By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 10. 2012
“What Are Women For?”: The Conservative War On Women’s Sexuality
If you have been surprised to see an uptight prig such as Rick Santorum leading the Republican primary field in national polls, you shouldn’t be. Recent events have demonstrated that conservative positions on social issues are as much about repressing women and reversing the gains of the women’s movement as they are about saving the lives of the unborn.
The young people I saw at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington the week before last looked to me exactly like what you would expect from a bunch of college Republicans. They were dorks. They wore suits. Maybe some of the women’s suit skirts were short, but I was hardly scandalized.
But we learned last week that much of the conservative movement is still living in a different century—and I don’t mean the twentieth—with regard to women’s sexuality. Conservative bloggers were horrified that some young women at CPAC were dressed provocatively and engaged in loose sexual behavior with the young men in attendance.
CPAC has a well deserved reputation for being the time of year when earnest young conservatives unbutton their Oxford shirts, crack open a few Busch Lights and let loose. I see nothing wrong with that. But Erick Erickson, who runs the popular blog Red State, does. He wrote a lament that CPAC has gotten too debauched: “Young men, regardless of political persuasion or ideology, are intent on having sex, being boys, getting drunk—doing what young men in college often do. All to [sic] often there are also a few young ladies willing to shame their parents if their parents only knew.”
Erickson’s commentary is such a caricature of an avuncular misogynist that it’s amazing his post isn’t actually a parody. He almost literally says, “Boys will be boys.” But girls, on the other hand, are responsible for warding off boys’ advances. They, and they alone, are charged with protecting the conservative movement’s morality. If they don’t, they are “shaming their parents.” The notion that there is nothing immoral with enjoying oneself, as long as you aren’t spreading disease, doesn’t even cross Erickson’s mind. Nor does he consider the possibility that women and men are equally responsible for restraining their sexual urges.
Erickson also linked approvingly to Melissa Clouthier, a conservative blogger who plaintively demanded, “Have women so internalized feminist dogma that they see themselves in only two ways? Butch, men-lite wannabes or 3rd wave sluts who empower themselves by screwing every available horndog man?”
These posts, and criticisms of them, inspired James Poulos of the Daily Caller to write a meditation on Thursday about “What are women for?” He fails to answer his own question. Here’s the closest he comes: “Much good would come from a broader recognition that women have a privileged relationship with the natural world. That’s a relationship which must receive its social due—if masculinity in its inherent and imitative varieties (including imitation by quasi-feminized males of quasi-masculinized females!) is not to conquer the world.”
The item is so garbled I can’t really critique it, except to note that posing the question itself is absurdly sexist. (Rich Yeselson valiantly attempts to wade through Poulos’s inscrutable prose and explains what’s wrong with Poulos’ “hoisting [women] onto a grand pedestal far above the barbarism of men.”)
Meanwhile, the far more legible Ross Douthat demonstrated in Sunday’s New York Times how even the most seemingly reasonable conservatives oppose gender equality. Douthat’s column argues that conservatives must recognize abstinence teaching alone often doesn’t prevent unwanted pregnancies, and liberals must admit that access to contraception doesn’t either. That’s true, but for those of us who think that women should be able to avail themselves of a certain safe and relatively affordable medical procedure when confronted with an unwanted pregnancy, it’s not clear what the problem is. The problem, to Douthat, is that abortions are an inherent social ill.
(Unfortunately, far too many liberals, by saying that every abortion is a “tragedy” best avoided, have reinforced this widespread superstition. Hence, Douthat can pose as a moderate consensus-seeker by accurately noting, “Even the most pro-choice politicians, for instance, usually emphasize that they want to reduce the need for abortion, and make the practice rare as well as safe and legal.”)
Douthat claims that lack of access to contraception is not a significant problem and so liberals should stop pretending it’s an answer to our abortion scourge. He writes:
A lack of contraceptive access simply doesn’t seem to be a significant factor in unplanned pregnancy in the United States. When the Alan Guttmacher Institute surveyed more than 10,000 women who had procured abortions in 2000 and 2001, it found that only 12 percent cited problems obtaining birth control as a reason for their pregnancies. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of teenage mothers found similar results: Only 13 percent of the teens reported having had trouble getting contraception.
I disagree with Douthat. I think lack of access to contraception is a major problem. My evidence? The Guttmacher Institute found that fully 12 percent of women who had abortions cited problems obtaining birth control and the CDC found 13 percent of teenagers had problems getting contraception. Twelve or 13 percent! In a country as wealthy and socially advanced as the United States, it is remarkable that so many women would be unable to access one of the many contraceptive options that should be available to them. In the Guttmacher study alone there were 1,200 women who had to have an abortion because they could not get contraception. One would be too many.
