Category Archives: Republican Party

Now They’re Saying We’re Insects?

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A few days ago a Gallup poll found a widening gender gap in swing states.

The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney’s support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.

Romney’s main advantage is among men 50 and older, swamping Obama 56%-38%.

One poll does not an election make, but this was a Gallup poll, and I understand Gallup tends to overstate Republican support. But instead of trying to reassure women voters that the GOP is not anti-woman, the freaking idiot Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus compared us to insects.

Well, for one thing, if the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars, and mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we have problems with caterpillars. The fact of the matter is it’s a fiction and this started a war against the Vatican that this president pursued. He still hasn’t answered Archbishop Dolan’s issues with Obama world and Obamacare, so I think that’s the first issue.

This is right up there with the claim, repeated many times on the Right, that the reason African Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats is that they’ve been snookered into staying on the Democrat “plantation” by food stamps and welfare. That righties don’t realize this as a slap in the face of African American voters exemplifies why African Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

Now Reince Priebus is saying the war on women is a media fiction that women, apparently, are falling for out of stupidity. And apparently our concerns are of no more importance than an insect’s. This is not reassuring us that you’ve got a clue, Reince.

Of course, there are women who do support Republicans. Women who diss their own gender are a common phenomenon. (I blame their fathers, but that’s another rant.) This columnist at the New York Daily News is an example.

The truly compelling — and frightening — finding from the Pew poll on the gender gap isn’t about abortion or contraception. It’s that women prefer big government solutions. And this is where feminism meets its match.

The percentage of women who favor bigger government providing more services outpaced men by 9 points in 2011, and has since at least 2000, with widest gap in 2004 at 12 points.

Women, it seems, are falling for the left’s “we’ll take care of you” economic paternalism, the insistence that women need the state, or wealthy taxpayers, to rescue them from a life of oppression, squalor and servitude.

The way I’d put it is that women are more realistic about their own vulnerabilities than men. They are much more likely to actively seek emotional support systems and to realize that sometimes they need help from others. Men are more likely to be in denial that they need anything from anyone else, which is a big reason why men commit 75 percent of suicides. When the fickle finger of fate points at men, they are less emotionally prepared to deal with it.

For most of us, beyond our friends there are big, ominous powers out there capable of either helping us or jerking us around. The government is one of those powers. Employers are another one. For some, Church is a third. According to Republicans, the only one of those likely to harm you is government.

But in their real lives, women are far more likely to have been jerked around and otherwise treated shabbily by their employers than by the government. Government can be annoying and unhelpful sometimes, but it usually doesn’t make your day to day life a living hell the way a bad employer can. And these days, even Catholic women are ignoring their Church on “women’s” issues.

So when anyone, including another woman, sneers about the left’s “we’ll take care of you” economic paternalism, it does not resonate with the real-world experience of most women. Sure, some fall for it, such as the Tea Party ladies who want to keep government out of their Medicare. But I think more women would vote for the “paternalism” of government over that of their employers when it comes to, say, why they are on the pill.

I don’t think most women look to Democrats to create a government that will “take care” of us. But when Republicans clearly take the side of corporations and churches over individuals, that ought to scare the stuffing out of us. And I think it is scaring the stuffing out of some of us.

And it ought to scare the stuffing out of men, too, but in my experience white men at least are more likely to be loyal to the powers that be. Yes, there are many exceptions, but on the whole I think I am right. This is another reason they are more likely to commit suicide when their trust is betrayed.

The fact that Republicans can’t seem to imagine why it would be bothersome to a woman to have to get a permission slip from their employers to get their pills paid for tells me these people cannot be trusted.

Government programs that benefit the poor, especially children, don’t impact the day-to-day lives of most women nearly as much as programs that give our employers more power to jerk us around or corporations more power to rip us off with impunity. And messing with our health care is the last straw. Steve Benen:

As we’ve reported on the show many times, the effort on the part of GOP policymakers at the federal and state level to undermine women’s health care is as severe as anything we’ve seen from a major party in many years. Unlike the war on caterpillars, Republican efforts are real.

I’ll spare you the full list of every bill in every state, but the policy offensive is, well, offensive. Restricting contraception; cutting off Planned Parenthood; state-mandated, medically-unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds; forcing physicians to lie to patients about abortion and breast cancer; abortion taxes; abortion waiting periods; forcing women to tell their employers why they want birth control, going after prenatal care, possible abortion permission slips … this is no minor policy initiative.

