“Daydreams And Irrelevent Truths”: Republican Women in Denial
You have to feel just a little sad for Callista Gingrich. When she began having an affair with Newt Gingrich, he was House minority leader and on his way to becoming Speaker. He later told his soon-to-be-ex-wife Marianne that Callista would “help me become president.” And, remarkably enough, there was a moment or two in recent months where that seemed possible. Gingrich surged to the top of the national polls in early December, and he won a dramatic victory in the South Carolina primary. Callista, a former Congressional staffer, has surely entertained a few daydreams of being first lady.
Not anymore. On Tuesday afternoon Callista Gingrich appeared at the Republican Women’s Club in New York, an imposing gray, seven-story townhouse across the street from Rockefeller Center. The venue was impressive, but the event was not. The entire press delegation consisted of a producer from ABC News and a two-person team from a Chinese television station. The club apparently struggled to pull together its attendance of roughly sixty people. (One attendee told me she was called by the club and asked to come.)
The demographics didn’t augur well for the future of the GOP. The average age at the luncheon tables appeared to be around 75. I counted more women in pearl necklaces, more women in purple suits and more women with platinum blonde dyed hair (including Gingrich on all counts), than women who aren’t white.
Not a single woman I interviewed—of those who would let me, they were surprisingly hostile and generally unwilling to divulge basic information, such as their names—intends to vote for Newt Gingrich in New York’s upcoming primary.
You might expect this to be a depressing event for Gingrich for other reasons as well. The Republican war on women has severely damaged the GOP’s brand among women. Consequently, were the election held today women voters would provide Obama with his margin of victory, and a healthy one at that.
So you would expect the Republican Women’s Club to be a pretty demoralized crowd, right? Wrong. The table closest to me boisterously toasted the GOP and joked that President Obama had better start working on his presidential library.
When I asked about their party’s unpopularity among women and the reasons for it, I was met with nothing more than blinkered partisan denial. Some people simply denied the math of recent polls showing that Romney’s advantage among men is outweighed by Obama’s far greater advantage among women. For example, a lawyer told me she isn’t worried about Republicans doing poorly among women because “historically, for whatever reasons, Republicans have appealed to men more and Democrats to women.” Others simply denied the numbers, saying it all depends on which polls you look at.
These are irrelevant truths. Obama’s margin varies from poll to poll, but he consistently leads in all of them. And while women have always leaned more Democratic than men, they are currently leaning much more Democratic than men are leaning Republican.
On the substance of the issues that have made the Republicans look so retrograde to so many women, the majority in attendance simply spouted GOP talking points. “The press is making such a big deal out of birth control, which [banning] isn’t Romney’s platform,” said a woman who gave her name only as Delores. “[Insurance coverage] has nothing to do with birth control,” said another. “I’d like to have my eyeglasses covered.”
Even the predicament of a rape victim brought to the nearest hospital, which may happen to be a Catholic institution, generated no sympathy or compromise. According to Romney, Gingrich et al., a woman in such a circumstance should be denied emergency contraception (also known as “the morning-after pill”) and forced to carry her rapist’s fetus. “After you’ve been raped it’s too late for contraception,” Delores offered.
Ironically, the attendee who appeared to be most in touch with political reality, and the most reasonable on the substance of reproductive freedom, was Marilyn Reagan, a distant cousin of former President Reagan. “If you’re going to frown on abortion you need to provide contraception,” she said. “It’s the [Republican] men I’m worried about. They want to preach. Some of it seems religiously motivated.”
When I accosted Gingrich on her way in and asked what she’d be speaking about she said, “American exceptionalism.” I asked whether she would address the Republican war on women. “No,” she said, with a laugh. “Why not?” I asked. “Because I’m here to talk about American exceptionalism,” she said.
Her speech didn’t give anyone a specific reason to vote Republican, much less for her husband. It was a paean to America’s fantastic history. The only nominal connection to contemporary politics was the false assertion she frequently repeated that liberals and “elites” think America to be undistinguished among the nations. (This is strange since she mentioned liberal heroes John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. as having “testified” to America’s greatness.) “Nothing pinpoints you as a conservative more than believing in American exceptionalism,” said Gingrich. Presumably that means she either thinks President Obama is a conservative, or she didn’t listen to either of his two speeches to Democratic National Conventions. (Delores explained that Obama abandoned his belief in American exceptionalism upon taking office, and that he has explicitly proclaimed upon America’s unexceptional nature from the Oval Office, although she couldn’t furnish any offhand examples.)
