I can’t tell you how excited I am at the prospect of a debate over birth control in the year 2010. Do these religious nuts not have anything better to do than to fight battles they lost decades ago? How about a stirring debate on heliocentrism or phlogiston?
Although I guess we should appreciate the irony that the wingnuts spent the last two years screaming that Obamacare would cut your benefits and lead to rationing, and then after it passes, the first thing the religious nutters try to do is… cut the benefits of half the nation.
CalD
Given that pretty much every serious problem that we have in the world today is rooted in the fact that there are too damned many people on our planet, maybe we should have that discussion again.
TR
It’s all part of the right’s grand electoral strategy. First, they succeeded in driving away blacks and Latinos. Next, they’ll make sure women run screaming away from them. Then a warm kiss to Wall Street to alienate working-class folks, and so on and such and such.
Grover Norquist apparently wants to shrink the Republican Party so it’s small enough to be drowned in a bathtub.
slag
Personally, I’m ready to go to war against all of modern medical science.
Penicillin, you’re on notice.
Comrade Jake
I’m gonna go with NO on that one.
Tom Hilton
Yeah, that’s a fight that’ll be fun to have. Even people like Bart Stupak understand that contraceptives prevent abortions.
Davis X. Machina
Save yourself a lot of time. When you read articles on this, or any related topic…
sed 'woman/s/pro-life/anti-sex/g'Unix is your friend… you can have my shell prompt when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
rekster
This seems like a reissue of the movie Idiocracy. When will it end?
demo woman
Should we have a collection and send them copies of the movie Revolutionary Road? They would probably watch it thinking it was a film about Nathan Hale.
beltane
Maybe they are trying to make sex heroic again. When using birth control becomes an act of civil disobedience, we will all be Gandhis.
Allison W.
OT: I miss Sully. He’s on vacation.
Annie
What debate? To Christian conservatives no sex until marriage…Birth control promotes sex. It has nothing to do with reproductive health. Cut entitlements and force young girls to have babies. They have to learn to live with the consequences — that will teach them.
I hope conservatives add this to their platform. Let them try to take the country back to the 1950s when minorities knew their place, sex was dirty, and young girls who got pregnant were hidden away. A real crowd pleaser.
Adam Collyer
From the article…
Oh, well if THOSE groups are resisting it, it obviously won’t happen….
Someone should ask if they know what “resisting” means. Because, outside of talking about it, they literally have no control over the matter.
Martin
@Allison W.: I don’t. Wiegel and Frum are an interesting combination. I’ll get tired of Frum before Sully gets back, unlikely I’ll get tired of Wiegel.
slag
@Adam Collyer: I love the Catholics trying to flex their political muscle when it comes to people’s sex lives. You’d think the word “shame” was nowhere to be found in their vocabulary.
demo woman
Republicans never point out the negative. I can see the banner now V.i.a.g.r.a for all.
J
I hope you’re right about this being a big loser for the Republicans, John, but I’m not so confident. There is no sphere of human life about which people are more hypocritical. ‘My affair with someone not my spouse is different from other people’s and not really adultery’, ‘My doing X with a member of the same sex is not homosexuality’, ‘My abortion…’ ‘My use of contraception…’ People who think like that have trouble not surrendering the moral high ground to the anti-sex zealots, even though their own behavior (I mean behavior and not single episodes) would make you think they disagree. Hope I’m wrong.
Adam Collyer
@slag:
As a “Cafeteria” Catholic, I assure you that the rest of us are equally amused. :)
Rosalita
oh yeah, women are just supposed to not have sex.
ditto demo woman, bastards will always cover v1agra.
but who are those men supposed to have sex with if the women are supposed to keep their legs closed?
Barry
John Cole: “Although I guess we should appreciate the irony that the wingnuts spent the last two years screaming that Obamacare would cut your benefits and lead to rationing, and then after it passes, the first thing the religious nutters try to do is… cut the benefits of half the nation.”
