A New Front is Opened in the GOP’s War on Reason, Common Sense and (yes I am going there) Democracy
It is hard to wrap your head around what the GOP is thinking when it comes to waging war on Planned Parenthood, until you accept the reality that Republicans don’t care about anything other than making headlines and fucking shit up.
Gail Collins:
As if we didn’t have enough wars, the House of Representatives has declared one against Planned Parenthood.
Maybe it’s all part of a grand theme. Last month, they voted to repeal the health care law. This month, they’re going after an organization that provides millions of women with both family-planning services and basic health medical care, like pap smears and screening for diabetes, breast cancer, cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.
Our legislative slogan for 2011: Let Them Use Leeches.
Now, it is tempting to point out that “basic health medical care, like pap smears and screening for diabetes” is good for society with a lot of downstream savings for taxpayers – but Republicans honestly don’t give a shit about that.
So what is next then? If you can’t have a conversation about Planned Parenthood that brings in facts and evidence, what is left? What is left for Democrats is to wake up to the fact that Republicans have opted out of the American experiment in Democracy. Our system depends on people of goodwill being willing to discuss issues and arrive at decisions through a sober review of the facts. Those decisions require compromise and, at times a willingness to accept that your ideas has been defeated.
Does that sound like the modern GOP to you? Democrats have the willingness to accept defeat down pat. We’ve over compensated in that area, while never addressing the core problem facing our age…. that a significant number of our fellow citizens have simply given up on democracy.
Republicans are going after women in a big way. We get “forcible” rape, and now this:
I can’t believe there are any women left who would call themselves Republican.
The GOP is also introducing a “conscience clause” bill that will allow physicians to opt out of treating women who have the complications of abortion (like bleeding). Of course, it’s probably difficult to tell which women had natural miscarriages and which had surgical abortions, but whatever. I wonder if they are planning on calling it the “let the slut die” bill. “Pro-life” my ass.
And there’s more…
Disgusting. Seriously, where are the Republican women on this sort of crap?
Jinx pandora!
I find that bill astonishing. The fetus can’t live if the mother dies. So Pitts thinks it’s ok to let them both die?
Also, I love the name of that bill “Protect Life First.”. Life, in this case, doesn’t refer to the woman.
Republicans don’t care if the bills pass or not. They are just using them as wedge issues to drive wingnut fundraising and GOTV in swing states. They are collecting pro-choice votes to be used in 2012 campaign ads.
Remember all the flagburning and Pledge of Allegiance and gay marriage amendments in the ’90s that never passed, but were used to kick our butts? It’s all coming back again like an untreated case of the clap. Not to mention the bogus House investigations.
They have been running this same play against us for 30 years. This is what happens when you abandon the Dem platform and create an enthusiasm gap and hand the House to Republicans. But I guess we still have our tax-cuts-for-the-rich and individual mandate “victories” to cling to.
This is different, O2008. Flag burning played on faux patriotism – and most people agreed (though they didn’t understand the principle) that burning the flag isn’t nice. And while gay marriage was an issue then, I don’t think it would generate the same turn-out today. Yes, they’re trying for a new wedge issue, but I think they’ve chosen the wrong one.
When it comes to laws that redefine rape and laws that say it’s okay to let a woman die rather than have an abortion I think they’ve gone too far. After all, they already have the “pro-life” vote. Who are they adding to their their rolls with these bills?
IMO, these bills will drive out the portion of their base that’s always been comfortable with the phrase except in the cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother. This is more purging – another game of who’s most pure.
Let me go on record as saying that if we had some form of public option in effect today, and if Obama had let the tax cuts for the rich expire, Nancy Pelosi would be Speaker and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation about Planned Parenthood and abortion and redefining rape.
Compromise has consequences, and the consequences have arrived.
I think you’re right about that, Obama2008.
Sickening, isn’t it?
Why did you become a physician if you don’t want to treat people? Their conscience should be more along the line of following the oath and ethics of their profession rather than letting personal religious feelings cause them to do harm or allow harm.
They are free not to be doctors to follow their conscience. In fact I would prefer it.
Is this bill just posturing or do they really expect it to pass? Do they get credit for trying to pass the bill but no consequences because it isn’t actually enacted? Am I paradoxically being too naive to believe they believe their extreme “pro-life” beliefs while also being so cynical that I think it all just a scam?
Among other benefits to the GOP, it is a sop to try to keep the religious right and social conservatives on board. Check in with Frank Knotts and his commenters to see what I mean.
Remember they don’t need to convince everybody to win. They only need a small fraction to tip an entire election. Bush won in 2004 because an Ohio ballot measure against gay marriage drew a few thousand Appalachian hillbillies into the voting booth.
Republicans know this and will claw at any string they can use later to gin up hate against Democrats in a close race. They always need only less than 1%.
Plus, Republicans everywhere will have the chance to grandstand and call Democrats baby-killers (but only in districts where that would be an advantage to the Republican).
Keep hate alive!
Why O-ma, I come out of them hills to vote FOR gay marriage.
I hoped to sanctify the union between my brother and I.
My dear old maw bore no sisters for us to lie with before going to her reward from drinking tainted “dew”.
I still say this forcible rape and let the woman die tactic goes to far. It cuts out everyone except the Frank Knotts’ crowd. That’s purging.
Knotts and co. have always been part of the “pro-life” movement, they grew the wider base with these exceptions. Going after rape, incest and the life of the mother shrinks the group.
From a strategy perspective, is a “let sluts die” legislative agenda a misstep? Who knows. There are too many variables including the reaction/ non-reaction of Democrats. (This seems like the kind of thing that Obama could push back hard on, but I’ve thought that about a lot of things.)
The thing that is know is that the Republicans need to keep upping the ante to keep their based in the highly excited state that they need to be in.
Jason330 needs his mouth eased with soap
I went for about ten years without cussing. Having returned to cussing, I am amused by the fact that Republicans always comment on my use of the word “fuck.” The dipshits at DelawarePolitics are always harping on the fact that I am vulgar – but I can’t think of anything more stomach churning and vulgar then the policies that they regularly advocate. They faint over the use of the word “fuck” but they aren’t deep enough thinkers to fathom the brutal ass-fuck they advocate for people who had the nerve to be born poor, non-christian, or female.
Having observed them all this time, I can say without a doubt that Republicans are far more concerned with spoken vulgarity than actual vulgarity.
I went for about ten years without cussing.
“… and then on my eleventh birthday all hell broke loose.”
Close. My son’s 11th birthday.
Obama2008, that’s funny stuff. Thanks for bringing a laugh to the Mongo household.
This is why I love Jason.
“the reality that Republicans don’t care about anything other than making headlines and fucking shit up.”
In retrospect, the largest failure of the Obama election team was to opt out of sending the newly elected president to GA to campaign and knock off Chambliss. Had that 60th Senate vote been secured, and it certainly might have had with the president-elect appealing to Atlanta to turn out again and win his first battle for him, these past two years would have put our nation back on it’s tracks..
It had been a long campaign, both primary and general… Everyone was weary of campaigning. And it would have been surreal, like playing a regular football game just after winning the Super Bowl. And no one really believed the republicans would be so uncompromising… . and so it didn’t happen.
…and look at what we got. Remember that the next time.