For the chairman of the Republican National Committee to dismiss concerns as “fiction” only adds insult to injury.

Eric Boehlert documents that righties are in massive denial about how much they are hurting themselves with women. They think we are insects? Let’s show ’em how hard we can sting.

GOP for Individual Mandate Before They Were Against It

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Awesome segment by Rachel Maddow last nignt —

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Maddow documents that way back when Republicans were battling the evil “Hillarycare” instead of the evil “Obamacare,” Republicans pushed an individual mandate to purchase health insurance as a solution for soaring health care costs. And this includes some of the same Republicans who today declare that the individual mandate is the end of liberty as we know it. If you are short of time you can skip to the 5 minute mark, right before the juicy bits start.

Update: Several news stories say that the justice’s questioning today suggests the conservatives on the Court are going to end the mandate. Steve Kornacki says ain’t necessarily so. Ezra Klein is less optimistic.

Wingnutism as an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

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Along with not being able to control their fear/loathing of women, wingnuts also are decidedly knee-jerk when it comes to government social programs. So it is that some Republican Senators (Rand Paul, LIndsey Graham, Jim DeMint, and Mike Lee) have trotted out a new plan to “save” Medicare by destroying it.

Dana Milbank writes,

If you’re thinking of answering this in the affirmative, you might want to pause long enough to learn what transpired on the third floor of the Capitol on Thursday. There, four prominent Republican lawmakers announced their proposal to abolish Medicare — “sunset” was their pseudo-verb — even for those currently on the program or nearing retirement. …

… For years, Republicans have insisted that they would not end Medicare as we know it and that any changes to the program would not affect those in or near retirement. In the span of 20 minutes Thursday, they jettisoned both promises.

And in an election year, too, although I don’t know if any of these four is up for re-election this year. Rand Paul isn’t, of course.

DeMint and his colleagues think the time to end Medicare is now — with a cold-turkey conversion to a private program, effective in 2014. “I think if Americans actually find out the truth about what we’re doing, it will be a very big positive for Republicans in the fall,” DeMint forecast.

The plan is to scrap Medicare and enroll seniors in the health care plan for federal workers. Exactly how this would save money is a mystery to me, although Rand Paul says it would save Medicare $1 trillion over ten years, a figure I assume he pulled out of his ass. It’s possible he doesn’t appreciate that adding all those seniors to the federal group insurance plan would drive up the cost of the federal group insurance plan.

At Thursday’s news conference, Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times pointed out that the lawmakers were proposing to do with Medicare almost exactly what President Obama’s reforms do for non-retirees: Direct them into private insurance with a subsidy for those who need it most.

Paul was flummoxed. “Uh, anybody want to comment on that?” he asked, producing laughter in the Senate TV studio.

DeMint gave it a try. “Medicare’s already set up as a government program, so we’re beginning to privatize with this idea,” he said. He said his plan takes Medicare recipients “out from under that manipulative umbrella of the Democratic Party.”

I’ve seen primary exit polling that suggests many seniors vote for Republicans because they believe they will “save” Medicare from the evil President Obama, who wants to “cut” it. Of course, the opposite is actually true. The President is trying to keep the program as it is but keep it solvent by putting tighter controls on payments to providers. On the other hand, all of the GOP candidates, including Mittens, have endorsed some variation of the Paul Ryan Medicare-killing plan. But a big talking point with them is a promise to maintain the current program for people already on it.

Now Rand, DeMint et al. are challenging the candidates to go even further Right on Medicare than they were already, which would be a disaster for whichever one of them is in the general election. That they couldn’t contain themselves and wait until after the November election to make this proposal makes them all look even more like lemmings than they did already.

Related: “The Case for Crazy.” John Avlon argues that the best thing that could happen to the GOP is to nominate Rick Santorum and lose in a historic landslide in November.

If Mitt Romney does finally wrestle the nomination to the ground, and then loses to Obama, conservatives will blame the loss on his alleged moderation. The right wing take-away will be to try to nominate a true ideologue in 2016.

But if someone like Rick Santorum gets the nomination in an upset, the party faithful will get to experience the adrenaline rush of going off a cliff together, like Thelma and Louise—elation followed by an electoral thud.