It’s really, really, *really* hard to find some issue
where the right’s screaming about the evil intent of
liberals in a certain issue is not a sure sign that the
right is planning on stuff just like it:
Draft-dodging, tax evading, screwing anything
screwable within arm’s reach, corruption, lying,
…., the list goes on.
Barry
(crap) the comments form for firefox isn’t putting in the linebreaks, so I put in my own; sorry for the hideous formatting.
I blame Rosie :)
The Dangerman
@Rosalita:
Inside airports or outside airports?
demo woman
If GA folks are around, I still haven’t made up my mind on attorney general. I’m leaning towards Teilhet but probably for the wrong reasons. His ad which has been high lighted everywhere is devastating. Any ideas?
AB
For them, it’s the same thing. I think that they believe that people being allowed to have sex for pleasure is wrong, and whether you have contraceptives or condom use or abortions, it’s all the same thing. The minutiae of each debate are just meant to obscure it.
Lurker
@Rosalita:
Don’t ask, don’t tell. ;-D
EDIT — damn, The Dangerman beat me to that one.
CADoc
Once again, these folks confuse the world view of about 20% of the population for a mandate. Everyone else out here in The Real World can see the benefit of using contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancy and avoid abortions. I hope Republicans go after this with gusto. It’ll be a real crowd pleaser!
David in NY
“how excited I am at the prospect of a debate over birth control”
Me too, except that the debaters are not going to be you, or me, but the likes of Harry Reid. Pretty good parliamentarians make horrible debaters. Elected Democrats are the only group I can think of that could actually lose this debate.
slag
@Adam Collyer: You’d almost have to be. Dealing more directly with the leadership’s proclivities probably engenders a healthy sense of humor. And an ability to overcome some wicked skeevy feelings.
Ash Can
In all seriousness, this issue is a non-starter. As the article says, contraceptives don’t provoke anywhere near the controversy that abortion does, and are very popular. I don’t see these yahoos getting anywhere with this, but they should provide a fair amount of entertainment if they try.
hal
Not even birth control for the hookers conservatives use?
slag
@David in NY:
Also, an anti-choice Mormon.
Davis X. Machina
Can I just promise not to have any fun?
kay
I keep telling people that anti-abortion activists include the birth control pill in their definition of “abortion” but no one listens.
Read the insert when you buy the product. There is a chance that birth control pills can act as an extremely early abortificant.
Listen to them. When they say “life begins at conception” they mean just that.
No rape exceptions, no incest exceptions and no birth control pills.
Their position doesn’t make any sense unless all of it’s outlawed, because it’s all “murder”. Once you define “life” as “at conception” that’s all she wrote.
This battle started over contraception, not abortion. The first Connecticut “privacy” case that eventually led to Roe was on contraception, not abortion.
They want to go back there.
kay
@Ash Can:
I take them seriously.
The first case in the line that that eventually led to Roe was over contraception, not abortion.
It wasn’t that long ago.
QuaintIrene
As my Mom always said, if men could get pregnant, abortion and birth control would be part of the Bill of Rights.
Roger Moore
@Rosalita:
Other men who
spread their legsadopt a wide stance in airport restrooms. SATSQ.maus
Lord help you if the GUBMINT tells them what to do about medicare or their erection-pills but we will give these girls “ABORTION ENABLERS” OVER MY DEAD BODY.
jl
@J:
True, people can be hypocrites, but when you come after contraception, you are coming after something very useful for a recreational activity high on the list for most people.
The public may be torn about abortion, it is not torn about contraception. The surveys I have seen indicate that it is considered a very good idea.
From the article:
‘ Eighty percent of Americans say pharmacists should be required to dispense birth control regardless of their own opinions on the morality of premarital or non-reproductive sex. Three-quarters of American Catholics disagree with their Church’s anti-contraception policy. A recent survey of evangelical leaders—the family values crowd—found that 90 percent of them consider hormonal birth control and condoms “morally acceptable.”
