Todd Akin is establishing himself as a great recruiting tool — for the Democrats. Melinda Henneberger, the WaPo‘s “She the People” anchor-blogger and apologist for Republicans at their Rethuglican-ist, wakes up and smells… something that ain’t coffee:
… For more than a year, I’ve argued against the idea that Republicans were coordinating a “war on women.’’ What hyperbole, I thought, reluctant to compare affronts to American women to the truly life-threatening situation of so many women around the globe…
Well, that was then. Though I still know plenty of Rs who show enormous respect for women, as well as some Ds who don’t, Akin hasn’t become a pariah for putting forth a marginal idea, but for embarrassing those in his party who resemble that remark. I believe in extending the benefit of the doubt, but this isn’t the first time, or even the second, that elected GOP officials have suggested that women have to be closely monitored to make sure they’re on the up-and-up about having been raped…
In an hour-long interview with Pelosi this week, at the end of a long day of back-to-back fund-raising events, I was surprised when she agreed that at bottom, this isn’t even about abortion: “My family’s all pro-life – they don’t share my views,’’ she said of the family she grew up in. “But this is not about abortion; let’s put that aside. Abortion is something you can agree to disagree on, but this shows a disrespect of women that’s beyond that – and even beyond politics, to something that’s deep-seated, sociological, cultural and psychological. Todd Akin’s statement and the obliviousness with which he made it find a very comfortable home with House Republicans, who are rushing to get rid of him because of what he says about them.”
Particularly, she says, because Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (Wis.) has sponsored a number of the same bills Akin has, including laws redefining rape and pushing for a ‘human life amendment’ that would ban some forms of birth control….
But Pelosi says that as good as all this is for turnout, “I really have a level of sadness about it.’’
Of the “war on women,’’ meme, she shrugs and says “it’s alliterative. I have not been one of those who’s been out there with the ‘war on women’ words.’’ Those who send e-mails with her name on them don’t seem to know that, but she insists that for a long time, “I was hoping it was the odd duck here or there.’’
What the congressman from Missouri has done, though, she says, has shown that’s not the case – and made him “the doggie doo on the shoe of his party, the tattoo on Paul Ryan that they won’t be able to get off.’’
Villago Delenda Est
Akin didn’t speak in code!
He blew the whole thing!
He explained GOP dogma on women in blunt terms that make it very clear what they believe, and holy shit, that doesn’t play well out there in Peoria!
raven
But come on come on down sweet virginia
Come on honey child I beg of you
Come on come on down you got it in you
Got to scrape that shit right off your shoes
geg6
The GOPers are squealing like the pigs they are about Akin because he said what they all really think. The mask has been ripped off and it is really, really ugly underneath. I always knew that but many people were blind and could not see. They can’t deny it now and that is killing the members of the woman/AA/Hispanic/Muslim haters club. Their tears taste like honey to me.
And I love me some Nancy SMASH.
JPL
According to Mitt we can’t talk about abortion anymore. It will hurt his chances among women.
c u n d gulag
Fine, thanks to Akin, the whole MSM and its punditry platoon are talking about the Republican Parties misogyny.
But that’s only one head of the Conservative Hydra.
That soulless beast, the Dominionist Christian Corporate Hydra, also has racist, xenophobic, homophobic, heads.
So while we all love the attention paid to the misogynistic Hydra-head, let’s not forget that the other heads are just as lethal, and are biding their time to be used as wedge issues to bite representative democracy (or, rather, what’s left of it) in the ass, and give Dominionist Christian Fascists all of the power in this country.
The Republican Party is now the party of Faith and Fascism. They will stop at nothing to gain power. And they will suppress the votes of anyone who disagrees with them, and do any and every other thing, to win. Until voting us merely symbolic like in the old USSR, and pre-invasion Iraq.
In this party of Faith and Fascism, the ends justify the means.
And if that means we end-up being the worlds largest Christian Banana Republic, well then, that’s fine – as long as Banana’s Republicans are the heads of the Junta, “All praise be to God.”
They have to be stopped, or else ‘I’ll see you in the GULag!”
I’ll save you the lower bunk.
maya
With that growing list of things we can’t talk about concerning Mitt – [Bain, Mormanism, family, tax returns, and now, abortion] – I guess the debates with the President will have to be conducted in some quiet room out of public view.
