I’m watching CNN and David Gergen thinks all the birth control stuff will turn women off. Even the liberal Ari Fleischer (is he using botox, btw) said that if the reproductive rights debate shifts to birth control, which he thinks it might, that hurts Republicans. And Chuck Todd says:
I continue to believe this generic GOP downturn in the polls is related to the uptick in conversation about birth control
I’m surprised that even the Village is coming around to thinking this one might not be Good News For Republicans.
Baud
Villagers like to fuck.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
He thinks it might do that two fucking weeks ago? Is Gergen the CNN House liberal again tonight? Has Fred Hiatt been hired as a consulting producer?
jl
@Baud: They are of Satan’s party. Rih tried to warn us.
freelancer
I as well, also saddened. Because when it comes to wingnuts, they revert to their interpretation of the old lawyer standard:
When the people like your bullshit, spew bullshit. When the people think the other guy’s bullshit is better, attack the other guy. When the people like the other guy better, resume the culture war.
DanielX
So all the stuff described above – oh, and let’s not forget the booing of soldiers – has nothing to do with it? Gosh, was I ever wrong.
Bort
You need to have faith. I’m sure they will come together and blame those mean old Democrats for making an issue out of birth control.
cathyx
Let’s face it. We all want to have sex without worrying about pregnancy. It’s a no brainer for the sane crowd.
Hill Dweller
Way too many pundits were slow on the uptake. Even Charlie pierce seemed to miss this one.
amk
@Baud:
ding, ding.
freelancer
Blast, I can’t edit. I wanted to add that the Culture War is an entire political movement yelling “SQUIRREL!”. That is all.
Cassidy
I wish more Republicans would use birth control and have abortions.
Soonergrunt
@Hill Dweller: Do you know ANYBODY who predicted that the Republican field would wed themselves to the Catholic Bishops and go full metal fuckwit? I didn’t.
pragmatism
One admission of reality gives them plausible deniability. They can now resume pushing the narrative on friendlier grounds. Iran, Satan and gas prices.
Midnight Marauder
@cathyx:
Are we sure the sane crowd includes Chuck Todd? Because I am pretty sure it does not.
WereBear (itouch)
@Bort: Apparently Rush Limbaugh is doing just that.
John O
Almost all Republican men know at least one woman casually. I’m sure opinions have been shared.
Gex
Great news for McCain!
Linda Featheringill
@Soonergrunt:
Yeah! What’s with this fundamentalist Let’s-support-the-poor-widdle-Catholics nonsense?
ETA:
Not support for your Catholic neighbor or coworker but for the Bishop/Rome uber-Catholic bunch.
Mnemosyne
Didn’t it turn out that Ari Fleischer was the genius behind Komen’s decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood?
I’m starting to wonder if he has a sizeable bet against the Republicans winning in November. He sure seems to be doing everything in his power to tank them.
Sophia
@freelancer: No. If the facts are with you, pound the facts. If the law is with you, pound the law. If neither are with you, pound the table.
Anya
So, does that mean the republican candidates are in the process of abandoning the child rape enablers?
PeakVT
@freelancer: Lol. Also, too: stop insulting dogs.
freelancer
@Linda Featheringill:
Those whom libruls “attack” are your brethren. No more, no less. We are all
GeorgiansIsraelisPro-lifersCatholics now. See also Cleek’s definition of Conservatism.Speaking of which, where is Cleek?
DanielX
@Bort:
They’re doing that already.
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/23/did_crafty_dems_make_contraception_a_campaign_issue/
Sometimes it’s necessary to just walk on, as our Lady of Stolichnaya once said. Now that most Republican pols have figured out that this whole issue is about as popular as bubonic plague, they’re walking on as quickly as possible while trying to blame the whole thing on Democrats, or liberals, or the Masons, or…anybody. Except for Santoronola, who positively wallows in obsessing over lady parts (among other things).
