Excellent work, wingnuts:
The fragile gains Republicans had been making among female voters have been erased by what in recent weeks has become a national shouting match over reproductive issues, potentially handing President Obama and the Democrats an enormous advantage this fall.
In the 2010 congressional midterm elections, Republican candidates ran evenly with Democrats among women, a break with long-established trends. That was a major reason the GOP regained control of the House.
Now, female voters appear to be swinging back to Democrats.
When the Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey asked last summer which party should control Congress, a slim 46-42 percent plurality of women said it should be the Democrats.
But in a survey released Monday, compiling polling since the beginning of the year, that figure had widened considerably to a 15-point advantage for the Democrats, according to polling by the team of Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican Bill McInturff. Fifty-one percent favored Democratic control; only 36 percent wanted to see the Republicans in charge.
Both sides have tried to shape the narrative in this battle for and about women. But many Republicans are beginning to wish they had never waded into what has become a heated conversation over contraception, who should have it and what it says about people who use it.
The best part is, as we have seen with their continued assault on Latinos and the black community, is that the Republicans will not learn:
When the hysteria peaked with l’affaire Limbaugh last week, there was general bewilderment over whether Rush understood that the birth-control pill is not female Viagra, that a woman takes the same daily dosage of estrogen and progestin regardless of whether she’s going to have sex one time, a thousand times, or zero times (entirely leaving aside the fact that three out of five women take the pill for reasons having nothing to do with sex or pregnancy). Perhaps indeed it’s true that someone previously investigated for an oxycontin addiction would be of the mind-set to think of the pill in these terms; more likely, however—since no clear-headed person ever has called Limbaugh stupid—is that he understands the basics of contraception but wasn’t going to let them get in the way of invoking for his program’s listeners the sexual spectacle of orgiastic women caught on videotape. Thus the Limbaugh comments about Sandra Fluke transparently were not those of a naïf but rather a bully at best and a pervert at worst, with many shades of creep lying between the two. When women of whatever political stripe heard Limbaugh, they heard several millennia of familiar male piggery.
Just on cravenly political grounds, the response of the right should be more stupefying than it was. John McCain (whose condemnation of Limbaugh has been bracingly unequivocal and dishearteningly rare among conservatives) polled 43 percent of all women voters in 2008. At the rate the Republican Party is going, it will struggle to get 33 percent in 2012, leaving the party to try scaring up seven out of ten men (whom women outvote). That none of this had any apparent impact on Tuesday night’s result, that the candidates showed no more cognizance of what happened these past eight days with the female electorate than they did the Tuesday before or the Tuesday before that, and that Romney’s opportunism was so determinedly unfazed may mean—in terms of Republican prospects in November—that the more things stay the same, the more they change, and not for the better.
At this point, all I have to say is Onward, Christian Soldiers. Keep up the fight. Leave no contraceptive alone.
Morans.
Villago Delenda Est
Moran, indeed. Three cheers to brave soldiers OvenMitt, Rih, and Noot, for their scathing attacks on Limbaugh.
Oh, wait…they’re cowering in a corner. Never mind.
amk
wtf ??? Really ?
What part of “I am and will always in your vagina” do they not understand ?
dmsilev
Title Win.
And we should all remember that a lot of this crap has been present in the conservative movement for quite a while; what has changed is that they’re less able to hide it.
rlrr
@Villago Delenda Est:
How can we expect any of them to stand up to Iran when they can’t sand up to Limbaugh?
c u n d gulag
The dicks have shown their dickishness by waving their dicks, and saying dickish things, in public.
You should have kept those opinions to yourselves.
They didn’t learn Lesson #1 – Say whatever you want in the men’s locker room at the Country Club, but leave that kind of dickish talk there.
Republicans had better do a 180 on their cloning position – because the only chance they’ve got in the coming years is if they can clone enough old white male stupid assholes to overcome the 100′s of millions of people they’ve already antagonized, and the ones they’re going to work to alienate even further in the coming weeks, months, and years.
I’m hard-pressed to understand how they think any of this helps them any – but, then, I may be older, and white, and I may even be an asshole, but I’m not a stupid one.