The Gingrich campaign is not the only one afraid of addressing women’s rights. On Wednesday morning Sam Stein of Huffington Post asked Mitt Romney’s campaign on a conference call with reporters whether Romney supports the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The answer? Six seconds of silence followed by “We’ll get back to you.” Hours later the Romney campaign made a half-hearted attempt to fight back on the gender front by issuing a statement from Representative Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) saying Obama is to blame for the rate of unemployment among women. Of course, macroeconomic conditions are completely unrelated to the question of whether Romney, like Obama, supports full legal equality for women.
I asked Reagan whether she thought Republican men would wise up on the subject of women’s rights. “It will take a long time,” she said.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, April 11, 2012
“The 99 Percent Spring”: Deepening The Progressive Bench
In 1973, a small but powerful group of right-wing state legislators and activists met in Chicago. They gathered to form an organization for those who believe that government, in their words, ought to be limited and “closest to the people.” And since, thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts and Mitt Romney, we know that corporations are, in fact, people, it makes sense that Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart and Koch Industries are among the funders of this secretive and influential group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, known by its sweet-sounding acronym ALEC.
For nearly forty years, ALEC has quietly and successfully pushed its extremist agenda in state assemblies across the country. As The Nation and the Center for Media Democracy exposed last summer — work recently cited by The New York Times’ Paul Krugman — ALEC literally writes state laws by providing fully drafted model legislation to more than 2,000 state legislators. This corporate leviathan backed the recent national conservative push to further enrich the one percent while rolling back workers’ rights, inventing new ways to harass and debase women and suppressing the vote. They also wrote the so-called “Stand Your Ground” gun bills that now blight some 20 states across the country and are implicated in the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.
While conservatives are skilled puppeteers, progressives are great at mobilizing people and channeling energy for the big fights, whether it’s putting the crisis of income inequality at center stage, or even electing a progressive president. But ALEC’s astonishing influence exposes the progressive Achilles’ heel: a lack of a similarly entrenched, nationwide infrastructure of state and local policymakers and advocates that can create and support lasting change.
Sure, well-coordinated progressive responses throughout the country, thus far, have prevented more extensive damage to our democracy. Mississippi, for instance, soundly defeated a ballot initiative to legalize “fetus personhood.” Maine saved same-day voter registration at the ballot box. The people of Wisconsin have fought back against a relentless right-wing attack on workers’ rights and forced Governor Scott Walker into a recall election.
But playing defense isn’t enough. The progressive movement needs to build a bench that can play offense at the grassroots, local, state and national levels, and one that is positioned to pull every lever of power in our multi-layered political system. Without that, for every big union busting bill defeated, or every progressive president elected, there still will be hundreds of right-wing initiatives percolating through the political system, eroding our rights and unraveling our hard-earned progress.
The good news is that this is already happening, resulting in key wins on paid sick leave, the minimum wage and gay and lesbian equality at the state and local levels. “People are now looking to do what the right has done so effectively — coordinating ideas, narratives, legislators and activists to really push in a progressive direction,” says New York City councilman and Progressive Caucus co-chair Brad Lander.
It was in this spirit that Lander met earlier this month with other progressive city leaders from across the country, key allies and groups like Progressive States Network, New Bottom Line and PolicyLink, to discuss the creation of a national network focused on promoting local progressive action by sharing and spreading great legislative ideas. This budding network joins established organizations like the Center for American Progress, Working Families Party, Progressive Majority, and Center on Wisconsin Strategy.
At the same time, Progressive Majority director Gloria Totten and a range of allies are pursuing a complementary project called the Elected Officials Alliance to coordinate state lawmakers across issue and organizational lines. Ultimately, the goal is to link state and local officials to policy organizations, like the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN). All of these groups are aiming to build a counterforce to ALEC.
On the policy front, the centerpiece of the effort is an initiative called the American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange (ALICE), started by Center on Wisconsin Strategy director Joel Rogers. ALICE would offer model laws for both state and local legislators and support citizen-directed efforts like ballot initiatives, all based on the values of equity, sustainability and responsible government.