The MSM will just furnish us with an embedded news-pool report on how they did.
kay
@JPL:
They lie even about that.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan talk about abortion constantly when it helps them politically. Paul Ryan cosponsored 8 abortion-related bills and they take tens of millions in anti-abortion PAC money.
Paul Ryan was chosen specifically to appeal to single issue anti-abortion Republicans in OH and WI and PA. He’ll use it on Catholics in Ohio like Bush used same sex marriage. He already is.
I’ll make a deal with them. They promise not to use it as an election issue and either will I.
They’d break that deal in the first stump speech in a Catholic majority county in Ohio.
Republicans have been sanctimoniously beating us over the head with abortion since 1973.
Now they don’t want to talk about it?
Tough shit. Too late.
It’s their favorite subject. Let’s talk about it.
hells littlest angel
Akin is the shit on the shoe of the Republican party as the Republican party is the shit on the shoe of America.
KeithinOhio
I hope the Democratic/Progressive/Lib base is energized to vote. If all this misogyny and racism does not energize I don’t know what will. Cause this Pew research poll is alarming. This would give justification for what we perceived as skewed polls with cross tabs representing a greater share of rethugs in the polling. I don’t know if this is legit or not, but how could independents be flocking to the insanity of the Rethuglican party in its current state? This articles says they are:http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/23/a-closer-look-at-the-parties-in-2012/
kay
I have MANY more questions for Paul Ryan on abortion.
He drafted 8 bills. He’s written more abortion legislation than anything else in his career. That’s not saying much because other than that he’s been focusing on naming post offices and impressing people like Andrew Sullivan, but still.
He’s the abortion/ rape expert, as far as I’m concerned.
He’s happily used federal sanctions to control women to promote his career. Now he wants us to go away? Poor baby. The same women he was busy regulating won’t let him talk about tax cuts for rich people.
They’re so mean!
JPL
@kay: Ryan knows best. I do hope that the democrats start talking about family planning being a personal decision and not one to be made by a bunch of men in Congress.
WJS
@kay: Yes, and he has gotten exactly two bills passed as a Congressman. One named a post office after Les Aspin and the other changed the tax rates on hunting arrows.
A deep, deep thinker and a legislative wizard he ain’t.
Doggie D
Nancy Pelosi is brilliant and in this case displays quite noteworthy association skills.
KeithinOhio
@hells littlest angel: Love Nancy Smash, but I wonder why it took her so long to realize what the Rethugs have in store for women. She admits that she believed “the war on woment” was just hyperbol until Akin’s rape comments. Heck, she works with these sociopaths in congress. If some of our Dem leaders have been lackadaisical about the Rethug anslaught how do we expect the electorate to be outraged? Hopefully this wakes the masses up!!!
SFAW
@hells littlest angel:
Only on the shoe? Hell, they’re an ocean of shit, and we need something more protective than waders.
@KeithinOhio:
“But Obama did/didn’t do ‘X’, so he doesn’t deserve my/our vote.”
@WJS:
You’re kinda harsh on the guy. After all, getting a Post Office named after St. Ayn Rand would take some REALLY heavy lifting, so he practiced with Les Aspin. Give the guy a little credit, you commie.
Randy P
This is not the only “staunch Republican woman realizes her party doesn’t exist anymore” story I’ve heard this week. Hope you can parse that sentence.
To me, that’s the big fallout. They lost more automatic Republican voters. Maybe not a lot. I realize that the plural of “anecdotes” is not “data”. But in some places this November (such as my state, PA, with the Voter Suppression Act) it will be a game of inches.
Chyron HR
@KeithinOhio:
This is an op/ed piece by someone else. It just contains quotes from Pelosi.
Josie
@KeithinOhio: She’s known the truth all along. She’s just trying to mind meld with the average American voter, like a good politician should. She is helping them to make the discovery by discovering it herself and giving them cover for being so blind all along. The woman is amazing in her ability to influence people. I love Pelosi.
Randy P
In 2016 the Republicans are going to have to figure out how to write their Voter ID Laws to disenfranchise women too. Of all races. Should start to get interesting.
When does the crazy get so bad that moderates and non-crazy conservatives (remember those?) stand up a viable 2nd party and “Republican” becomes the 3rd party? Will I live to see that?
debbie
Even more frightening is that this flat-Earther-for-women clown sits on the House Science and Technology Committee.
