“Revenge Of The Abortion Barbies”: The GOP’s Growing Terror Of Mobilized Women
Erick Erickson is the insecure frat-boy id of the Republican Party. Oh, sure, party leaders wring their hands about their problem with women voters, but deep down, we’re all “Abortion Barbie” to a whole lot of them. Only Erickson is creepy enough to say so.
In case you missed it: Erickson — last seen freaking out over women as breadwinners, and being schooled by Fox host Megyn Kelly — apparently had a panic attack today over Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, and decided to call her “Abortion Barbie.” That’s clever, and likely to do his party as much good with women as when Rush Limbaugh decided to call Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
But Erickson’s outburst comes in a week when Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus melted down over CNN and NBC plans for a Hillary Clinton miniseries, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell got so rattled by Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes that he disrespected her by attacking her dad, as though the girl in the race didn’t matter enough to engage directly.
Psychologically a lot of Republicans seem to have problems with women, with our real and imagined power. The conservative project of controlling us is coming undone, and their fear is showing. But politically, they’ve got even bigger problems, with women’s genuine and growing political power. From Wendy Davis to Alison Grimes to Michelle Nunn in Georgia (she’s leading all her GOP Senate rivals in the latest PPP poll), female candidates are giving Red State Democrats some hope that they may win more statewide power sooner rather than later.
So Mr. RedState.com let loose another well-timed slur to give us a window onto his fear and loathing.
Reince Priebus has so many fears: He of course fears Hillary Clinton, since the GOP doesn’t have a candidate who could win a primary who could beat her if she runs. He fears his party’s likely 2016 roster, which may not be as chock-full of wacko birds as the Michele Bachmann-Herman Cain 2012 slate, but will still have plenty of characters to scare moderate voters. He fears a rerun of the grueling 2012 debate schedule, where said wacko birds had more than enough time to hang themselves with their own words.
And so his silly attack on the Hillary Clinton miniseries is a three-fer, for Priebus: It’s a way to attack Clinton, to reduce the number of 2016 GOP debates and to declare fealty to Fox News. He took his complaints to Sean Hannity Monday night, and the Fox host supportively stroked his hand and echoed his complaints, declaring that the CNN and NBC miniseries will be a “love letter to Hillary.” Both Priebus and Hannity would like the 2016 GOP race to be contested entirely on the friendly terrain of Fox News, where candidates are received lovingly, and viewers are reassured their party will win in a landslide, until Karl Rove’s “Republican math” fails him and they have to announce the election of yet another Democrat. It wouldn’t seem to have worked out so well for them last time around, but I guess it’s better than going out into the big scary world where Democrats have a growing edge with the largest single voting bloc: women.
Then there’s Mitch McConnell. It’s way too early for Democrats to get overconfident about Grimes’ chances in Kentucky. McConnell will have a lot of money and loves to fight dirty. But there was something unsettling about his decision to attack Grimes’ father at the iconic Fancy Farms event over the weekend. “I want to say how nice it is to see [former Kentucky Democratic chairman] Jerry Lundergan back in the game,” he told the crowd. “Like the loyal Democrat he is, he’s taking orders from the Obama campaign about how to run his daughter’s campaign.” In fact the family is much closer to the Clintons, who are hugely popular with Kentucky Democrats, so McConnell’s decision to attack Grimes through first her father, and then through the president, was not just coded sexism but racism, and betrays his fear of a strong woman candidate – not just Grimes, but Hillary Clinton.
But at least he didn’t call her “Abortion Barbie.”
We all know the Republican Party is demographically doomed, but the question is how soon will its dominance with white voters become irrelevant in a multiracial America. It will be very soon if Republicans continue to repel white women. Depressingly (to me), white women went for Mitt Romney in 2012 after backing Obama in 2008. But in many states, younger white women and college-educated white women are a swing electorate that can accelerate the transition from red to blue.