The business community, too, is enthusiastic. A new report from the National Business Group on Health found that most companies would save money in the long run by providing their employees with co-pay-free birth control ‘
Unless the sexual hysteria, gynophobia and mysogyny nutjob caucus can focus on availability to minors, I don’t see this as a popular cause.
I hope the wingnuts go nuts over it.
Rosalita
@QuaintIrene:
you said it!
General Stuck
@Rosalita:
Oh they can have sex, but must watch a Lawrence Welk rerun first and pay attention to the champagne music rhythm section.
Rosalita
@jl:
still makes me want to do some bishop punching
Midnight Marauder
@J:
If they were planning to have this fight over abortion (again), I think there would some credence to what you’re talking about here. But people LOVE birth control. All kinds of people: liberals, conservatives, young, old, atheists, non-Catholic Jesus freaks, people who breathe oxygen. If they go after birth control, they will be slaughtered.
In the short run AND in the long run.
kay
@Ash Can:
To clarify, I’m not talking about “the moderates”. There’s a person who comments here who is “pro life” (I can’t remember his name) but he makes a good argument and wholly supports birth control.
But the real fundies? Oh, yeah. They’re gunning for it. They have to, if they want to be consistent.
It always makes me laugh when real fundies are asked about a rape or incest exception. Of course they don’t support that.
When they say “at conception”, they mean it. 3 days post-conception = a three year old. No difference.
Scott
but who are those men supposed to have sex with if the women are supposed to keep their legs closed?
The line now is “Wives can abstain.” The line later will be “Wives have to please their husbands. Or else.”
jl
I have mixed feelings about the National Business Group on Health endorsement.
I think society should allow people to live well rounded lives, which would include having kids and a parent at home if they want to do that. But the US version of economic progress has almost destroyed that option for many families.
I am so cynical, if the business community likes free pills, I smell a rat trying to keep people working in the US corporate satanic mills 24/7. I guess I am getting very cynical. Of course, making women pay for contraception is not a good way to encourage old timey families with a parent at home. Forcing women to get pregnant whether they want to or not leads to brutal and dysfunctional tin pot patriarchy (which I think is the aim of the prudes).
Brian J
This might be the sort of wedge issue that actually helps the Democrats. As most would say, the public largely supports access to birth control, so the idea of making it more difficult isn’t going to go over well, particularly with non-senior women, who are a vital Democratic constituency. The fact that they are bound to make their case in a less-than-subtle manner is only to dig them in deeper.
demo woman
Republicans will not frame the issue about birth control for all. They will run ads with 13 years getting prescriptions for birth control pills and the public will gasp.
Be ready cuz it’s coming.
Ash Can
@kay: There’s “long ago,” and there’s “long ago.” Back in the days of Roe, contraceptives really were controversial, mainly because the unspoken issue behind them was the recreational aspect of sex, as opposed to the dutiful/procreational aspect that it had been whitewashed with. People started being more honest about the nature of sex, and the acceptance of contraceptives followed closely behind. This was also the time when The Pill made its debut, which had a tremendous impact on attitudes toward sex and gender relations, as well as women’s rights in general.
Yes, it was only a few decades, and some areas of the nation are more advanced than others in this regard. But I believe that the changes in America society as a whole are great enough that these stone-age yahoos won’t gain any nationwide traction on this issue.
Robert M.
De-lurking here for just a moment…
I understand where you’re going with this, but it’s not exactly irony. The wingnut hissy fit over “rationing” was predicated on the idea that people they don’t approve of (too poor) might get healthcare; now they’re upset that people they don’t approve of (too young, too interested in sex, or both) might get healthcare. Plus ca change.
jl
@demo woman: Tales of 13 year old orgies after school because of health care reform would be the way to go to get some frisson going among the public.