Part of the delusion that is “movement conservatism” is the belief that a large majority of the American people agree with teabaggery, and that only a fringe of elitist liberals stand against them. A teabag candidate sinking like the Titanic might wake some of them up, and might also be a warning to the small group of gazillionaires underwriting this nonsense that there’s a limit to what their money can buy, even in the age of Citizens United.

Today’s Freedom News

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So now Frothy vows to end internet and other porn (Note to commenters — remember to misspell “porn” so that your comment isn’t caught in the spam filter. Or just call it “santorum.”).

Santorum says in a statement posted to his website, “The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.”

If elected, he promises to “vigorously” enforce laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”

According to the Daily Caller article linked above, the way to “stop” internet porn would be to prosecute people who are receiving it. So if the Gubmint determines you are browsing in naughty places, the prosecutors might knock on your door, seize your computer and indict you for what you were doing with it.

Ain’t freedom grand? But one catch with this (hat tip Digby) — internet porn consumers disproportionally live in red states.

In 2009, Benjamin G. Edelman of the Harvard Business School published the results of a state-by-state study on the number of people who were subscribing to adult membership Web sites; Edelman found that eight of the 10 states that had the highest per capita consumption of online porn were states that Republican John McCain won in 2008’s presidential election. Utah topped the list, and other red states in Edelman’s top 10 included Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alaska, North Dakota and West Virginia. The only states in Edelman’s top 10 that Obama won in 2008 were Florida and Hawaii.

To be fair, this may be because other outlets for porn are less available in, say, Salt Lake City than in, say, San Francisco. But my impression was that porn is not the hot-button issue it was in the 1970s or so. See also Annie Laurie and Doghouse Riley.

The state of Texas, which tirelessly protects women’s freedom to not get abortions, has now gone a step further and liberated poor women from access to family planning services.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday that it will cut off all Medicaid funding for family planning to the state of Texas, following Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) decision to implement a new law that excludes Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid Women’s Health Program. …

… The federal government pays for nearly 90 percent of Texas’ $40 billion Women’s Health Program, and nearly half of the program’s providers in Texas are Planned Parenthood clinics. But the new law that went into effect earlier this month disqualified Planned Parenthood from participating in the program because some of its clinics provide abortions, even though no state or federal money can be used to pay for those abortions.

I’m sure the women of Texas are grateful.

They Don’t Learn, Do They?

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A Bloomberg poll says that 77 percent of Americans side with progressives on the question of contraception and women’s health.

Americans overwhelmingly regard the debate over President Barack Obama’s policy on employer-provided contraceptive coverage as a matter of women’s health, not religious freedom, rejecting Republicans’ rationale for opposing the rule. More than three-quarters say the topic shouldn’t even be a part of the U.S. political debate.

More than six in 10 respondents to a Bloomberg National Poll — including almost 70 percent of women — say the issue involves health care and access to birth control, according to the survey taken March 8-11.

Meanwhile, the yahoos in the Arizona legislature think that employers need to be informed about their employees’ contraception use.

A proposed new law in Arizona would give employers the power to request that women being prescribed birth control pills provide proof that they’re using it for non-sexual reasons. And because Arizona’s an at-will employment state, that means that bosses critical of their female employees’ sex lives could fire them as a result.

This is all about “freedom,” of course.

Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment.

“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.”

Yeah, I’m sure the women of Arizona will be fine with having to get permission slips from their bosses to be on the pill.

Meanwhile, just weeks after the Komen for the Fail debacle, Mittens promises to get rid of Planned Parenthood:

“The test is pretty simple. Is the program so critical, it’s worth borrowing money from china to pay for it? And on that basis of course you get rid of Obamacare, that’s the easy one. Planned Parenthood, we’re going to get rid of that. The subsidy for Amtrak, I’d eliminate that. The National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities,” he said.

I’d borrow money from China to buy Mittens some integrity. Or maybe even a brain.

Frothy’s Night

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For once Nate Silver was a tad off, but he had said it would be close. So Frothy has won Alabama and Mississippi, and it looks like Noot will be second in both and Mittens third. I tried to see some TV commentary on this, but every time I turned to MSNBC either Frothy or Noot were talking, and I’d rather have my fingernails ripped off than listen to them. But I suspect this isn’t going to help Mittens much.

Do see this cartoon. It’s a hoot.