So keep slurring Wendy Davis, and Alison Lundergan Grimes, and Hillary Clinton, Republicans! While you continue to insult and stereotype African-American and Latino voters, you’re making sure that the Obama coalition not only holds together but expands in 2014 and 2016.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, August 6, 2031
“Nothing Short Of Radical Inclusiveness”: The Power of Pissed-Off Women United For Equality
I’ve just begun my second four-year term as president of the National Organization for Women. I was reelected — by acclamation, I’m proud to say — at NOW’s 2013 Conference in Chicago over the July 4th weekend.
My vision for the next four years of activism begins with something that’s long overdue — the election of a women president of the United States.
And not just any woman. A feminist woman who will stand up for our issues against those who would turn the clock back to the 1950’s.
Women need to be thinking — and acting — for the long-term, not just for this year’s elections or next year’s. We need to be preparing for the next president, and the ones after that. That’s what our adversaries have been doing.
As the grassroots arm of the women’s movement, NOW is strong and getting stronger. We are focusing our power — the power of a whole lot of pissed-off women — identifying targets and achieving goals.
As we look towards the 2014 elections, we know that the stakes couldn’t be higher. The radical fringe that controls the Republican party is chomping at the bit for a replay of 2010, and this time they mean to take over the Senate as well as the House.
The Supreme Court has just made our job harder by eviscerating Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Now dozens of state and local jurisdictions, freed from having to pre-clear changes in their voting laws with the U.S. Department of Justice, will race to erect new barriers against voting by such “undesirable” voters as people of color, seniors, immigrants and younger citizens.
We are committed to restoring the Act, and correcting the Supreme Court’s sordid attempt to enhance the political power of those who already have so much.
Beyond our electoral challenges, NOW is doubling down on fighting for women’s economic security. We support the initiative launched last week by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Congresswoman Doris Matsui (D-CA), Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD), and House Democratic women to address real economic needs facing women and families: ensuring equal pay for equal work, promoting work and family balance, and providing access to quality, affordable child care.
It’s called When Women Succeed, America Succeeds: An Economic Agenda for Women and Families.
As Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro said,
Women are really struggling financially. They are looking for an increase in the minimum wage and equal pay, so they can raise their income, support their families and have a chance for a better life. So today, 165 years after the Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, we are launching a woman’s economic agenda to address these severe financial pressures. Raising wages for millions of struggling women is central to ensuring work pays for them and their families. Closing the wage gap, increasing the minimum wage, expanding educational opportunities and supporting women entrepreneurs are crucial to making sure that women — and America — succeed.
Of course, wage security isn’t the only linchpin of economic equality for women. We need access to the full range of reproductive health services, because, as this Valerie Tarico column in the Huffington Post says, “Anybody who says that talking about reproductive rights is a distraction from talking about economics is not running the numbers.”
Unintended pregnancies push women out of the workforce, keep women from earning their full potential as business leaders, contribute to absenteeism and lost wages and throw state and federal budgets out of whack. According to the Guttmacher Institute, every public dollar spent on contraception saves three dollars that would otherwise be spent on Medicaid payments for pregnancy-related and newborn care.
Another enormous economic burden facing women is the crushing cost of student loans. As Elizabeth Warren, the sponsor of the Bank on Student Loan Fairness Act has said,
Students owe more than $1 trillion in student loan debt — more than all the credit card debt in the entire country. But they didn’t go on a shopping spree at the mall–they did exactly what we told them to do. They worked hard, they played by the rules, and they got an education.
As I wrote in this column for the Huffington Post, because women are paid less than men are paid after college, student loan repayments eat up a larger part of women’s earnings.
Like a bad penny, economic insecurity follows women through school, in the workplace, at home, and far too often, in what should be a safe and secure retirement.
This year, we are rolling out NOW’s Campaign to Break the Social Security Glass Ceiling to add a good offense to our ongoing defense against cuts in this crucial program.
We are calling for a range of improvements in benefits for women — including a caregiver credit, so women will no longer be penalized in their retirement years for having dropped out of the paid workforce to care for children or family members; a higher minimum benefit for low-wage workers (who are, very disproportionately, women); modernized rules for divorced and widowed spouses; and equal treatment for same-sex couples and their families — and we show how to pay for it by requiring the wealthiest to pay their fair share into the system.