How can Douthat see these statistics and reach such a different conclusion than I do? Because he doesn’t believe access to contraception is a good unto itself. If you believe, as liberals do, that women should control their reproductive organs and that all aspects of healthcare, including preventive measures such as contraception, should be available to all citizens of a civilized country, then lack of access to contraception is bad. Conservatives such as Douthat don’t share either of those premises. They believe healthcare is a privilege that should only be bestowed upon the wealthy, and sexual freedom is a social ill. If you think that, then access to contraception is a neutral or a negative. It is only valuable to Douthat as a means for reducing the number of abortions, which he considers an even greater social ill. Since he approaches the data on contraception from that perspective, then he finds that only a 12 percent reduction in abortion isn’t saving nearly enough souls, so who cares about the underlying problem of women being prevented from exercising their bodily autonomy?
Back in October Rick Santorum said, “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s OK; contraception is OK. It’s not OK. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” After reading what leading conservative pundits have to say on gender and sexuality this last week, it’s no surprise they would find Santorum appealing.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, February 20, 2012
“Extreme Positions”: The GOP Again Goes For The 1%
Fighting contraception. Stopping domestic violence protections. Extending tax cuts for the wealthy, while hiking taxes on the middle class. Welcoming white supremacists to a conference, but banning gay conservatives. The GOP has followed its extremist fringe off the deep end, leaving the rest of us back in the reality-based world, and befuddled. Their strategists warned them not to do this, but it appears that to the GOP, unhinged fringe issues are like catnip.
It wasn’t a surprise to see Republican luminaries, including Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell flock to major conservative conference last week that also included a panel session featuring a white supremacist. But it was ironic that this same event, the Conservative Political Action Conference, banned a group of gay conservatives from participating, accusing them of alienating so-called “family values” groups like the Family Research Council (FRC).
The banned group, GOProud, is hardly radical, even by right-wing standards — it split from the Log Cabin Republicans because it thought the older group was too concerned with gay rights. Beyond pushing the much feared “The Gay Agenda,” now just being gay excludes you from the biggest conservative conference of the year. Being a white supremacist gets you on a panel.
This year, CPAC banned the gays to gain back the FRC — and white supremacists came as a bonus. The leaders of the GOP — including a few aspiring leaders of the free world — came along for the ride.
But CPAC was just the beginning of what has been a surreal week for a major political party. On Friday, President Obama announced a compromise with Catholic leaders who objected to religious institutions being included in the contraception coverage mandate for employee insurance. The compromise, which spared Catholic institutions from providing contraception coverage while ensuring that female employees would still have access to it, was not enough for the Catholic bishops and GOP leaders. Instead, they announced that they wanted a rule that would allow any employer to renounce any insurance coverage for any procedure they find morally objectionable.
Anyone who has ever had health insurance knows that that’s an extreme position — allowing employers to pick and choose what procedures they’ll provide insurance for? — but it’s one that Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and the leaders of the House and Senate GOP jumped right on.
And attacking contraception is just the beginning. Republicans in the Senate are blocking a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act because it includes protections for LGBT people and undocumented immigrants. The Virginia House just passed a bill that would require women seeking abortions to undergo an invasive trans-vaginal ultrasound without their consent, and another that would put access to birth control at risk. The latter, a so-called “personhood” bill, is so extreme a similar measure was rejected by Mississippi voters by double digits last year — yes, that Mississippi. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who is widely considered to be a top candidate for the GOP vice presidential nomination, has said he will sign the forced ultrasound bill and may sign the “personhood” measure.
Finally, on another issue important to millions of American families — middle class tax cuts — the GOP gave in and joined the rest of us in reality. While Republicans had been making rumblings about repeating their disastrous stunt in December where they threatened to raise payroll taxes on working Americans because the cost would be offset by a miniscule tax on the very rich, they ultimately gave in — while leaving lower-profile but equally important issues of extending unemployment benefits and fixing Medicare payments for doctors in the lurch.
Where is the mainstream of the GOP? And why aren’t they speaking up? 99 percent of American women who have ever been sexually active have used birth control. 59 percent of Americans think all employers should have to provide comprehensive health insurance to their employees — including to women. Sixty-six percent think the wealthiest should pay a bit more to help all Americans get by in a bad economy. As of last year, 56 percent said gay and lesbian relationships are “morally acceptable” — and although I haven’t seen polling, I’d bet that the “morally acceptable” number for white supremacists is significantly lower.
