, the plan he supported was one built around what he said worked in Massachusetts—including the individual mandate.
Yet despite his clear embrace of the individual mandate as part of federal health care reform, Mitt Romney has faced such a weak set of rival candidates that not a single one of them has brought this up in the twenty Republican debates.
But as fortunate as Mitt Romney has been to face such a staggeringly incompetent Republican field, he won’t be so lucky next fall. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the very first time he tries to attack President Obama over health care reform in the debates, he’s going to get this thrown right back in his face. And he’ s not going to like how it turns out.
By: Jed Lewison, Daily Kos, March 2, 2012
“The Real Romney”: The Danger Of Mitt Being Mitt
Political consultants tell candidates to be authentic — to “be yourself.” In Mitt Romney’s case, that might not be such good advice.
Once again, for what seems like the umpteenth time, Romney is being crowned as the presumptive Republican nominee. His victories in Michigan and Arizona took much of the wind out of Rick Santorum’s sails; Newt Gingrich is lost at sea; and Ron Paul is, well, Ron Paul. As long as Romney keeps winning, talk of some kind of a deus ex machina plot twist at the convention — someone just like Jeb Bush surfaces, but with a different last name — remains pure fantasy.
Given the Romney campaign’s huge advantages in money and organization, and given the has-been nature of his opposition, the only reason he hasn’t wrapped this thing up is the “authenticity” issue: Not just “is he a real conservative” but “is he even a real person,” in the sense of having some idea of how most Americans live.
The campaign has sought to answer that question with stunts such as sending Romney to the Daytona 500. The optics were good until a reporter asked the candidate if he follows NASCAR. Romney’s response will live forever.
“Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans,” he said, “but I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.”
Well, who doesn’t? In Romney’s world, I mean.
There was a similarly clueless moment in Michigan. Romney was trying to atone for his vocal opposition to President Obama’s bailout of the auto industry. He said that he liked seeing so many Detroit-made cars on the streets — to be expected in Detroit — and noted that he drives a Ford Mustang and a Chevrolet pickup. As icing on the cake, he added that his wife Ann “drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.”
Again, who doesn’t?
The explanation of why Ann Romney can’t get by with one did not advance the candidate’s quest for regular-guy authenticity: The cars are garaged at different residences.
And who can forget the way that Romney, whose wealth is estimated at $250 million, described one of his sources of income. “I get speakers’ fees from time to time, but not very much,” he said.
His tax returns showed earnings from speaking engagements of more than $370,000. Indeed, that’s “not very much” compared to Romney’s income from his investments. To most Americans, it’s a fortune.
I could go on and on with examples of Romney’s Marie Antoinette rhetoric, but you get the point. It’s not just what he says that tends to distance him from voters, but the whole way he carries himself. He’s just not believable as a NASCAR fan, ardent or otherwise.
Advisers tried putting him in jeans. At the end of a long day, they still have a crease.
Romney has been running for president for the better part of a decade yet still hasn’t made a personal connection with the Republican base, let alone the wider electorate. The conventional advice, at this point, would be: Quit pretending. Don’t try to convince voters that you’re a red-meat social conservative when your record on social issues screams “moderate.” And please, don’t pretend to be Average Joe if your proof of identity is that you keep American-made luxury cars at two of your mansions.
Romney took this kind of I-am-who-I-am stand this week when he said that, while “it’s very easy to excite the base with incendiary comments,” he was “not willing to light my hair on fire to try and get support.” He even joked later about his immaculate coif, saying that “it would be a big fire, I assure you.”
That was charmingly authentic. The problem is that the effect of Romney’s comment is to dismiss the Republican Party’s activist base as an unsophisticated rabble. Which is perhaps not the best attitude for a Republican candidate to display.
Romney’s “gaffes” look unmistakably like glimpses of the real Romney — not a bad person but a man with no ability to see beyond the small, cosseted world of private equity and great wealth that he inhabits. He has to be reminded that most voters live in a world where people drive their Cadillacs one at a time.