He really is a true believer and true believers will get you killed every time, all the while insisting it’s for your own good. So women in future who might be faced with the possibility of sepsis from an illegal abortion, fear not – Little Ricky will be praying for you and it’s for the good of your soul.
scav
Whole new chapter can/will be written on those ebil ebil bad bad wimminz with their snakes ‘n’ pills and ebil ebil slinky ways ‘n’ votes ‘n’ stuff.
Their detect obvious button is on a time-lag or something.
jl
@Soonergrunt: I’ve been saying for a long time, to some of the ‘reasonable independents’ in my family, that the
anti choicewomen’s slaverytotalitarian sexual and reproductive police state faction was just as opposed to any kind of contraception as they were to abortion.They more or less said I was divisive shrill liberal.
If Rih keeps up his schtick, the lid will blown off that little secret.
Look folks, to be moral prosperous people, the lesser people need to face hard painful choices every day. Sex needs to be a very painful choice now, especially for the wimminfolk.
To prevent any federal money from going to making sex easy, should have child birth at home (the wimmins need to get used to it, they are going to have to homeschool anyway). Doc needs to arrive in a Model T, and use nothing but hot water, towels, a knife and laudanum.
And end federal subsidies for the auto mobile and those auto mobile roadways. Wimmin folk can get carried off an ruined in them damn auto mobiles.
Probably need to rethink that business about women being able to drive, too.
Davis X. Machina
@Linda Featheringill: Abortion. Two groups who will do anything to get Roe overturned. Then they can go after Griswold. Unless they can get Griswold, which anchors Roe, first.
freelancer
@Sophia:
Sectarian. I get that there are several iterations of this idiom. Is my larger point any less sound? :)
Bruce S
The downturn is connected to the uptick? Chuck Todd is a poetic motherfucker…
geg6
@Soonergrunt:
No, although I have no illusions as to what trogolodytes they are, it never dawned on me that they’d decide that Opus Dei had the handbook on how to win elections (at least, any elections outside the Curia). I simply can’t believe that in 2012 we’d be arguing about whether women should be allowed to have access to the pill or whether the hierarchy of the Catholic Church should make policy decisions for the U.S. government.
But I should have know when Obama was elected that if that could happen, pretty much anything could happen. Especially a completely unhinged, batshit backlash.
Anne Laurie
On topic, best snark of the day: Charlie Pierce refers to Virginia’s transvaginal-probe ultrasound legislation as the Dildos Mandating Dildos Act Of 2012.
Schlemizel
@jl:
Why all that falderal for a simple birth? The bitch should just go out in the field, clinch a twig in her teeth & squat! Just like the good old days, you know the 1300’s
Hill Dweller
@soonergrunt: I meant too many pundits not realizing this would ultimately turn out badly for the wingers.
Narcissus
Tuck Chodd.
jl
@Linda Featheringill:
” What’s with this fundamentalist Let’s-support-the-poor-widdle-Catholics nonsense? ”
Repressed fear and disgust with sex and intimacy makes for strange bedfellows, as we have seen in the news repeatedly in GOP gummint circles.
Which reminds me of McCain’s he man deputy Babeau (sp?). Did he use his office to intimidate and threaten his MALE lovah, under color of law?
Haven’t heard much about that, since the big US v Satan title match has been stealing the headlines. Rih should be a fight promoter.
pseudonymous in nc
argh, automoderator:
ALEC is busily circulating draft legislation to statehouses to demand ‘Voter IP’, in declaring that the only valid identification at the polls will be a p3n1s.
kdaug
Just saw Stephanie Something-or-Other on L.O’D.
Said that Obama “had to do it himself”.
Framed properly, that can be powerful. Very powerful.
And true.
Tonybrown74
@Baud:
And all the (male) pundits have heard from their mistresses/secretaries/interns loud and clear: no kitty without the pill!
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne:
Fleischer is a calculating little weasel, and there’s been talk that some of the calculating weasels have decided they’ll make out better personally as mouthpieces for the minority party than they would if the GOP wins.