Simultaneously, our national action campaign to Let Them Put a Ring On It expands and deepens NOW’s commitment to achieving equal marriage rights in all states, at all levels of government. We’ll engage NOW’s chapter leaders and activists to press for passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA including the provisions not struck down by the Supreme Court. And we’ll ramp up our work with coalition partners in key states to reverse anti-marriage measures and pass laws recognizing the full rights of loving, committed same-sex couples.
As NOW feminists, our goal is nothing short of radical inclusiveness, as we work to build an organization, a movement, and a society that values diversity and upholds respect for every single woman and girl, no matter where she comes from, what she looks like, where she works or who she loves. We are stronger together, and united for equality.
By: Terry O’Neill, President, National Organization for Women; The Huffington Post Blog, August 5, 2013
“The GOP’s Limited Appeal”: New Data Shows Why The Next Republican Nominee Is Screwed
Immigration reform isn’t quite dead yet, but the political fall-out of immigration reform’s demise is pretty clear: the GOP rebrand is going to be pretty tough. Despite relatively favorable circumstances, immigration reform advocates weren’t able to drag the party toward the center. And if congressional Republicans can’t advance the rebrand by allowing losing issues—like a pathway to citizenship or background checks on gun purchases—to advance through Congress and depart from consideration in 2016, then the next Republican nominee will be left with the difficult task of broadening the appeal of the GOP.
Today, a new Pew Research survey suggests that Republican presidential candidates won’t find it easy to move toward the center. The poll shows that Republicans recognize the need for change—with 59 percent even suggesting they need to change on the issues. But when it comes to the specifics, most Republicans support maintaining the party’s current positions or even moving further to the right. When asked about the party’s current stance on gay marriage, immigration, government spending, abortion, and guns, at least 60 percent of Republicans said they thought the party was about right or too moderate.
Desire for change was greatest, if still very limited, on cultural conservative issues. On gay marriage, 31 percent of Republicans said they wanted the party to moderate. But 27 percent thought the party wasn’t conservative enough (do they want a return to sodomy laws?) and another 33 percent were satisfied with the party’s current stance. The numbers were similar on abortion: 25 percent wanted the party to moderate, but 26 percent thought the party wasn’t conservative enough, and another 41 percent were satisfied with the party’s current position.
On immigration, where the party’s current position is potentially less clear to voters, the Republican rank-and-file isn’t itching to get behind a compromise. 17 percent support moving to the left on immigration, compared to 36 percent who want the party to get more conservative. More generally, 67 percent of Republicans think the party is compromising too much or the right amount with Democrats.
Unfortunately, the poll offered fewer answers on economic issues, the center of much of the discussion of the Republican “rebrand.” The poll only asked about government spending, where Republicans are predictably all but unified—only 10 percent want the party to moderate, compared to 46 percent who want a more conservative stance and another 41 percent who are satisfied with the party’s current position. But the poll offers few answers on other economic issues, like taxes, Wall Street, or the various proposals for making the party more “populist” within its current ideological bounds. The degree of party unity on government spending, however, suggests that there might not be very much space for movement on economic issues.
With little Republican appetite for moderation, it’s not surprising that Rubio’s numbers have dropped. It’s also not surprising that he’s moving to reaffirm his conservative credentials on the push to defund Obamacare and ban abortion after twenty weeks. These numbers suggest that the Republicans won’t be eager to nominate someone pushing the party to moderate, at least on cultural issues and government spending. Chris Christie’s favorability ratings suggest as much: He’s only at plus-17, with 47 percent favorable and a sizable 30 percent holding an unfavorable opinion. That’s worse than Romney ever had, and it’s probably inconsistent with winning the Republican nomination.
The composition of the Republican primary electorate makes the challenge even greater. In the Pew poll, 49 percent of Republicans who participate in every primary support the tea party—just 22 percent consider themselves moderate. In last year’s primaries, evangelical Christians represented more than 40 percent of the electorate in just about every major contest, including relatively moderate Romney states like Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida.