Polls are polls and politicians shouldn’t govern by them, but shouldn’t they notice when they’re falling off the deep end? The GOP, in pursuing the agenda of the most extreme factions of its base, has left moderates within its own party and American common sense behind. This isn’t just bad for them politically — in the long run, it’s bad for the country. There are plenty of serious issues that demand our attention — jobs, housing, the energy crisis, crumbling infrastructure. But instead of tackling these, the GOP seems determined to fixate on a parade of dangerous nonsense.
By: Michael B, Keegan, the Huffington Post, February 16, 2012
“Severe Conservative Syndrome”: An Incurable Malady Detached From Rationality
Mitt Romney has a gift for words — self-destructive words. On Friday he did it again, telling the Conservative Political Action Conference that he was a “severely conservative governor.”
As Molly Ball of The Atlantic pointed out, Mr. Romney “described conservatism as if it were a disease.” Indeed. Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, provided a list of words that most commonly follow the adverb “severely”; the top five, in frequency of use, are disabled, depressed, ill, limited and injured.
That’s clearly not what Mr. Romney meant to convey. Yet if you look at the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, you have to wonder whether it was a Freudian slip. For something has clearly gone very wrong with modern American conservatism.
Start with Rick Santorum, who, according to Public Policy Polling, is the clear current favorite among usual Republican primary voters, running 15 points ahead of Mr. Romney. Anyone with an Internet connection is aware that Mr. Santorum is best known for 2003 remarks about homosexuality, incest and bestiality. But his strangeness runs deeper than that.
For example, last year Mr. Santorum made a point of defending the medieval Crusades against the “American left who hates Christendom.” Historical issues aside (hey, what are a few massacres of infidels and Jews among friends?), what was this doing in a 21st-century campaign?
Nor is this only about sex and religion: he has also declared that climate change is a hoax, part of a “beautifully concocted scheme” on the part of “the left” to provide “an excuse for more government control of your life.” You may say that such conspiracy-theorizing is hardly unique to Mr. Santorum, but that’s the point: tinfoil hats have become a common, if not mandatory, G.O.P. fashion accessory.
Then there’s Ron Paul, who came in a strong second in Maine’s caucuses despite widespread publicity over such matters as the racist (and conspiracy-minded) newsletters published under his name in the 1990s and his declarations that both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act were mistakes. Clearly, a large segment of his party’s base is comfortable with views one might have thought were on the extreme fringe.
Finally, there’s Mr. Romney, who will probably get the nomination despite his evident failure to make an emotional connection with, well, anyone. The truth, of course, is that he was not a “severely conservative” governor. His signature achievement was a health reform identical in all important respects to the national reform signed into law by President Obama four years later. And in a rational political world, his campaign would be centered on that achievement.
But Mr. Romney is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, and whatever his personal beliefs may really be — if, indeed, he believes anything other than that he should be president — he needs to win over primary voters who really are severely conservative in both his intended and unintended senses.
So he can’t run on his record in office. Nor was he trying very hard to run on his business career even before people began asking hard (and appropriate) questions about the nature of that career.
Instead, his stump speeches rely almost entirely on fantasies and fabrications designed to appeal to the delusions of the conservative base. No, President Obama isn’t someone who “began his presidency by apologizing for America,” as Mr. Romney declared, yet again, a week ago. But this “Four-Pinocchio Falsehood,” as the Washington Post Fact Checker puts it, is at the heart of the Romney campaign.
How did American conservatism end up so detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality? For it was not always thus. After all, that health reform Mr. Romney wants us to forget followed a blueprint originally laid out at the Heritage Foundation!
My short answer is that the long-running con game of economic conservatives and the wealthy supporters they serve finally went bad. For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy — a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush won re-election by posing as America’s defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security.
Over time, however, this strategy created a base that really believed in all the hokum — and now the party elite has lost control.
The point is that today’s dismal G.O.P. field — is there anyone who doesn’t consider it dismal? — is no accident. Economic conservatives played a cynical game, and now they’re facing the blowback, a party that suffers from “severe” conservatism in the worst way. And the malady may take many years to cure.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, February 12, 2012
“Jim DeMint’s Doormat: GOP Presidential Nominee Only Needs Enough Working Digits To Handle A Pen
The most quoted speech at CPAC this year was Mitt Romney’s, but my vote for the most significant goes to Grover Norquist’s. In his charmingly blunt way, Norquist articulated out loud a case for Mitt Romney that you hear only whispered by other major conservative leaders.
They have reconciled themselves to a Romney candidacy because they see Romney as essentially a weak and passive president who will concede leadership to congressional conservatives:
All we have to do is replace Obama. … We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. … We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.
The requirement for president?
Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.