But we have already been there with debates over school clinics. Did that cause a huge fuss, or create openings for the Medieval Party? That is an honest question, because I do not know whether it did or not.
General Stuck
The sin flowed like a river of baby jeevuses.
HumboldtBlue
@demo woman:
I’ll echo this because it was my first thought as well. This will be framed as just another liberal-atheist plot to get young teenaged girls to put out for pervy liberal men and the thugs from ACORN.
They will make it a scare tactic ….
“Do you know what they are teaching your daughter in 6th grade health class? DO YOU!!!!”
burnspbesq
Trust me, I am fully aware of the irony in saying that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops doesn’t speak for Catholics. But on this issue, they don’t – and if they ever showed their faces in a real parish church on Sunday, they would get an earful.
My Bishop is even more of an idiot than my Congressman – and I live in CA-40 (Royce), so that’s saying something.
Upper West
This should be a winning issue — privacy is the key and the pro-choice movement would have done much better if BC and abortion had always been linked.
Upper West
This should be a winning issue — privacy is the key and the pro-choice movement would have done much better if BC and abortion had always been linked.
kay
@Ash Can:
I elaborated, but it went to moderation, because (like an idiot) I keep using a forbidden word when discussing this.
I hope you’re right.
I just think there’s a huge difference between “moderate” anti-abortion people (one of whom comments here, I can’t remember his name, but he’s pro-birth control, and reasonable and sane) and fundamentalist religious.
It’s just world’s apart. When they say “life begins at conception” they mean exactly that. No exceptions. Birth control pills are included in the ban.
burnspbesq
@Rosalita:
Wait – you thought “The Handmaid’s Tale” was fiction???
Silly girl. It’s an instruction manual.
Ash Can
@jl: And this is an important point too — contraceptives are way, way cheaper than prenatal care, childbirth, post-natal care, and pediatrics. Insurance companies like contraceptives, because they prevent them from having to shell out (lots) more dough. Given the amount of weight these guys can throw around, I don’t see some raggedy-ass band of misogynists prevailing over them.
@Midnight Marauder: Believe me, Catholics like contraceptives too. Just not the bishops.
QuaintIrene
In the early to mid-1850’s, men’s fashions changed. Men’s trousers had been buttoned up the side. Now they changed to the front-the ‘fly’, if you will. Certainly much more convenient. Too convenient for some. These pants were condemned by many pastors as leading too easily to sin. And many a sermon was preached about these ‘fornication pants.”
Plus ca change.
General Stuck
Do away with contraceptives and keep Viaagra. I don’t think so.
ksmiami
No Sullivans blog is totally painful today… Except for Larison, name one conservative who is right about anything… Just a bunch of pampered white assholes
SIA
@General Stuck: You’re cracking me up today General.
@Robert M.: And then when all the poor white and brown people do have babies, these cretins are going to be screaming about whites becoming the minority, the cost of taking care of the poor, welfare moms and so on. Vicious cycle, mission accomplished.
DonkeyKong
Pampered white assholes? Is David Vitter guest blogging at Sully’s?
Rosalita
@General Stuck:
yeah, they never have any issues with the little blue pills
John Cole
I think that may be the funniest thing you’ve said on this blog, Stuck.
Ash Can
@kay: Oh, absolutely, they mean exactly that. But that doesn’t proscribe barrier devices. Also, in the case of the Catholic Church, the official line is that sex should be allowed to result in conception with no artificial interference, hence no birth control of any kind is allowed other than the rhythm method. And we all know how well the laity observes that regulation.
I don’t blame you for being nervous about this, believe me. It’s just that I believe the controversies associated with abortion and contraception, while sharing the same roots, do not share anywhere near the same fervor.
El Cid
Can’t we just stone to death any woman who has sex without their Baptist preacher’s or Catholic priest’s permission?
General Stuck
@John Cole: Gracias amigo.
kay
@DonkeyKong:
The only thing I really like about Andrew Sullivan is that he’s quirky and human. The whole Trig Palin thing, for example. Ahem.