But much more is needed. To successfully counter ALEC, the progressive movement also needs troops on the ground to complement the work of legislators. While conservatives may have built the best movement that money can buy, progressives build movements fueled by what politicians need more than money: people and their votes.
That’s why the time is right for this week’s launch of the 99 Percent Spring, a new movement led by a huge coalition of progressive organizations — from MoveOn.org to the UAW. It will train 100,000 people across the country to tell the true story of how the one percent’s financial excess and political abuse destroyed our economy. Participants will be trained and equipped to campaign for change through non-violent direct action.
As I’ve often said, political leaders move to where the energy is. If we want to see lasting progressive change, we need to inject that energy, driven by ideas and strategy, into every level of the process. That’s what the growing networks of progressive legislators and the 99 Percent Spring are positioned to do.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 10, 2012
Arizona’s “20th Century Boss” In 2012: Using Birth Control? You’re Fired!
First, a bill that gives immunity to doctors who lie to couples about the results of their prenatal tests in order to prevent them from getting an abortion. Now, a bill that would give your boss the green light to fire you for using birth control. You think I am kidding? I wish. For a decade now, Arizona insurance companies have been required to provide coverage for contraception just like other prescriptions. But, because they saw an opening to score some political points, some politicians there are suddenly moving to take that coverage away from women and their families.
And we aren’t talking here just about exemptions for religiously affiliated employers like Catholic hospitals and universities. We are talking about authorizing secular, for-profit employers to deny a woman coverage for birth control if the employer doesn’t believe that she and her partner should be allowed to have sex without getting pregnant. Yup, that’s right. If the owner of the Taco Bell where you work opposes birth control, Arizona legislators want to give him a legal right to deny you insurance coverage for your pills.
Sadly, that isn’t even the half of it. You may want to sit down for this one. Arizona legislators know that whether or not her insurance covers it, a woman may get the prescription she needs to prevent an unintended pregnancy. They want to give her boss the right to control that too. The bill they are pushing would not only allow employers to take the insurance coverage away, but it would also make it easier for an employer who finds out that his employee uses birth control to fire her. You heard me right . . . to fire her. And I thought Rush Limbaugh’s comments were as low as you could go on this one.
The Arizona bill has, incredibly, already passed one house, but we can still stop it. We’ve seen what can happen if we make our voices heard. So, if you’ve had enough; if you think the decision about whether to have a child is one for you and your partner, not your boss and your senator, I urge you to speak up now. Tell the legislators in Arizona to stop playing politics with women’s health and put personal and private decisions back in the hands of a woman and her family.
By: Jennifer Dalven, Reproductive Freedom Project, ACLU Blog, March 12, 2012
” A Load Of Self-Serving Nonsense”: Be Civil, Not Like Those Jerks
With Rush Limbaugh’s toxicity becoming (even more) of a problem for the conservative movement, the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis is issuing a call for “civility” in our discourse:
Conservatives, of course, will point to liberal examples of hatred and bitterness and say, “they do it, too!” Both sides do this. Both sides should be more civil. Both sides should show more character.
But since I suspect I’m reaching more conservatives here, let me make the case that you should not allow yourself to become obsessed with the political fight. In this, I agree with Peggy Noonan, who writes, “[I]n their fight against liberalism and its demands, too many conservatives have unconsciously come to ape the left. They too became all politics all the time.”
At the end of the day — at the end of our lives — shouldn’t our life’s work — our purpose — have been noble? (Yes, political participation is honorable. Fighting for freedom is certainly honorable. But it is noble only if done in an honorable manner.)
What a load of self-serving nonsense.
This is a favorite defense for conservatives who find themselves in the unfortunate position of being forced to apologize: “I’m sorry for what I did, which happened only because I ‘unconsciously’ acted like a liberal.” It’s a neat little trick for sort-of accepting responsibility while at the same time heaping a considerable portion of blame on your ideological foes.
Limbaugh himself made good use of it in explaining his “apology” to Sandra Fluke: “I don’t expect…morality, intellectual honesty from the left. They’ve demonstrated over and over a willingness to say or do anything to advance their agenda. It’s what they do. It’s what we fight against here every day. But this is the mistake I made. In fighting them on this issue last week, I became like them.”