Comrade Mary
@kdaug: Had to do what himself?
jl
I figure, if one of these guys win, and the wingnuts take Congress, the goal will be to turn the US into something like, I dunno, a fundamentalist patriarchy. Think of Sumer or Assyria with Bibles. Or Ancient Greece under the tyrants.
Except less culture and art.
There will be lots of war, though. Good old fashioned war, for good and holy causes, all the time.
For the men, at least there will be plenty of beer.
For the women, well…. not good.
kdaug
@cathyx:
Roger that, cathyx. Got dogs, no kids, by design.
How the hell this is just a woman’s issue is beyond me.
mclaren
But surely the truth lies somewhere in between the two extremes. Right?
So the obvious solution is to allow women to have babies, and then feed the newborns into a meat grinder.
It’s the sacred middle! Right between both extremes!
Redshift
@Baud:
I’m not sure that’s it, though. As with abortion politics, Villagers always assume this stuff won’t really apply to their class, so it’s just an abstract discussion of what the lower orders really ought to do.
Anya
Speaking of out of souless wingnuts, did Romney really say at the debate that Arizona’s papers please law is a model for the nation? He’s so fucked at the GE.
Gin & Tonic
@Midnight Marauder:
Personally, I think the type of sex Chuck Todd prefers leads to zero danger of pregnancy, if you get my drift. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you. Or am I alone in this assessment?
Redshift
@Midnight Marauder: I’m putting the phrase “no brainer” together with “Chuck Todd” and coming up with a different meaning than usual.
(Okay, I don’t actually believe that, but he is a walking illustration of the Peter Principle — he was pretty good presenting and discussing polls, but he got promoted to his level of incompetence.)
cynn
I’m so sick of men insinuating themselves into this issue. Unless they post a one million dollar bond, they have no voice.
jl
@kdaug: As long as Rih is strong in the polls, he will run to the vanguard waving his crazy freak flag.
I like it. Hope he keeps it up. The current version GOP needs to be destroyed, and Rih is the man for the job.
I don’t like to say that a major political party needs to be destroyed, but the parts of the debate I heard tonight were disgusting, the lies and dangerous fantasies those vicious fools peddled were disgusting. Totally disgusting display of vileness. Bah!
Mendacity, mendacity! What was that smell in the room? A powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity!
But, no accounting for tastes, I guess. Probably just me. The pundits will explain it all to me and I will realize later that it is shrill to worry that one of those debased compulsive liars and vicious murderous loons will run to lead this country.
shortstop
I was not the least bit surprised that the GOP went all in with the RC bishops. Not the least bit.
Blunt following up with a hamhanded attempt to take down the whole PPACA under the guise of moral freedom…yeah, that briefly threw me.
Gian
per the 2000 census here: http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t11/tab01.pdf
there were 138,053,563 men
and
143,368,343 women.
…
wasn’t broken down by how many were 18 or older, but if I was planning a political strategy, I’d be thinking of trying to please the group that’s more than 5 million people bigger.
Leaking Geek
So by Ron Paul’s logic – that it’s not birth control killing babies, its all those immoral women who use it – I’m a serial killer because I take aspirin.
He is selling some serious crazy right there.
Anya
Apparently my husband is mad at me. Naturally, I am blaming it on gay marriage, specially the DOMA ruling. I am sure it has nothing to do with me forgetting about his mom’s 50th birthday party.
Soonergrunt
@geg6: You know what the hell of it is? The Teabaggers hate the ‘papists’ as much as they hate almost anybody else. Santorum only gets their support because he talks shit about President Blackity Black Blackorama.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Gian: I think the national electorate has had a small but consistent majority of women–52, 53% for as long as I’ve been paying attention. I think that holds for mid-terms and presidential years. What really might bite them in the ass is unmarried women, who vote less consistently and tend to favor Dems, IIRC.
MikeJ
@Leaking Geek:
Do you hold it between your knees?
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
@jl:
Doctors favored Franklins because they were air-cooled and didn’t freeze up in winter. Of course, with global warming, maybe that isn’t as much of a consideration….