Keep it up, BOYZ!!!
Trentrunner
Hart is on MSNBC right now, elaborating.
Keep fucking that chicken, rightwing. Keep on fuckin’.
quannlace
Those aren’t the words I would have used.
Martin
15% will kill the GOP. And they won’t see it until it’s too late.
The election now is the primaries, not the general. The voters they’re losing in November aren’t voting now, so they don’t feel the impact, nor do they even care. Who gives a shit how many people you’ve alienated from the party if you don’t get the nomination? You can’t win if you don’t play. So they’re going to keep doing this until the race is settled.
This is why I say that elections aren’t won so much as they’re not lost. You can alienate every voter, because if only 3 people bother to cast a vote and you win 2 of them, you win, even if a million boycotted the election. That’s the GOP primaries right now.
The tactics that worked against minorities worked because minorities don’t turn out even in the general. Had Latinos in texas voted at the same rate as whites in 2008, Obama would have won the state. But women don’t trend that way. They don’t stay home. They just switch parties. And so closed primaries actually magnify the problem.
The GOP is going to get massacred if they don’t find a way to win those voters back in the next 6 months. Good luck with that.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
i.e. women are evenly split on which party to support
/Polifact
c u n d gulag
Women should get some bumperstickers made up:
“WE FUCK – AND WE VOTE!”
gnomedad
From the second article:
I knew that many did, but 60%? Can someone verify that?
Punchy
Post title is pure genius. Well done Johnnie.
Now go get laid.
arguingwithsignposts
Yeah, that phrase jumped out at me too.
ETA:
Is there a reason you limited this to women?
shortstop
I know mentioning vag.ina dentata freaks you fellows out, and rightfully so, but just picture us wielding some of that action in the voting booths rather than the bedroom. Chop, chop.
pete
@c u n d gulag: There’s always the Lysistrata option, though
MikeBoyScout
Clearly egg & sperm loving Republicans should demand that Darrell Issa reopen his hearings and subpoena Ms. Fluke.
Jay C
@c u n d gulag:
Kinda catchy! And a little better-phrased than
SLUTS FOR OBAMA!
gbear
Well, there’s that Al Franken thing about writing an entire book called Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot. There is that…
P.S. The title of this post is genius.
MattF
@rlrr: When BJ commenters start quoting George Will, the Apocalypse is nigh.
Bulworth
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: A majority of women wanted to see Repubs in charge. 40%=majority; 36%=majority
AnotherBruce
Well Cole, you tried to warn them, but for some reason they just don’t listen to you.
Stooleo
I iz in yoar vagizille ultra sounding ur doodz.
catclub
@gnomedad: There might be an ‘as well as’ hidden in that statement.
I.e. Sixty percent of women take the pill for reasons unrelated to sex and pregnancy, as well as for its value as contraception.
Venn diagrams and all.
Dork
Typical women. Can never make up their minds. Always switching back and forth. Luckily, most of that switching is from front burner to back burner, and left-side mopping to right-side mopping.
pete
Math is easy: (women + [male minorities] + [poor white men] + [intelligent, empathetic, white men who are not poor {both of them}]) x [(100 – 27)/100] = plenty!
artem1s
@gbear:
gotta say, Senator Al has been remarkably quiet during this whole kerfluffle. I imagine he has been walking around with a rather large grin on his face the last few days though.
aimai
Vagina Demagogues for the Win.! Its right up there with “Menstrual Show.”
aimai
PeakVT
51% to 36%, with 13% still undecided.
We should start calling Limbaugh and tell him not to back down.
New Yorker
It’s not really “Morans”, John. It’s the delusions of a cult. These people think that all that matters in America are the opinions of white, rural evangelicals. That’s the whole basis of “Real America”. Blacks don’t count. Latinos don’t count. Atheists don’t count. Gays don’t count. Catholics and Jews don’t count unless they’re Bill Donohue or Bill Kristol and parrot the lines of “Real Americans”.
And that’s why, the moment a black man enters the White House instead of a self-described “ordinary guy from West Texas” (excuse me while I wipe away tears of helpless laughter), the freakout goes to 11. Black men aren’t supposed to be allowed into a position that’s reserved for the white, rural evangelicals. That’s also the basis of “I want my country back!”. They want a country where only the opinions of white, rural evangelicals matter.