Snarki, child of Loki
@maya: “With that growing list of things we can’t talk about concerning Mitt – [Bain, Mormanism, family, tax returns, and now, abortion] – I guess the debates with the President will have to be conducted in some quiet room out of public view.”
Or, we could just do like the old Emperors of Hawai’i and have a surfing contest for the top job. Lots better ratings than boring old doubletalk debates.
Obama will win, of course.
anonymous
Is it possible Akin is a chickenhawk?
An article in the WashPost said he was in the National Guard, and his age was about right to have avoided serving in Vietnam. A bio somewhere implied he was in college when he could have been serving. (Also made it seem like he was probably born pretty wealthy.)
Ash Can
I still think the GOP convention will turn out to be a bridge too far for a pretty fair number of
people who just aren’t paying any fucking attention“independents.”pk
Actually Ryan (and I’m sure Akin)does not even believe in exceptions even if the life of the mother is at risk. I’m trying to imagine how that scenario would play out in real life.
ExurbanMom
@Josie: THIS. THIS is true.
Nancy Smash for the win, as always. We need her back in the Speaker’s chair, so that Obama can actually get some things done in his second term.
Cassidy
@KeithinOhio: Yes. Because Nancy Pelosi woke up this morning and said “Oh my God, they hate wimmens!”.
Think it through, dude.
SFAW
@Ash Can:
You’re an optimistic sort, aren’t you? If they’re still (i.e., as of today) “independent” (as in “On the one hand, Romney is a lying SOB who will return us to the Dark Ages; on the other hand, I am concerned that Obama hasn’t reached across the aisle enough”), then nothing that happens in Tampa will change they minds.
Elizabelle
This was fun and fast. Courtesy of K-Thug: Yiddish curses for Republican Jews.
May you have a large store, and have it all dismantled by vulture capitalists.
Krugman’s favorite: May your child give his Bar Mitzvah speech on the genius of Ayn Rand.
May you live to 120 without Social Security or Medicare.
hep kitty
You know she wanted to say “tattoo on Ryan’s a$$” You just know she did.
Kane
Despite all of the overwhelming evidence of a republican war on women, all it took to finally convince some in denial of that reality was a short video clip of Todd Akin expressing his thoughts and having his “macaca” moment. Todd Akin is this year’s George Allen.
beltane
Now they’re saying Romney may accept the nomination early in the convention because he is scared of the Ron Paul faction http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2012/president/candidates/romney/2012/08/24/romney-could-nominated-early-convention-week/IPJ4DMp6ApfCXmk5WMv0kM/story.html
I have to say, it’s not very impressive to see a presidential nominee cower in fear of members of his own party. Romney is just not leadership material. That Mormon prophecy must refer to someone else. Sorry Mitt, you’re not the One.
kay
@pk:
Agreed.
We have plenty of examples of how that “life of the mother” exception plays out in real life, because we have plenty of examples out of Catholic hospitals where care for the mother was denied or delayed to “save the pregnancy”. 80 mile ride in a cab that the physician had to pay for out of his own pocket? They were too pure to take her to a proper medical facility that would save her life. They wouldn’t end “the pregnancy” (which is apparently what we call pregnant women now, “the pregnancy”) although she was at death’s door.
It’s complete and utter bullshit. It’s impossible to administer this “exception” using state law. How are they going to do it? The exception is granted…when? when they rapist is accused? When the rapist is indicted? Convicted? We’re talking about months for these processes. How far along is the pregnancy when this “exception” is granted? With an appeals process, the kid will be entering kindergarten when Paul Ryan sees fit to grant this wholly mythical “exception”. Are we going to have “abortion exception” hearings for rape victims?
If abortion is outlawed there will be no exceptions for rape or pregnancy by family members or life of the mother. We know this. Anti-abortionists don’t protect the life of the mother NOW.
They choose to “save the pregnancy”. Not the physician. Not the mother. Not the father. They choose. A panel of religious.
They say this stuff to appeal to people who think abortion and pregnancy and women are icky, and don’t want to think about all these messy realities when they’re voting for tax cuts for themselves, but it doesn’t make any sense, and it’s NEVER made any sense.
jurassicpork
Last night, my erstwhile contributor Mike Flannigan put up the second installment of his ongoing diary at the site of the GOP convention in Tampa. Think Hunter S. Thompson meets Kafka.
