Accusations of sex harassment nothing new for ALEC’s man in Wisconsin

PR Watch: Assembly Majority Leader Bill Kramer, a stalwart of the American Legislative Exchange Council, has been accused of sexually harassing two women while in Washington, D.C. last week for a Wisconsin GOP fundraiser. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the 49-year-old Republican lawmaker physically and verbally harassed a 33-year-old female lobbyist at the fundraising event and another woman on the plane back to Wisconsin…

Kramer’s office staff released a statement indicating that the boss was checking into rehab, but a little counseling may not be enough. This is not the first time that this type of allegation has been made about Kramer. Republican State Representative Chris Kapenga warned his caucus that Kramer was a loose cannon after he engaged in similar conduct at an ALEC meeting in Chicago last August.

According to news reports, Kramer shrugged off the allegations: “I have heard that something happened at ALEC, and everybody I’ve talked to said they heard something inappropriate happened at ALEC,” Kramer said. “I haven’t run into anybody that saw something inappropriate happen at ALEC. Apparently, I had a pretty good time.”

Kramer is an ALEC pointman in the Wisconsin legislature. He supported Voter ID, telecom deregulation, anti-consumer tort legislation, the repeal of collective bargaining rights for state workers and more. He also supported radical restrictions on a woman’s right to choose, including a state mandated ultrasound before terminating a pregnancy.

The cocky Kramer, who likes to use Wisconsin’s new concealed carry law to reportedly carry a Glock semiautomatic onto the floor of the Assembly, will face a vote on Tuesday designed to strip him of his leadership position and ease him out of office.

OK, so here’s the timeline here: the Assembly GOP were warned that Kramer was a pig (and apparently a bit of a nutjob) in September of 2013. In January of 2014, they elected him Assembly Majority Leader (think Eric Cantor’s equivalent in the Wisconsin legislature). They knew that he’d been accused of sexual harassment before, but they went ahead and elected him anyway.

These accusations are so serious that it’s highly likely that he’ll be removed from his leadership post tomorrow. Wait, did I say the accusations were serious? I’m sorry, I meant the bad publicity is serious.

Obviously, Wisconsin Republicans don’t take this sort of thing seriously at all. If they did, Bill Kramer would never have gotten the leadership post in the first place.

WI GOP lawmakers will vote to remove Assembly majority leader in sex harassment scandal

Reuters: Wisconsin Republican lawmakers will attempt to remove Assembly Majority Leader Bill Kramer from his leadership post after two women accused him of sexual harassment last week, according to local media on Sunday.

The Republican caucus in the Assembly will vote on Tuesday on whether to oust Kramer, according to a statement released by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to Wispolitics.com.

“It is clear he has lost our trust and confidence,” Vos said in the statement.

Calling this “sexual harassment” is probably underselling this, since Kramer is accused of groping at least one of the women during a lobbyist’s fundraiser in DC. If that’s not some degree of assault, then it certainly should be.

Since the accusations broke, Kramer has reportedly gone into “treatment" for some sort of disorder. History shows (i.e., Anthony Weiner, Bob Filner) that this sort of attempt to turn popularity-deflating scandal into a sympathy-gaining disability doesn’t actually work so well. That these guys keep reaching for that particular escape hatch suggests a lack of imagination, options, or both. In any case, Kramer’s days as Assembly Majority Leader are pretty certainly numbered.

And the fact that Republicans are moving so quickly on this shows that they really want to get this out of the headlines as quickly as possible. One Wisconsin Republican scandal at a time seems to be about all they’re capable of handling. The party may not be all that comfortable about 2014.

[photo by bloomsberries]

To Republicans, sexism doesn't exist and the War on Women is just boys being boys

Steve Benen ticks off just a few of the reasons why Republican denials of a War on Women are laughable horsecrap:

• Republicans have gone after Texas gubernatorial hopeful Wendy Davis (D) over the details of her personal family history. One Texas Republican eventually conceded, “If this involved a man running for office, none of this would ever come up.”
• Mike Huckabee delivered a bizarre speech to the RNC in which he argued that Democrats believe women require government mandated  contraception access because women can’t control their libidos.
• Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) argued Hillary Clinton can be criticized for Bill Clinton’s Lewinsky affair 19 years ago because “sometimes it’s hard to separate one from the other.”
• Republican state policymakers continue to push new restrictions on women’s reproductive rights, including a proposed 30-day waiting period in Louisiana.
• Sean Hannity suggested yesterday the creation of an “Adopt-A-Woman Birth Control Program” as an alternative to guaranteeing contraception access in federal health care law.
• Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) wrote a book in which he argued wives should “voluntarily submit” to their husbands.
• Republican Senate hopeful Ken Buck in Colorado explained his opposition to abortion rights by comparing pregnancy to cancer, which is why he doesn’t think a woman should “be in control of her body.”
• Republican congressional hopeful Dick Black in Virginia opposes making spousal rape a crime and has called military rape “as predictable as human nature.”

All this is why the GOP chose a woman to respond to the State of the Union last night — to remind people that there are some women Republicans too. And Benen quotes New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman — another Republican woman — to explain why that’s not good enough:

It’s hard for me to phrase this politely. Sometimes Republicans think that just putting a woman up front means somehow that women are going to feel good about the party. It is not about the messenger. It’s about the message. And until we figure that one out, while it’s nice that we have a woman as a spokesperson, if the message itself doesn’t get changed a bit, it’s not going to work.

But Republicans are so invested in this anti-woman crusade of theirs that they couldn’t change even if they realize that it’s what’s costing them women’s votes. The fact that they feel absolutely comfortable saying these sorts of things in the full light of day is proof enough of that.

This has somehow become a core principle of modern Republicanism — that women are just children who can’t be trusted to make good decisions for themselves. Republicans can no more drop it now than they could get their arms around the idea that taxes are necessary.

They make the same mistake over and over and over because they think it’s not a mistake. It’s Republican Gospel. And if you find it offensive or demeaning, then they think maybe you should have your husband explain it to you, little lady.

But don’t expect Republican men to change, because they won’t. They’ve got a fucked up idea of masculinity — as evidenced by the religious right, gay panic, and an irrational fear of being “feminized" — so regarding women as fully human and equal somehow seems to mean that they wouldn’t be men anymore. Give a damn what women think and — Which-aa! — you’re “whipped.”

[photo by Lan Bui]

BREAKING: Fox News host Brian Kilmeade is a neanderthal

ThinkProgress:

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade today referred to his female coworkers as Victoria’s Secret models who can also speak.

During Kilmeade’s Fox radio show, he joked to his female co-host Alisyn Camerota that that the way he and his network pick out female hosts is, “we go into the Victoria’s Secret catalogue and we said, ‘Can any of these people talk?’ And they all could and they all went to college.”…

Hahahaha! It’s funny because pretty ladies are all dumb, not smart like Brian Kilmeade.

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