From the Romney campaign’s point of view, it may be that while fake authenticity is bad, real authenticity is much worse. If I were an adviser, I’d send out a memo to all hands: Whatever you do, don’t let Mitt be Mitt.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 1, 2012
Four Fiscal Phonies: GOP “Irresponsible Deficit Hysteria” Presidential Candidates
Mitt Romney is very concerned about budget deficits. Or at least that’s what he says; he likes to warn that President Obama’s deficits are leading us toward a “Greece-style collapse.”
So why is Mr. Romney offering a budget proposal that would lead to much larger debt and deficits than the corresponding proposal from the Obama administration?
Of course, Mr. Romney isn’t alone in his hypocrisy. In fact, all four significant Republican presidential candidates still standing are fiscal phonies. They issue apocalyptic warnings about the dangers of government debt and, in the name of deficit reduction, demand savage cuts in programs that protect the middle class and the poor. But then they propose squandering all the money thereby saved — and much, much more — on tax cuts for the rich.
And nobody should be surprised. It has been obvious all along, to anyone paying attention, that the politicians shouting loudest about deficits are actually using deficit hysteria as a cover story for their real agenda, which is top-down class warfare. To put it in Romneyesque terms, it’s all about finding an excuse to slash programs that help people who like to watch Nascar events, even while lavishing tax cuts on people who like to own Nascar teams.
O.K., let’s talk about the numbers.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently published an overview of the budget proposals of the four “major” Republican candidates and, in a separate report, examined the latest Obama budget. I am not, by the way, a big fan of the committee’s general role in our policy discourse; I think it has been pushing premature deficit reduction and diverting attention from the more immediately urgent task of reducing unemployment. But the group is honest and technically competent, so its evaluation provides a very useful reference point.
And here’s what it tells us: According to an “intermediate debt scenario,” the budget proposals of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney would all lead to much higher debt a decade from now than the proposals in the 2013 Obama budget. Ron Paul would do better, roughly matching Mr. Obama. But if you look at the details, it turns out that Mr. Paul is assuming trillions of dollars in unspecified and implausible spending cuts. So, in the end, he’s really a spendthrift, too.
Is there any way to make the G.O.P. proposals seem fiscally responsible? Well, no — not unless you believe in magic. Sure enough, voodoo economics is making a big comeback, with Mr. Romney, in particular, asserting that his tax cuts wouldn’t actually explode the deficit because they would promote faster economic growth and this would raise revenue.
And you might find this plausible if you spent the past two decades sleeping in a cave somewhere. If you didn’t, you probably remember that the same people now telling us what great things tax cuts would do for growth assured us that Bill Clinton’s tax increase in 1993 would lead to economic disaster, while George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 would create vast prosperity. Somehow, neither of those predictions worked out.
So the Republicans screaming about the evils of deficits would not, in fact, reduce the deficit — and, in fact, would do the opposite. What, then, would their policies accomplish? The answer is that they would achieve a major redistribution of income away from working-class Americans toward the very, very rich.
Another nonpartisan group, the Tax Policy Center, has analyzed Mr. Romney’s tax proposal. It found that, compared with current policy, the proposal would actually raise taxes on the poorest 20 percent of Americans, while imposing drastic cuts in programs like Medicaid that provide a safety net for the less fortunate. (Although right-wingers like to portray Medicaid as a giveaway to the lazy, the bulk of its money goes to children, disabled, and the elderly.)
But the richest 1 percent would receive large tax cuts — and the richest 0.1 percent would do even better, with the average member of this elite group paying $1.1 million a year less in taxes than he or she would if the high-end Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire.
There’s one more thing you should know about the Republican proposals: Not only are they fiscally irresponsible and tilted heavily against working Americans, they’re also terrible policy for a nation suffering from a depressed economy in the short run even as it faces long-run budget problems.
Put it this way: Are you worried about a “Greek-style collapse”? Well, these plans would slash spending in the near term, emulating Europe’s catastrophic austerity, even while locking in budget-busting tax cuts for the future.
The question now is whether someone offering this toxic combination of irresponsibility, class warfare, and hypocrisy can actually be elected president.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 1, 2012
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