Given today’s numbers and Mitt Romney’s difficulty securing the nomination, it’s highly unclear whether Republicans could nominate a candidate who wants to moderate the party. And if the primary process is unlikely to yield a candidate who can moderate the party, then the Republican House would be wise to preemptively bail out the next Republican candidate, and relieve them of the obligation to oppose a pathway to citizenship, background checks on gun purchases, or whatever else. That doesn’t look like it will happen. Instead, it looks like Republicans will need to count on the appeal of their 2016 presidential candidate and economic fundamentals to overcome the party’s limited appeal.
By: Nat Cohn, The New Republic, July 31, 2013
“The Notion Of The Shiny Object Theory”: Conservative Firebrands Want Scalps, Not Hollow Victories
Ornery first-term Republican senators and bomb-throwing conservative activist groups are locking horns again with the Republican establishment.
Tea Party firebrands want to defund Obamacare by threatening to shut down the government at the end of the fiscal year. Other Republicans decry this as irresponsible.
Insurgents say the Establishment doesn’t really care about conservative goals. The Establishment says the right-wingers confuse a difference in tactics for a lack of principle.
To understand the tension, it helps to explore the notion of the “Shiny Object.”
Mike Needham is the CEO of Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation. Heritage Action is the spearhead of the Beltway Tea Party. Needham is the sharp tip of that spear. He’s also the author of the Shiny Object theory.
Republican lawmakers want to please their conservative constituents, especially in these days of Tea Party primaries. To mollify the base, GOP members come home touting a conservative vote or a victory over the Democrats. Far too often, Needham says, these supposed conservative accomplishments are just “shiny objects” intended to distract conservative voters from the lack of accomplishments by Washington Republicans.
Needham first used this term with me while discussing the gun control battle of last spring. Republican senators went back to their districts trumpeting that they had defeated Harry Reid’s assault-weapons ban.
“There was no chance that an assault weapons ban was going to pass,” Needham tells me. Defeating the assault-weapons ban was a shiny object that Republicans could hold out to distract conservatives, providing cover for mandating background checks.
Conservative congressional aides, current and past, complain that this shiny-object method has been the standard operating procedure.
New power dynamics disrupt this.
On gun control, the Tea Partiers refused to let the shiny-object strategy work. Freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, raised a stink, accusing GOP senators of being “squishes” on gun rights. Outside groups ran ads in the districts of GOP senators, ignoring the assault-weapons ban and saying the real fight was the background-check provision crafted by Senators Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
The grassroots responded, and Republican members heard about it during the congressional recess. Toomey-Manchin failed.
Heritage Action, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, and Americans for Prosperity — with their broad networks of local conservatives — all make the shiny-object trick harder. Politicians are no longer voters’ only source of inside-the-Beltway intelligence.
So when a Republican congressman says at his town hall he has voted to repeal Obamacare, the member might get pointed questions from some AFP member or local activist who sat in on a Heritage Action weekly conference call. Obamacare-repeal votes are shiny objects, these groups tell the grassroots. They are not really going to change policy.
The insurgents demand actions that could get real results. “Defund it or own it,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “If you fund it, you’re for it.”
How can a minority party defund Obamacare? By threatening to kill all appropriations for fiscal year 2014. Republican leaders think this unwise, and they bristle at the suggestion that they’re fine with Obamacare.
“We’ve been fighting this thing with everything we’ve got for four years,” one GOP Senate aide told me. “We don’t have a difference in goals, we have a difference in strategies … The party continues to be united in the effort to repeal it, but this is just not the right strategy.”
But Needham and allies argue that the Establishment’s strategy equals giving up. He has a point. Many Republicans quietly say what my Washington Examiner colleague Byron York writes: The 2012 election was the last chance to kill this beast.
Needham says he’s just trying to hold Republicans to their word: “When they tell their constituents, ‘I will come to Washington and do everything I can to block Obamacare,’ if they don’t do everything they can … They should have to explain themselves.”
This appears suicidal to many. Conservative columnist Ramesh Ponnuru writes: “The chance that Democrats would go along … approaches zero percent. So if Republicans stay firm in this demand, the result will be either a government shutdown or a partial shutdown combined with a debt default.” And Republicans will take the blame.