He’s obsessive and stubborn and a little ridiculous, like a real person. He makes huge embarrassing blunders. He doesn’t sound like a professional pundit.
His guest bloggers sound like professional pundits. They’re declarative and so self-assured. Pronouncements. It’s a bore. It seems like there are millions of professional pundits. I know it’s hundreds, but it seems like millions.
Bubblegum Tate
@demo woman:
Also: “UNIONIZED schoolteachers showing 10-year-olds how to use condoms!”
kay
@Ash Can:
No offense, but that is not comforting.
Kidding, just kidding! I understand your point.
When I read the insert on a birth control package (once! I actually read inserts) it occurred to me that if Roe were overturned I could make an argument that the pill was included in that ban. It can be an abortificant. That actual language is in there. It’s not a good argument, but it’s imaginable. I could make it with a straight face.
So I’m vigilant, or paranoid, when they start with this.
Jacquelyn
RANT ALERT (I refuse to mark individual thoughts with paragraph breaks!) Have you ever gotten whiplash from having too many reactions all at once to something you are reading? It seems the first reaction was the best (and since I didn’t read all the comments, I apologize for any duplication). Did we or did we not all take a fun ride with the racist tanning salon tax story this morning? So, taxing a tanning salon is racist, but requiring the provision of contraceptives free of copay to women is … what IS the word I’m looking for? Wrong? Sinful? Too pragmatic for words? And to which part are the anti-contraceptive groups objecting? The part where these methods “prevent” a later health condition (and pre HCR, a pre-existing condition for the most larcenous of Insurers) called pregnancy? Or is it the cost of the pill and other methods baked into the premiums? Or is it the whole pre-marital coition that the Church finds so titillating? (I know P Schlafly is busy with her handicapped son so she is probably not available to adopt all the accidental children.) I’m beginning to think it’s an accidental world.
Wile E. Quixote
@John Cole
How long ago was “Confederate History Month”? Oh wait, you’re asking one of those “rhetorical questions”. Damn, those always trip me up.
Silver Owl
There is not one thing about a woman’s personal being that wingnuts will not invade. Women are not sentient human beings to today’s conservative.
Ironically enough they want babies but they regularly treat people like human garbage and give little to no thought about killing them for their own egos and silly ideology.
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
I think the biggest difference is that the anti-abortion propaganda is a lot more effective. You can make very effective ads with pictures of aborted fetuses, or even pictures of healthy fetuses together with the suggestion that they might be harmed. After all, the fetuses in those pictures are recognizably humanoid, so they trigger a whole set of emotions related to protecting human life. But you can’t get the same level of sympathy/squeamishness when talking about bundle of cells smaller than a pixel on your computer screen, much less an unfertilized ovum. Without that gut reaction, they’re pretty much limited to targeting people who share their extremist religious views.
SiubhanDuinne
@demo woman #22: Definitely Teilhet. His opponent is a paranoid prima donna. I spent some time with both of them a few days ago and got to observe up close and personal. No contest in my opinion.
The Dangerman
@kay:
You’re not paranoid; the ultimate goal is overturning Griswold v. Connecticut. That was the foundation of a “right to privacy”; no “right to privacy” and Griswold goes down with Roe (that sounds so wrong in this particular thread).
Sly
Anyone who hasn’t read Michelle Goldberg’s “Kingdom Coming” or “The Means of Reproduction” should do so. They are extraordinary books on the religious right’s crusade against reproductive health and freedom.
This is my favorite part of Kingdom Coming, in which Goldberg observes a gathering of members of Reclaiming America for Christ listening to the head of the organization, Pam Stenzel, launch into a jeremiad against the HPV Vaccine:
This might be brushed off as simple insanity. But this, as well as the Catholic Churches’ actions in Africa, betray a logic that only superstitious nonsense can support, and it entails a very elegant, logical flow that is based on three simple precepts:
1) All humans have souls that exist for eternity.