Eventually, they’ll be deprogrammed by massive electoral defeats. I just worry about the potential for Timothy McVeigh-style violence before they accept defeat.
feebog
The number is not going to fall to 33%, that’s nonsense. But it could well fall from the 43% that McCain won to something less than 40%; which would put this election into landslide territory for Obama.
Amanda
Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it? Bwaahahahahaha
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Dork:
Well, at least the Dems appear to have the naked mopping demographic locked in.
Ken
If this does become a voting pattern, we can expect some effort to repeal the 19th amendment.
It’s just become habit with the Republicans. There’s any number of individuals who might vote for them on other grounds, but because the demographic as a whole (unions, blacks, Latinos, students, now women) doesn’t, they paint them as “other”. Sometimes it has an unpleasant resemblance to the guy who keeps screaming “Why don’t you love me” while beating his spouse or children.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@PeakVT: Maybe we should collect some money and pay for some advertising. And after a bit let people know Rush is collecting liberal money to pay for his show.
Joel
My cynical interpretation is that we Democrats just got a 6% swing of FYIGM female voters. I’ll take em anyways, big tent and all that.
Amir Khalid
@rlrr:
With what’s been happening to Rush Limbaugh’s popularity these past few days — dead air in his commercial breaks! I’d never heard of such a thing! — surely at least one of the presidential candidates would acquire enough courage to kick Limbaugh when he’s down. But no, not even that feeble amount.
maya
No matter how much you ask and plead the Republican party will always leave the toilet seat up.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@feebog:
More importantly, will it turn the House by depressing ticket-splitting? i.e. ensuring that there are fewer voters who vote Obama for POTUS but still pull the lever for their local GOP congress-critter, because of the advantages of incumbency, Citizens United money, etc.
The GOP nominee for POTUS may very well attempt to pivot back to the middle on this issue come the general election (while their VP candidate gives a wink-and-a-nod to the base that it ain’t really so), but that pivot may not work for the local congress-critter if the latter is a true believer not exposed to the full fury of the national electorate and more likely to be blind-sided by this swing.
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid: Until he starts to lose big chunks of audience, conservative politicians are going to be afraid of him. Especially conservative politicians in the middle of a nasty primary fight desperate to attract conservative votes.
gnomedad
@catclub:
That sounds likely, but even so, 60% is a very big deal.
bemused
@maya:
….without flushing.
shortstop
@Joel: Definitely some truth to that. But keep in mind that a lot of them are younger and not particularly politically engaged( just like a lot of younger men aren’t). They roll their eyes at 40-something broads like me who tell them that as established and secure as abortion rights seem to them, they always have to be fought for and carefully guarded (and I didn’t believe that either 20 years ago). Now they can see the GOP openly trying to quash access to contraception and they finally see a reason for concern.
Self-interested and self-focused for sure. But as much as I wish all white women would care about racial minority rights and people of color would automatically care about LGBTQ rights and all gay men would care about women’s rights and more white men would care about everyone’s rights, it’s the personalization of issues, more than anything else, that gets people active.
shortstop
@gnomedad: Not really — some of that is addressing diseases like endometriosis and fibroids, but most of it is probably just regularizing periods and reducing flow. You may have had to menstruate to understand just how nice those benefits are.
catclub
@gnomedad: It might be time to realize how medicated we Americans are, and the answer is:
heavily.
On-label, off-label, antibiotics for colds caused by viruses, anti-depressants, sleeping pills, anti-cholesterol just because, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And I have no idea what all those non-sex and pregnancy reasons are.
Southern Beale
Yet another reason to keep Santorum in the race, since he’s a misogyny message machine. For example, in his 1994 senate campaign it’s been revealed that he wanted single moms to submit to paternity tests before receiving welfare.
The extent to which people like Santorum want to control women’s sex lives — never even considering that it kinda takes TWO TO TANGO ya big dope — is just astonishing.
goethean
This should be pronounced with a thick French accent.