Cassidy
FYWP
CA Doc
Had a conversation yesterday with 2 women in my office. They are both Catholic and never talk politics and they have little interest in current affairs beyond true crime type stories. They both had heard of Akin and were both on fire regarding the newly revealed (to them) mysogeny and biological ignorance of the Republicans. And to my surprise at least one of them had heard about the Ryan/Republican plan to voucherize Medicare and wasn’t happy about that either. So keep pushing, Dems, the truth is getting through!
JPL
@kay: For the republicans, it’s just words. Ryan and Romney both want to slash medicaid funds and that would cut services for the poor. No prenatal care for you.
SFAW
@beltane:
“You were supposed to be the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Dark One!”
Tricia
@JPL Of course not, he’s ‘running for office for pete’s sake!’ Also the answer for not his having any detailed plans, white papers, position docs. Oh, and to really make things clear: He also says that out loud. Repeatedly. (Thanks oh mighty media for zero accountability). “We don’t want to give them anything to attack us with.”
This from a guy who’s run for major office four times, (senator, governor, and president twice)never releasing his taxes, each time completely altering his views, positions and platform. His one sacred consistancy, secrecy.
Stop and think a second how that would fly when Obama was running.
This may be the most insulting campaign for president by anyone in the modern era.
Elizabelle
From first paragraph of today’s NYTimes story on Mrs. Paul Ryan:
Paul Ryan. Did not. Ever have to. Work to support. His family. As a teenager.
Because the family owned a CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, damn it, and was quite well off.
And, like all the rest of us, Congressman and Mrs. Ryan live in “their Georgian-style brick house.” The one with the 6 or 8 bathrooms that ‘s on the National Historic Register. Right around the block from Ryan’s childhood home, by the way.
Per the NYTimes, they CHOSE to live in Janesville, although they could have raised their family in Washington, DC. On one salary. Right.
Just like you and me.
Applejinx
@Elizabelle: Ooooooh
Valdivia
@Elizabelle:
what??
Why is the NYT parroting this lie that he had to work in his teens because there was no money? They did just print a piece written by the RNC?
Also–an odd in today’s Times to Romney ad a professor. Shoot me now.
Wag
@JPL:
Maybe Mitt will insist we can only talk about abortion in quiet rooms.
kay
@pk:
It takes about a year to fully adjudicate a pregnancy caused by a family member where a minor becomes pregnant, from investigation to adjudication and then final disposition. The pregnant child is removed from the home, usually, but there’s no legal final determination until that process plays out. Parents have enormously robust rights regarding their children. They’re entitled to process. So when does this “exception” Paul Ryan and Ron Paul are touting come in? Who decides? An elected juvenile judge? A federal judge? Are we planning abortion courts for rape victims? Please. It’s a fantasy, and they know it.
No exceptions. If they were honest, they’d admit it.
Aimai
@KeithinOhio: She didn’t “admit” anything. She gave a very crafted and canny interview in which she removed flash points like feminism and choice and forced the interviewer to the side of feminism and choice against the interviewers will. It was like watching an elderly Jedi knight use the force.
gene108
@Randy P:
The Republican cash advantage this year is scary, because projecting forward a new Democratic Presidential candidate in 2016 is going to have a tough time overcoming all the smearing the Citizen’s United money will provide the Republicans.
President Obama has enough of a track record to weather what the Republicans can throw at him, but Governor/Senator ‘X’?
Voter ID laws will just be the icing on the Citizen’s United cake.
Elizabelle
@Valdivia:
Two authors on the NYTimes story, and neither good at fact-checking, apparently.
From the Ryan Lizza New Yorker article:
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/06/120806fa_fact_lizza#ixzz24TBU65vy
Bootstraps, people.
kay
@WJS:
But he wrote the Ryan Plan! Which no one read. It’s almost purely a political document. It slams Obama in nearly every paragraph. I was shocked, but then, I made the mistake of listening to people who loved it but hadn’t read it.
Won’t do that again. First question should ALWAYS be, “have you read it?” Then verify. Ask something specific.
Ash Can
@SFAW: I say it because up to now, the Joe Arpaios and Donald Trumps and witch-burners and Paulistas have been popping up only sporadically in the news and around the country. Now they’re going to be all together, concentrated in one building and all speaking together, one after the other, over a span of a few days, at an event that all the news services are sending crews to cover. Check out e.g. CA Doc’s comment @ 34. There’s potential here.