2) What you do in life will impact the future status of that soul.
3) Sex outside of marriage is something that will negatively impact the future status of a soul.
Once these initial premises are accepted, something that is mandated by more dogmatic brands of Christianity, it is quite easy to arrive at the conclusion that Ms. Stenzler does. The fault, therefor, is not in her ability to reason as it is conventionally understood. The fault is that her reasoning stems from a set of premises that invariably lead to immoral conclusions.
In other words: Garbage in, garbage out.
celticdragonchick
@demo woman:
Pretty much. The other meme will be:
“ZOMG!!! They hate Catholic hospitals and colleges and are making them provide birth control!! Tyranny!! Socialism!!!”
I’ve seen this one several times already framed as a religious liberty issue.
Pointing out that the same institutions invariably provide viagra gets no response.
Resident Firebagger
Keep in mind that these folks have been emboldened by all the compromises made on abortion since the Hyde Amendment. If they can keep limiting the availability of abortions, why wouldn’t the American Taliban think they can keep all those evil, adulterous
peoplewomen from having sex without making babies?Won’t be long till we hear about pharmacists who refuse to hand out contraceptives (hell, don’t we hear about that now?) and politicians voting their conscience on this issue.
DonkeyKong
Can’t wait for the Second Coming of George Carlin, boy is he gonna be pissed!
mellowjohn
what does bristol palin have to say about this?
oh, wait…..
MikeJ
@Sly: Of course once you accept those premises, the only logical thing to do is to kill every child at birth, before he or she become self aware and capable of sin.
This will work for fundigelicals since they believe that below a certain age you can’t really sin, which seems halfway sane. Of course this only applies to God’s rules, and not to the death penalty for transgressions in human courts.
For Catholics, you’d have to kill people at their first communion.
Either way, we’d prevent a lot of sin and send the deserving on to meet God.
Booger
Dear FSM, I thought we had the whole effing phlogiston thing settled. Let’s not open that can of worms again. Don’t we have better things to worry about, e.g., the aether?
Come on, guys, try to keep up.
lamh32
@Martin:
I’ve been over David Frum. I was sympathetic to his “plight”, but then shortly thereafter, I remembered that I never liked him. He’s always come off as scuzzy and completely untrustworthy.
as for Weigel, I’m already over his guest blogging somewhere between the post comparing NAACP’s condemnation of the “racist tea party ” to Drudge and conserv making up some type of “blacks over whites” conspiracy from FLOTUS Obama’s speech before the NAACP yesterday, i.e. both sides do it.
slag
@Sly: I’ve always wondered why God cared so much about people’s sex lives. You’d think an omniscient being would have more to offer, intellectually-speaking, than does your average peeping tom.
Sly
@MikeJ:
Except that infanticide is commonly accepted as a sin. The common rationalization would be “Well, this child is in my care. So it is therefor my responsibility, up to a certain age, to ensure that they do X/Y/Z to remain spiritually pure.”
Plus I doubt any Christian would ever dream of jeopardizing their own soul for the sake of another’s. Why risk with “certainty” the fate of your own soul when the future purity of someone else’s soul is unfixed? This brand of religiosity is at its core, after all, an eternal gamble. Literally. You accept, or even promote, mortal suffering to “secure” eternal bliss.
Sly
@slag:
The larger question is why any entity with the characteristics commonly attributed to God would give a shit about anything we do at all. If God doesn’t care about your sex life, why would He care about anything else?
slag
@Sly: That is a question, sure, but some areas of earthly existence must certainly be more fascinating than others. I’m just suggesting that if this really is one of God’s primary areas of interest, then his mind’s a little smutty. Maybe he’s suffering from a midlife crisis. Or is a prepubescent male. Or maybe God needs a hobby. Needlepoint?
Sly
@slag:
Having read the Bible, I would suggest we keep God away from sharp objects. Nothing good would come of it.