Southern Beale
@shortstop:
Friend of mine used to have a period every two weeks and was put on the pill in high school to regulate that. It’s not just convenience, she was seriously anemic bleeding twice a month.
shortstop
@Southern Beale: That is an absolutely astounding statement, free of any reference whatsoever to paternal responsibility.
Not “Santorum argued that his proposal would decrease welfare by increasing the number of fathers who pay child support,” but “Santorum argued that his proposal could persuade single women to slow their sex lives.” I’m speechless.
goethean
@Southern Beale:
There is a racialist subtext in Santorum’s statement — ‘let’s slow down the rate at which mothers on welfare have kids — because we all know what type of people they are, don’t we?’
Judge Crater
I think the current GOP has become quite like a cult – The Branch Davidians, for example. The triad of Fox News, hate radio and wing-nut web sites establishes the cult dogma and doctrine. It gets echoed and amplified back and forth amongst the 27 percent until it drowns out everything else.
David Koresh could accomplish the same mind control on a much smaller scale, but the principle is the same. The GOP base has regressed so far, as most cultists do, that it is incapable of even the most pragmatic level of reasoning.
Rush spent three days on a misogynistic rant. He couldn’t help himself. Once ignited, the cultist’s fervor is implacable and unquenchable. The rest of the wing-nut base is similarly without impulse control on its “core” issues.
What we may be witnessing is the fiery “Waco” of the rump GOP. The delusions and paranoia will just get worse. They will keep striking out at others until the fire consumes them.
shortstop
@Southern Beale: Yep, not just convenience — by “nice” I meant quite a bit more than “handy.” Frequent and heavy periods do take a big physical toll.
But even when they don’t, there’s nothing wrong with the “convenience” of wanting to know within a few hours or a day — rather than a few weeks — when one’s next period will arrive and how heavy it will be. Significant irregularity is actually pretty common, and heavy bleeding makes planning life tough.
scav
I think I need to go all zen and meditate, focus upon a single perfect crystalline jewel: Dead Air on Limbaugh.
Linda Featheringill
This. You guys, being nice persons, probably don’t understand how much of this *&(%$#*& we have heard all our lives.
[Is SCUM accepting new members? :-)]
bemused
@Southern Beale:
Not a surprise he’s a fan of “tough” love. Sadist.
Linda Featheringill
@shortstop: #42
So perhaps the Republicans are waking up the younger folks? Good!
DFH no.6
@shortstop:
Well, lots of us white men do care about everyone’s rights.
But, quite obviously, many (I suppose, sad to say, a majority) don’t.
So many that I interact with on a daily basis who look like me (white, male, older, well-paid) are proto-fascist and have a ridiculous persecution-complex about society at large. So “everyone’s rights” is not high on the agenda. It’s mostly FYIGM.
I’ll never understand what makes anyone (like, say, my baby brother and the guy in the office next door, and the guy next to him, etc.) have a fascist worldview. I just don’t get conservatives and I never will. It’s just such a childish, overly-simplistic, ultimately divorced-from-reality outlook. Like feudalism was the highest state achieved by humanity, and it’s all been downhill since.
But what’s truly bizarre is the persecution thing from the people who own everything, run everything, and who are the cultural default position.
The fascist worldview provides these motherfuckers with their destructive, inhumane ideology. The absurd persecution-complex provides the absurd, inchoate anger and hatred. They’re still royally pissed off that the 60s ever happened (even the ones with the good weed).
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Linda Featheringill: And yet half of these women will rail against the “special treatment” given to gays and minorities.
rikyrah
this is who they are. the thing is, they usually hide who they are behind other mess, but they didn’t this time. but, anyone who has been following them knows that THIS is what they’ve wanted all along…..and all the women that I used to tell this to, who thought I was crazy, have since apologized.
shortstop
@DFH no.6:
Isn’t it? There is a certain mindset, prevalent among those Republicans who happen to occupy the cultural default position you mention, that if they don’t have 100 percent, they have nothing; if they’re not free to bully without penalty, they’re victims; if other opinions or perspectives are considered, theirs have been fully devalued. They’re oblivious to, and will argue with, any objective, mathematical measurement of their power or influence because they operate only on feelings and emotions.
different-church-lady
Slightly missing the mark: whether Limbaugh knows or does not know how the pill works has no impact on what comes out of his mouth, because when your job is to babble on the radio 4 hours a day without a script there is no time for the bit of your brain that knows things to communicate with the bit of brain that controls your mouth. Words must come out in a constant stream, and frequently those words don’t have time to put their pants on.