But even if you can’t get your opening ask, the insurgents say, you can get something. Hold out until late September, and maybe Democrats will agree to delay the individual mandate — or delay the exchanges until the government thinks it can determine eligibility for subsidies.
These conservatives believe Republicans have been fooling them with shiny objects. This time, they want actual scalps.
By: Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner, July 30, 2013
“Beyond The Borders Of Logic And Reason”: The Threat Of Terrorism Is Still Making People Really Stupid
When you’re a partisan, you have a certain obligation to be, well, partisan. That means you have to put the things your side does in the best light and the things the other side does in the worst light. Their motives are always suspect while your are always pure, and if anything goes wrong it was obviously their fault, while if anything goes right they had nothing to do with it.
But just how far does this obligation extend? How far beyond the borders of logic and reason can you ride it? The unfortunate answer is, pretty darn far.
As you’ve heard, the administration ordered a number of embassies, mostly in the Middle East, closed for a few days because of some “chatter” relating to a potential al Qaeda attack. Republican Congressman Peter King said that this demonstrates that “Al Qaeda is in many ways stronger than it was before 9/11,” which is kind of like saying that the fact that the Backstreet Boys are currently touring shows that they’re even more popular than they were in the 1990s. And for some unfathomable reason, Rick Santorum was invited on Meet the Press on Sunday, and when he was asked about the significance of this potential attack, here’s what he said:
Oh, I think it’s a huge deal. And I think it’s really a consequence of the policies of this administration. I mean, if you look at Benghazi and what happened there. We had an attack on our embassy. We’ve seen really nothing other than cover-ups. We haven’t seen anything from this administration really go after the people who are responsible, or the network behind it. And I’m sure if you’re looking at it from a terrorist perspective, you say, “Well, here’s an administration that’s pulling back, that’s timid, and an opportunity to go after additional embassies.” So this is to me a direct consequence from what we saw in Benghazi.
Oh for pete’s sake. Now let’s think about this for a moment. What actually happened here? Well, American intelligence agencies, through whatever combination of techniques they’re employing, picked up information leading them to conclude that some kind of an attack or series of attacks was imminent. The government then decided to take action to make it more difficult for those attacks to take place, in a highly public way that no doubt had as one of its purposes letting the potential perpetrators know that we’re on to them. Unless there is an attack, this would seem like exactly what we want the government to do. Success, right?
But Santorum wants us to believe that this is actually a terrible failure! Sure, we may have headed off the attack, but just the fact there are still terrorists in the world who would even contemplate committing acts of terrorism shows how weak Barack Obama is.
Now, perhaps one should be asking, “Why the hell would Meet the Press think anyone gives a crap what Rick Santorum thinks?” Is he really the best person they could get to represent the Republican view of things? A former senator and failed presidential candidate, widely acknowledged to be one of the most repellent characters in American politics in the last couple of decades? What was the producers’ meeting like that week? “You know who we should try to book? Rick Santorum! He’s terrific! And such an important and influential voice!” “Ooh, great idea, Biff—get on it!”
Back on Earth, when you identify a possible terrorist attack and take steps to prevent it, that’s a good thing, even if there’s a Democrat in the White House. But I wonder what your average middle-of-the-road voter thinks when she hears stuff like this. Is she turned off by it? Does it not really bother her, or make even the tiniest difference in how she looks at the parties and how she might vote next time around? Now imagine if Rick Santorum had said, “This is certainly serious, but let’s give credit where it’s due—if what we’re hearing is accurate, we should commend the intelligence analysts for locating this threat, and the Obama administration did the right thing by closing the embassies as a precaution.” People watching would have said, “Wow, maybe Santorum is a more thoughtful, reasonable guy than I thought.”
But hey, it isn’t just Republicans! Here’s Candy Crowley asking Lindsey Graham, “Since the mission of terrorists is to terrorize, in some sense do you feel as if they’ve already won?” Because we temporarily closed some embassies! Of all the reactions to the threat of terrorism you could come up with, that’s about the least terrorized you could imagine. Something about this topic seems to turn so many people into idiots.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 5, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 