Mark S.
@slag:
Next you’re going to ask why alien races travel millions of light years just to anally probe us.
trollhattan
Goddamnit,
goodaffordable wine and birth control made this a great nation! We shall fight this forthcoming travesty withvigorvigah!Carry on.
slag
@Sly: Fair enough. And I suppose golf is probably also out of the question.
slag
@Mark S.:
Nah. I always figure they’re looking for treasure. Like those people on the beach with their metal detectors. The thrill isn’t so much in the finding but in the seeking.
Lurker
@MikeJ:
For what it’s worth, Philip Pullman explored this idea in his fantasy novel, The Golden Compass. In that novel, Church officials performed an operation called “intercision” on children to save them from sin.
jake the snake
@DonkeyKong:
FTW
liberal
@The Dangerman:
I was just thinking the same thing, reading through the comments.
Something Fabulous
@Lurker: See also, an extremely bitter but funny play called Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it all for You, by Christopher Durang…
Carlos Foutch
Beautiful girls, beautiful times I just wish I could spend some with Jasinta Campbell. I liked your website thanks for a good read.
Triassic Sands
IF being a right-winger means anything, it means never giving up, even on causes that appear to be lost. That’s why they win. We’ve gone from having a country with countless gun control laws, to one where it is suddenly “settled law” that gun control limits are unconstitutional.
With the Supreme Court on their side, conservatives keep fighting on issues like birth control, because they know that someday they may get the right case to the Court and with Kennedy’s help the four lunatics could reverse many decades of decisions and turn the law on its head. At which point, the media will report that the latest decision has made the whole issue “settled law.”
Complacency means certain failure.
Glidwrith
@Roger Moore: “After all, the fetuses in those pictures are recognizably humanoid, so they trigger a whole set of emotions related to protecting human life. But you can’t get the same level of sympathy/squeamishness when talking about bundle of cells smaller than a pixel on your computer screen, much less an unfertilized ovum.”
Unfortunately, I’m with Kay on the paranoia. We just had 8 long years of Bushie and friends declaring that stem cell research was forbidden because it destroys babies. I don’t think it would take much with the conservative nutjobs in Congress to draw an easy line of birth control = abortions. Hell, we’ve got at least half a dozen states (Nebraska and South Carolina come to mind) that have tried to confer fertilized ovum = personhood.
Maribeth Jones
Continuing the strategy to cover up her reality, Sarah Palin is happy to announce that Bristol and Levi will marry. Happy? You betcha! This took mountains of money and a team of expert PR flaks, to say nothing of coercion and silencing of the young folk — Levi was forced to eat his words and Bristol’s abstinence talk made mommy nervous. Yep, these young folks got too big for their britches when let out of the Wasilla compound and into the real world and we had to rein ’em back in.
I mean, golly, you can’t run for high office on the family-values ticket with a raft of smelly domestic garbage floating behind you. So, drink up, conservative America. This is some sickly-sweet tea-flavored Kool-Aid designed to put you into a diabetic coma by 2012. So you can’t say no to lies and stupidity no matter how hot she looks in a camouflage cap and tank top.
John Ellis, a conservative political analyst, predicts she will be the de facto Republican frontrunner by December and that, by then, it may be too late for the party to do anything about it. Ellis wrote on his blogsite: “‘She’s too stupid’ is what the Establishment GOP really thinks about Sarah Palin. ‘Good-looking,’ but a ‘ditz’.
This is unfertile ground, since Palin can turn the argument on a dime and say: ‘They drive the country into bankruptcy, they underwrite Fannie and Freddie, they bail out Goldman Sachs, they fight wars they don’t want to win, they say enforcing the immigration laws is silly and they call me stupid! I’ll give you a choice: you can have their smarts or my stupidity, which one do you want?’
A large number of GOP presidential primary voters will take Palin’s “stupidity” in a heartbeat.”