28 Percent
@Redshift:
This. The Villagers were convincing themselves that this was strictly an issue of funding which, since they live in the people-who-summer bubble, made it a topic of conversation with as much relevance to them as talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The rest of the country hears funding and coverage and immediately understands that to be synonymous with access, which makes this a whole ‘nuther ballgame.
Also, too, the Republicans raised the stakes mightily with the Blount bill, since that would not only cancel out any advances the ACA was going to make in accessibility, it would also potentially have invalidated every existing state law that had already been requiring that all health plans cover birth control without a copay, which means that a lot of people would lose the benefits they have now. Which ranks pretty high on the Not Smart meter, which isn’t much of a surprise.
MikeJ
BTW, bravo on the Elvis. I probably would have gone with Joe Jackson.
jl
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge: Thanks, that kind of info will come in handy if the election goes south and Rih the Rabid becomes president. Or Ron Paul, looks like he is heading for chastity belts (as long as they are free enterprise chastity belts).
Query for those of you who had the stomach to watch the pundits after this display of filth tonight: How concerned were they about the fact that the debate featured compulsive liars and fantasizing insane people? Were they concerned at all? Did the topic come up, perchance?
Linnaeus
Shit, I need another ginger and 7.
Soonergrunt
@Hill Dweller: I’ll give you that as well. All those liberal pundits who have made such a deal out of the original Admin position, stating that the Admin had gone too far and had overreached–they were absolutely worthless–never counted that the conservatives would keep pushing this issue so far that they’ve gone all the way around the world, come back again, and crossed the line twice.
Gex
The reason they hate SSM is the same reason they hate women. They despise the idea of the people in the marriage being on equal footing. If women are always pregnant, they can’t challenge you. If gays marry and are happy, it proves that a marriage of equals can work. Then they have to face the fact that they aren’t the bestest of the best just because they have a pen-is.
kdaug
@Comrade Mary: Take your pick.
suzanne
I am seriously to the point where I am emotionally exhausted by this shit. Like, REALLY?! We’re STILL talking about birth control pills? We’ve been talking about that FOREVER. THIS is the fuckin’ hill to die on here?
You know what? Fine. We can all just stop doin’ it. ‘Cause we all know how well the dudely ones deal with that.
Redshift
@jl:
We had to destroy the party to save it. Seriously, I might think differently if it looked like there was any way out for them other than to hit bottom, but I can’t see any other possibilities.
Triassic Sands
It’s not good news for Republicans in general, but undoubtedly it is great news for McCain, who probably sits around waiting for his party to abandon all those losers and give him a rematch with Obama. Sadly for “Crash” McCain, his party doesn’t love him even half as much as he thinks they do.
xyzxyzxyz
“I continue to believe this generic GOP downturn in the polls is related to the uptick in conversation about birth control” – Chuck Todd
Or you could put your beliefs on the side, do your fucking job, and actually talk to some folks to see if this is the case (you know, do some journalism. I’m sure you’re vaguely familiar with the concept, Chuck). I would encourage youn to speak to some women since they have been marginalized in this entire discussion. You’re welcome, idiot.
GregB
I’m not going to formulate an opinion on this issue until Mark Halperin chimes in.
Yutsano
@suzanne:
I for one refuse to believe you’re going to stop boning your husband. Don’t even try to front.
Tone In DC
@Soonergrunt:
LULz.
aimai
@Redshift:
Maybe I’m late to say this. I agree that the Villagers (aka the top people in the media and pundit class) assume that their wives/prostitutes can get birth control when its needed. But I have to think a whole lot of people with teenage to young adult children, even in the upper class, are frightened by this attack on contraception. None of these guys wants to be a grandpa or a great grandpa by accident–they know just how costly unplanned pregnancies in unplanned relationships are to class status. Everyone one of these bastards is paying top dollar for the universities and internships of their kids–there’s no way they want to see that derailed by Rick Santorum’s fetus fetish.
aimai