Mitt Romney, Serial Liar

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It’s been a while since I linked to a Steve Benen post about the Mendacity of Mittens, but here is a recent one. See also David Bernstein and Paul Waldman.

So, yes, the GOP field is a pack of mutts, but possibly the most bizarre behavior of the lot of them, which is saying something, is Mitt’s lying. Yeah, politicians lie, but not like this. They spin, they stretch, they take stuff out of context. Romney just makes it up.

Bernstein writes,

I think we’ve seen, over the past couple of months, an important tipping point where much of the national political media now recognizes — as the McCain team did during that January 2008 St. A’s debate — that, in the Romney campaign, they are dealing with something unlike the normal spin and hyperbole. They are realizing that Romney and his campaign simply cannot be trusted, in any way, about anything.

They are also coming to realize just how carefully controlling Romney is about the media, how little access and information the media will get from the candidate and the campaign, and how hostile Romney is toward them.

And Waldman says,

So here’s my question: Just what will it take for reporters to start writing about the question of whether Mitt Romney is, deep within his heart, a liar?

Because he does this kind of thing frequently, very frequently. Sometimes the lies he tells are about himself (often when he’s trying to explain away things he has said or done in the past if today they displease his party’s base, as he’s now doing with his prior support for an individual mandate for health insurance), but most often it’s Barack Obama he lies about. And I use the word “lie” very purposefully. There are lots of things Romney says about Obama that are distortions, just plain ridiculous, or unfalsifiable but obviously false, as when he often climbs into Obama’s head to tell you what Obama really desires, like turning America into a militarily weak, economically crippled shadow of Europe (not the actual Europe, but Europe as conservatives imagine it to be, which is something like Poland circa 1978). But there are other occasions, like this one, where Romney simply lies, plainly and obviously. In this case, there are only two possibilities for Romney’s statement: Either he knew what Obama has said on this topic and decided he’d just lie about it, or he didn’t know what Obama has said, but decided he’d just make up something about what Obama said regardless of whether it was true. In either case, he was lying.

The narrative the Press has been going by is that Ron Paul is a flake, Noot and Frothy are bomb-throwing clowns, and Mittens is the relatively “normal” one. But the truth is Mittens may be the sickest one of all.

Game Change

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I’m watching “Game Change” on HBO, about the McCain Palin campaign, and it’s a hoot. If you’re missing it try to catch it when you can.

Update: Taylor Marsh writes a review with which I entirely agree. The movie was extremely kind to John McCain (played by Ed Harris), but it nailed Moosewoman (played by Julianne Moore, who will almost certainly be nominated for an Emmy for this).

It was priceless to watch Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) as the truth about Palin’s ignorance of the world dawns on him. He has to explain to Moosewoman what the Federal Reserve is and that the head of state in Britain is the prime minister, not the queen. There’s a great scene in which some foreign policy experts show up to prep Palin for some event, and they end up showing her a map of Europe and saying “See? This is Germany.”

See also Tbogg and John Cole.

And while you are at Balloon Juice, read about Fionn and Druid. Beautiful story.

The Morning After

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Noteworthy items:

Right-wing whackjob and former maha-neighbor “Mean Jean” Schmidt lost her seat in the House in a landslide to her primary opponent, Brad Wenstrup. Unfortunately, from what I’ve read Wenstrup also is a right-wing whackjob, and he’s expected to win in the general election.

I regret that Dennis Kucinich was redistricted out of his House seat. Even though his self-promoting grandstanding sometimes worked against progress rather than for it, his perspective is needed in Washington.

Republicans stripped an 86-year-old World War II veteran of his right to vote. But did they really intend to keep elderly white men from voting? I thought that was their strongest constituency?

Of Mitt Romney’s tepid showing, Dan Balz writes,

Nomination battles often strengthen the winner, but some take a toll. Rarely is there a straight line between March and November that predicts the outcome of a general election. Still, Romney is in worse shape at this point in the campaign than virtually all recent previous nominees.

Demographically, his image among independent voters, the most critical swing group, is more negative now than it was when the primary battle began. He could be hurt among women. He is in trouble with Latinos, a growing part of the electorate that is tilting even more Democratic than it was four years ago. He is not as strong as he needs to be among working-class white voters, among whom President Obama has been consistently weak.

Any other thoughts?