So yes, if he had thought about it for ten seconds he probably would have realized, “Hey, wait a minute, I’m getting the pill mixed up with how condoms work.” But he didn’t have those ten seconds. But he also didn’t have ten seconds to think, “Yeah, I know how the pill works but I ain’t gonna let that stop me.” Maybe he had a glimmer that the pants were around the ankles, but the words needed to be sent out nonetheless.
This happens all the time in talk radio (which is one of the major reasons talk radio is useless), even with those who don’t wish to be mendacious. The difference is that when the non-mendacious do this, they’re willing to admit they’re wrong an correct.
catclub
@DFH no.6: “ultimately divorced-from-reality outlook”
The same outlook that tells nine out of ten people that in a previous life they were King Tut, not some guy toting stone blocks.
Self-delusion is not just a river in Egypt.
Heliopause
This is a good point. Recalling the Donovan McNabb episode we need to remember that Rush is actually fairly knowledgeable about football, so that when he essentially called NcNabb a token he didn’t just accidentally let loose with an offensive observation, he was deliberately stirring the pot by saying something he knew to be untrue. I’d be willing to bet that something similar was going on here with his tirades against Ms. Fluke.
J.W. Hamner
Where is that guy who was concern trolling about how foolish liberals were for slamming the GOP for their War on Women?
Persia
@Martin: Obviously they’ll nominate a woman for vice-president! It’s a winning strategy.
brantl
I know lots of clear-headed people who call him stupid. I’m related to a whole passel of them.
RD
@J.W. Hamner:
The undisclosed location.
trex
@Shortstop
Great insight, and very well put. This is the reality we need to keep in mind when dealing with this group, whether it’s on a personal level or on a tactical political battleground. Trying to reason with them while appealing to enlightenment values is futile: they don’t accept those premises and in some cases even fear and hate them. They have to be engaged at their level and go through a kind of Jungian psychodrama where they work through their issues of security and lack of mommy/daddy love before ideas about fairness and the common good will even make sense to them.
dr. luba
@catclub: OCPs are the simplest way to provide low does hormones (estrogen/progesterone) to women.
I started taking OCPs for contraception and realized, for the first time in my life, what it was like NOT have horrible cramps and heavy bleeding with my periods. I recall having spent hours curled up in a ball with pain on my period–no longer. I got back 2-3 days per month as a functional human.
I stayed on them until I had to quit for reasons of old age/hypertension. Naproxen helped with the cramps, but only somewhat. I really hate periods (and am glad to finally be done with them forever).
And so do many other women. Menorrhagia (heavy bleeding)/dysmenorrhea (painful periods) are the most common reasons for non-contraceptive use of OCPs. Regulation of menses in women with polycystic ovarian disease, frequent menses, or irregular menses, or dysfunctional uterine bleeding are others. Management of anemia due to heavy periods is yet another. Also pain from endometriosis.
So there are many medical non-contraceptive uses for OCPs.
ThresherK
The only thing more reliable than the librul media breathlessly front-paging a story on “How the GOP’s PR push will make inroads towards the wimmens’ vote” is the result of the female voters.
(Feel free to substitute any number of non-cranky-old-straight-white-guy demographic names, and it still holds.)
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
And here is the latest Latino poll in an Obama Romney match up. And we haven’t even experienced Harry Reid bringing to the senate floor another round of votes on immigration reform. That plus The WAR ON Icky SEX/cooties Stuff, and it looks like Demented’s Waterloo for Obama is around the corner, with wingnuts in the Napoleon role. Now all we need is for wingnuts to pick up the catfood for granny card, and run with it, for Obama to get voted presidente for life.
