Just a little something to back up my earlier post arguing that attempts to spin away the GOP’s War on Women only serve to prove it’s real.
But this is also the beginning of the nightmare scenario, where one moron says one very stupid thing and other morons rush to defend him because that’s what they think you do when conservatives get criticized. This is what the GOP has been trying very, very hard to avoid and most likely won’t be able to. You can’t spend years encouraging this sort of thing and expect to be able to shut it off when it turns out to be bad politics. These people are going to engage in insane and clueless sexism because that’s modern conservatism. It’s what Limbaugh does every day, it’s what rightwing blogs do every day, so it’s absolutely normal and not at all crazy to these guys. They’re going to keep doing it because they just don’t know any better.
And West is probably more popular in the base than Huckabee — meaning that even more people will likely come forward to defend him. Then others will come out to defend them. And cetera and cetera and cetera, until the unofficial Republican position will be that women who care about reproductive health and freedom are just loose, slutty morons being preyed upon by Democrats.
That’s exactly the wrong way to convince people you’re not waging a sexist War on Women. But it’s exactly what the base believes.
[photo by Gage Skidmore]
Right Wing Watch: On Friday, Allen West spoke with Steve Malzberg where he defended Mike Huckabee’s recent comment by declaring that “the Left tries to win the women’s vote by talking from the waist down” while Republicans seek to reach the hearts and minds of female voters.See, because women aren’t really concerned about all that contraception and reproductive health stuff — or if they do are then they’re wrong. Only Republican men like Allen West and Mike Huckabee know what’s important to women, so listen up and learn, ladies.
Asserting that Democrats want the government to be “the sugar daddy” and replace men, West said Democrats have been “caught guilty as always” and are responding by attacking Huckabee. He then went on to claim that the Left remains utterly silent when women like Malala Yousafzai are abused and attacked by the Taliban before declaring that “I’m going to be very blunt: the Left tries to win the women’s vote by talking from the waist down.”
But this is also the beginning of the nightmare scenario, where one moron says one very stupid thing and other morons rush to defend him because that’s what they think you do when conservatives get criticized. This is what the GOP has been trying very, very hard to avoid and most likely won’t be able to. You can’t spend years encouraging this sort of thing and expect to be able to shut it off when it turns out to be bad politics. These people are going to engage in insane and clueless sexism because that’s modern conservatism. It’s what Limbaugh does every day, it’s what rightwing blogs do every day, so it’s absolutely normal and not at all crazy to these guys. They’re going to keep doing it because they just don’t know any better.
And West is probably more popular in the base than Huckabee — meaning that even more people will likely come forward to defend him. Then others will come out to defend them. And cetera and cetera and cetera, until the unofficial Republican position will be that women who care about reproductive health and freedom are just loose, slutty morons being preyed upon by Democrats.
That’s exactly the wrong way to convince people you’re not waging a sexist War on Women. But it’s exactly what the base believes.
[photo by Gage Skidmore]