I suppose it’s possible that the conservative, in his natural state, is a peaceful and honorable being who only manages to debase himself after succumbing to the left’s proprietary tactic of non-stop politicking. Of course, Lewis and other people who argue that are implying that the liberals are the ultimate cause of all incivility in our discourse. And I don’t find that argument to be particularly civil.
By: Simon Maloy, Media Matters, March 6, 2012
Why I Wish Catholic Leaders Would Stop Saying Our Church Is Under Attack
On Friday the White House reached a compromise on the contraception mandate that can satisfy both reproductive health advocates and Catholic hospitals. For those like Rick Santorum, though, who have been loudly and repeatedly accusing the Obama administration of engaging in “overt hostility to faith in America,” this isn’t enough. But if this is really a war against religion, maybe it’s time to ask the people of faith who are supposedly under attack. People like me.
My expertise on this topic is personal. Mine is a family in which priests and nuns outweigh any other profession except nurses. My mom taught nursing and medicine at a Catholic college, and placed nursing students in Catholic hospitals for 40 years. Family, faith, and taking care of people—these values are at the core of what we were taught growing up. Perhaps that is why the harsh tones, the imaginary division of the world into two camps—the faithful under attack and the attackers—seems more politics than theology. Certainly it is extremely distant from the millions of lives that could be affected by these conservative outcries. This would merely be entertaining election year political shenanigans if there were not so many lives at stake. More than 11 million women use birth control; millions more will have access to it under the new law.
In fact, birth control use is nearly universal in the United States, even among Catholic women. One recent study shows that 98 percent of sexually experienced Catholic women will have used birth control at some point in their lives. Nearly 60 percent of women use birth control pills for something other than, or in addition to, contraception. For example for women at risk for ovarian cancer, taking birth control pills for five years reduces their risk of getting cancer by 50%. Should women have to explain to employers they need coverage for serious illnesses, not birth control, in order to obtain the medicine their doctor prescribes?
Yes, there is a religious freedom question at stake, not only for employers but also employees. But much of this is already settled territory. The wide use of contraception long ago opened up the complex nature of religion in the public square and already found resolution, well before these election year political attacks. The new Department of Health and Human Services rule comes years after advances in 28 states, where regulations similar to the HHS rule have prompted religious leaders and policy makers to create solutions that serve women and their families and faith-based organizations. Take, for example, DePaul University, the nation’s largest Catholic college, which has confirmed that its employee benefits include prescription birth control coverage. DePaul is not alone—the Archdiocese of New York provided contraceptive coverage for medical reasons even prior to a state law mandating it, as did Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Diocese itself now provides coverage under Wisconsin law.
I agree with the Bishops that there are cases when the religious freedom of an employer trumps that of an employee. For example, when I was a secretary at the Sacred Heart Rectory, I wouldn’t expect my health care plan to include prescription contraception because I worked for the church. Under Obama’s regulation, religious institutions, like the church I grew up in, are exempt. Synagogues and other houses of worship do not have to provide contraception. Period.
But when Notre Dame is the single largest employer in South Bend, Indiana, with Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center not far behind, how could we say, “Sorry, you should move if you want to have affordable access to these health services.” It is discordant with my Catholic and my American values that a receptionist at the local hospital making around $26,000 a year should have to shell out nearly $600 for birth control or cede control to her employer over when to start a family, when she is already paying in to her health care plan. The new agreement would take this difficult question off the table by allowing the women and men working at these religious affiliated organizations to receive the equal and affordable access through their insurers directly without engaging their employers.
It is about time we raise the policy debate in Washington to keep up with complexity of faith, health and family that most Americans already navigate in their daily lives. Most Americans are religious. Fifty-five percent told Gallup that religion is “very important” to them. But these same Americans are also focused on the health of their families and they are, in fact, using birth control. Newt, Mitt, Rick, and all the other gentlemen trying to demagogue this issue would be best served listening to the folks in the pews before launching any more pious screeds. Most of America’s faithful families aren’t under attack from a “war on religion.” I for one don’t feel under attack—except perhaps from a small group of Republican presidential candidates who keep ignoring the voices, values, and lives of women like me.
By: Tara McGuinness, The New Republic, February 13, 2012
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