SFAW
@Ash Can:
I still think you’re being optimistic, but that’s OK.
Based on the various polls (candidate, issue, you name it) taken over the past NN years, the “wisdom” of the electorate is in serious doubt. In general, it seems that the so-called “independent” voters are either too stupid to be able to understand the various positions and implications of those positions, or too chicken-shit to be willing to say they prefer “Position A” or “Position B” or whatever.
I think it would be good fun if we had Voter IQ laws, applied only in the Red states. “You must be at least this clueful to be able to vote” would go a long way toward weeding out those voters the Rethugs are catering to – “… people of the land. … You know… morons.”
Valdivia
@Elizabelle:
It just makes me want to use a rusty pitchfork! I guess it is easier to build up a myth about Ryan than actually tell the truth.
WereBear
Local Facebook post from a neighboring small town:
SATURDAY (local name) PIZZA WILL DONATE $1.00 FROM EACH SLICE SOLD TO HELP (local name)’s family as her son (local name) fights childhood cancer
SOOOO STOP IN BUY A SLICE SATURDAY FROM 11:30AM-12 MIDNIGHT GOOD PEOPLE THAT CAN USE EVERYONES HELP
THANKS …. (initials)
Great, just great. This family is facing childhood cancer and the community is chipping in and it’s lovely and all but it is not enough. You would think these genuinely good-hearted people would stop and figure out what a travesty it is that the richest nation on earth throws their sick children onto the meager resources of small town America.
Doubtless Sarah Palin is experiencing a warm feeling… somewhere.
Thank you, Republicans!
Elizabelle
@Applejinx:
Yeah, I loved that one.
We could come up with some new curses.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hennenberger is a professional media Catholic. WHen the Bishops stirred up the whole birth control fantasay, she appeared on Tweety on Ash Wednesday with the biggest, blackest forehead stain I’ve ever seen. She came across as more than a little crazy.
I can’t believe any national media site is still repeating the “Paul Ryan worked to support his family!” lie. He banked his SS death benefit for spending money at college. My family was solidly upper middle class, and I worked in a restaurant after school too. It wasn’t to pay the mortgage or help me old maw pay the grocer.
Patricia Kayden
Preach Pelosi! Would be nice to see her back as the Speaker.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Liar! No follower of St. Ayn the Preachy would ever allow hisself to accept SOCIAL Security! That’s what Commies do!
Or hypocritical Objectivists, but still …
@Patricia Kayden:
It would be a good thing. Might turn me from a super-curmudgeon to a sorta-curmudgeon.
cyntax
Out of curiosity, I clicked Henneberger’s link to see who the Dems were that don’t respect women and I got a link to an article on Bill Maher. Seriously? That’s the best equivalency she can draw to actual, sitting Repub congressmen? Gawd bless or VSPs.
Cassidy
@cyntax: Someone who isn’t a Democrat.
Matt McIrvin
In Rudy Rucker’s early cyberpunk novel Software he foresaw old baby-boomers taking over Florida as a kind of retirement reservation, only he imagined that they’d all be freaky old hippies.
(oops, wrong thread, this was supposed to be on the one about The Villages.)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@JPL: We can’t talk about anything because, shut up, that’s why.
artem1s
I’m glad this Akin thing has finally uncovered the underlying misogyny of forced birtherism and the anti-choice movement in general.
What I am not yet seeing is the final link in the argument. The next President is going to be choosing, potentially, two Supreme Court nominees. Who do you want to be making that call when it comes to reproductive rights?
Too many republican voting women over the last 20 years or so comforted themselves with a split vote regarding Roe v Wade. The Dems need to pound this message over and over until the election. Team Mitt will result in the over turn of every woman’s right to make reproductive choices for themselves, potentially, forever.
piratedan
and here’s another twist to the forced birtherism…. those rapists have parental rights……
http://thethorntonreview.com/news/world/1807-31-states-give-parental-rights-to-rapists
I wouldn’t wish this shit on anybody, but what self respecting man or father would suffer thru their daughter’s sexual assault and then stand by helplessly while the evil bastard would then have rights regarding his grandchild is fucking beyond my capacity to deal with things….