This is not a very complimentary assessment of Romney’s leadership. It’s also not a very realistic political program: congressional Republicans have a disapproval rating of about 75%. If Americans get the idea that a vote for Romney is a vote for the Ryan plan, Romney is more or less doomed.
To date, sad to say, Romney has worked hard to confirm this image of weakness.
Nobody wants a president who acts as the passive instrument of even generally popular groups like labor unions. (Did you know that—despite decades of declining popularity—unions still have an approval rating of 52%? I didn’t until I looked it up.)
But a candidate who appeases the most disliked people in national politics? That guy will command neither public affection nor respect.
Mitt Romney badly needs his Sister Souljah moment. Instead, he’s running as Jim DeMint’s doormat.
By: David Frum, The Daily Beast, February 13, 2012
CPAC: “Nattering Nabobs Of Negativism”
“How many of you,” Scott Rasmussen asked the crowd at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, “have ever mocked or made fun of the president’s call for hope and change? Raise your hands.”
Most people in the Marriott Wardman Park hotel ballroom raised their hands. There were cheers and whoops.
“With all due respect,” the conservative pollster and commentator told them, “I’d like to say that’s really stupid.”
This time, there was uncomfortable laughter. “Voters are looking for hope and change as much today as they were in 2008,” Rasmussen explained, and “you ought to be encouraging Republican candidates, people you support, to offer that positive step forward.”
Rasmussen had put his finger on a major problem for Republicans in 2012, and conservatives in particular: At a time when the national mood has begun to improve, they remain nattering nabobs of negativism. At CPAC, any hint of a “positive step” was buried in vitriol.
This worked well for Republicans in 2010, because it matched the sour mood of the electorate. But now, with optimism and confidence finally on the rise, Republicans are left with an anger management problem. They risk leaving the impression that they are rooting against an economic recovery.
Take, for example, the speech to CPAC by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader. Among his criticisms of the Obama administration: It “made an art form out of the orchestrated attack”; it will “go after anybody or any organization they think is standing in their way”; it releases “the liberal thugs” on opponents; it “used the resources of the government itself to intimidate or silence those who question or oppose it”; it engages in “attacking private citizens or groups for the supposed crime of turning a profit”; it takes it on itself to “dig through other people’s tax returns”; and it has no higher priority “than picking on Fox News.”
“The president seems to have forgotten . . . that he was elected to be president of the United States, not the Occupy Wall Street fan club,” McConnell lectured, spitting out the words.
The unrelenting anger in the ballroom was an extension of what’s been happening on the campaign trail. In the week preceding the Florida Republican primary, 92 percent of the political ads were negative, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group. There was only one positive ad for Mitt Romney — and it was in Spanish.
The Republican candidates for president visited CPAC on Friday to deliver more of the same: “We’re going to win by making Barack Obama and his failed policies the issue in this race” (Rick Santorum); “History will record the Obama presidency as the last gasp of liberalism’s great failure” (Romney); and “My goal, with your help, is that by the time President Obama lands in Chicago, we will have repudiated at least 40 percent of his government on the opening day” (Newt Gingrich).
The dour message has contributed to low voter turnout and an enthusiasm gap among GOP voters — a worrisome development that the Washington Times’ Ralph Hallow tried to warn the CPAC participants about. “None of these things I see are particularly good,” he said during one of the conference panels. “Intensity and enthusiasm about voting is now with the Democrats.”
On the same CPAC panel, conservative activist Ralph Reed argued that “it isn’t going to be enough to be anti-Obama. . . . We have to have a forward-leaning, positive conservative reform agenda.”
But at the moment, the message remains backward-looking and negative. At CPAC, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) used his speech to decry a “totalitarian state that’s descending upon us” and to assert the existence of the administration’s “Stasi troops” — a reference to the East German secret police.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) claimed, “Our country has never been in as much trouble as we’re in today, and I’m not exaggerating.” Speaker John Boehner recalled his defiant stand against Obamacare on the House floor: “Hell no, you can’t!” And former presidential candidate Herman Cain argued that “stupid people are ruining America.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) even dismissed the significance of the death of Osama bin Laden, the fall of Moammar Gaddafi and the birth of the Arab Spring. They are “tactical successes” that pale against the “mess that Barack Obama has created,” she said.
On another CPAC panel, conservative commentators were asked to respond to conservative columnist David Brooks’s argument that Romney needs “to actually have some big policies” rather than “cruising on a bad economy.”
Radio host Roger Hedgecock disagreed. “We know that this economy is not recovering,” he said.
McConnell was similarly grim. “Last week’s jobs report happened in spite of the president’s policies, not because of them,” he told the gathering. “It’s the Obama economy now. And we’re not going to let people forget it.”
Such nattering is exactly what Obama needs.
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