Origuy
Does Santorum realize that a paternity test requires the participation of the alleged father? I thought that applying for ADFC required identifying the father anyway. That’s why they get the child support sent to them instead of directly to the mother.
Calouste
So if a woman who follows all Santorum’s rules, i.e. no contraception and no abortion, gets raped and has a kid, Santorum says that she shouldn’t get any welfare for her or the child because she can’t name the father? The shithead probably thinks that “she had it coming”.
Fanshawe
@Origuy:
Without reading the rest of your sentence, I feel comfortable saying, “No of course not.”
Scratch
@Calouste:
Maybe in Santorum’s mind, the threat of being raped and having a kid and not being able to get public assistance because the mom can’t name the father, that threat would inspire her to dress less slutty.
gelfling545
@catclub: The facy is that the cards women got dealt in the hormonal game are pretty bad. What with problems with the onset of menses right through to menopause, it can be pretty awful. As an example, my daughter at age 12 and for about 2 years required hormonal therapy for debilitating migraines at the onset of every period and if that Limbaugh abomination would like to call her a slut for that, though I am but a frail granny lady I will hunt him down and kick his …Any way, on the other side of the spectrum my sister for whom birth control ceased to be an issue years ago takes them because of severe osteoporosis. There is a host of conditions for which hormonal therapy can be useful.
IowaOldLady
New Republican slogan: Abstinence Only for Everyone!
I don’t know why we didn’t see that coming.
David Koch
tHIS wOULDN’T bE hAPPENING iF bARRY uSED tHE bULLY vAGINA!
Smiling Mortician
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
Just for fun (assuming you’re a masochist) check out the RNC response to recent polling of Latinos, via the always thoughtful and credible Fox news network. Bonus points to the anchorguy for deliberately and cavalierly effing up the basic arithmetic right out of the gate.
Smiling Mortician
@gnomedad: Also too, I have known several physicians over the years who would list other medical reasons (beyond contraception) for pill prescriptions because women’s health insurance would cover it only if it were for a narrowly-defined medical condition. That reality might account at least in part for what seems a surprisingly high percentage.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@Smiling Mortician:
I prefer to call it reconnoitering the enemy, but yes.
She is way easier on the eyes than Baghdad Bob, but the message is not altogether different.
Jamey
Your best title evar.
Vickie Feminist
A wonderful video mashup of how women feel about this issue
http://annfriedman.com/blog/slutty-women-gifable-0
HyperIon
@gnomedad: Post menopausal women often take estrogen as homone replacement therapy. And that’s the major component of most BC pills. But it’s unclear if the 60% really applies only to folks taking those 28 day packs.
I’d like a cite on this “stat”.
Karen
When I first heard about the Vagina Monologues, I actually thought it was about a talking vagina puppet.
You’re welcome for that image.
Barry
Different Church Lady
“Slightly missing the mark: whether Limbaugh knows or does not know how the pill works has no impact on what comes out of his mouth, because when your job is to babble on the radio 4 hours a day without a script there is no time for the bit of your brain that knows things to communicate with the bit of brain that controls your mouth. Words must come out in a constant stream, and frequently those words don’t have time to put their pants on.
So yes, if he had thought about it for ten seconds he probably would have realized, “Hey, wait a minute, I’m getting the pill mixed up with how condoms work.” But he didn’t have those ten seconds. But he also didn’t have ten seconds to think, “Yeah, I know how the pill works but I ain’t gonna let that stop me.” Maybe he had a glimmer that the pants were around the ankles, but the words needed to be sent out nonetheless.”
He’s been nasty for twenty years now. And in this case, the list of vile comments was 53 items.
F*ck him.
Barry
@catclub: “The same outlook that tells nine out of ten people that in a previous life they were King Tut, not some guy toting stone blocks.”
They wish for a nice stone block; they were probably hauling buckets of sh*t in the broiling hot Egyptian summer.
peggy
@PeakVT:
I signed petitions against Russ and now I want to take them back.
Please, please can we offer him up a sacrificial slut every month from now till November??
I would contribute to a Limbaugh 501.3c if he promises to accuse one personable college graduate regularly of being a whore for using contraception.
Obama 2012! Take back the House! Filibuster free the Senate!