In “Just Think No” MoDo has a question: Why do Republicans have a gender gap when they ascribe superpowers to women, like the ability to block rape sperm with sheer willpower? The Moustache of Wisdom has decided to gurgle about centrism again. In “We Need a ‘Conservative’ Party” he babbles that we need more than debates from our politicians. Just imagine what could be accomplished if the moderates were in charge instead of the radicals. He’s struggling to find a way to recast a bunch of Republican crap, trying to make it sound palatable. Feh. Here’s MoDo:
There’s something trying about an unforgiving man suddenly in need of forgiveness.
Yet Todd Akin is right. He shouldn’t have to get out of the United States Senate race in Missouri simply for saying what he believes. He reflects a severe stance on abortion that many in his party embrace, including the new vice presidential candidate.
“I talk about one word, one sentence, one day out of place, and, all of a sudden, the entire establishment turns on you,” Representative Akin complained to the conservative radio talk-show host Dana Loesch on Tuesday as he spurned pleas from Mitt Romney and other G.O.P. big shots to abort his bid. He continued: “They just ran for cover at the first sign of any gunfire, and I think we need to rush to the gunfire.”
He’s right again. Other Republicans are trying to cover up their true identity to get elected. Even as party leaders attempted to lock the crazy uncle in the attic in Missouri, they were doing their own crazy thing down in Tampa, Fla., by reiterating language in their platform calling for a no-exceptions Constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, even in cases of rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother.
Paul Ryan, who teamed up with Akin in the House to sponsor harsh anti-abortion bills, may look young and hip and new generation, with his iPod full of heavy metal jams and his cute kids. But he’s just a fresh face on a Taliban creed — the evermore antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs.
In asserting that women have the superpower to repel rape sperm, Akin ratcheted up the old chauvinist argument that gals who wear miniskirts and high-heels are “asking” for rape; now women who don’t have the presence of mind to conjure up a tubal spasm, a drone hormone, a magic spermicidal secretion or mere willpower to block conception during rape are “asking” for a baby.
“The biological facts are perhaps inconvenient, but whether the egg meets the sperm is a matter of luck or prevention,” says Dr. Paul Blumenthal, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology who directs the Stanford Program for International Reproductive Education and Services. “If wishing that ‘I won’t get pregnant right now’ made it so, we wouldn’t need contraceptives.”
When you wish upon a rape.
Dr. Blumenthal is alarmed that Akin is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
“What is very disturbing to me is that people like Mr. Akin who have postulated this secret mechanism for avoiding pregnancy have developed their own make-believe world of science based on entirely self-serving beliefs of convenience or just ignorance,” he said. “I don’t think we want these people to be responsible for the lives of others.”
But, for all the Republican cant about how they want to keep government out of the lives of others, the ultraconservatives are panting to meddle in the lives of others. Contrary to President Obama’s refreshing assertion Monday that a bunch of male politicians shouldn’t be making health care decisions for women, this troglodyte tribe of men and Bachmann-esque women craves that responsibility.
“Next we’ll be trying to take away the vote from women,” lamented Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist who advised Romney in the 2008 race. “How can we be the party of cool and make the generational leap forward when we have these recidivist ideas at the very core of our base?”
Akin defended the incendiary comment he made on a Missouri TV show — “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down” — by saying he wasn’t talking about rapists being legitimate, but rather “false claims” of rape, “like those made in Roe versus Wade.” He said he meant to say “forcible rape.” Oh, that’s ever so much better.
Akin, Ryan et al. have made it their business to designate which rapes are legitimate, joining up to push Orwellian legislation last year to narrow the definition of rape to “forcible rape.”
And Mitt, who was for abortion rights (except for Mormons he counseled) before he was against them, in his last presidential bid went after the endorsement of Dr. John Willke, a former president of the National Right to Life Committee and father of the inanity about rape victims being able to turn back sperm if they put their mind and muscles to it.
The nutty doctor hypothesized: “This is a traumatic thing. She’s, shall we say, she’s uptight.” Adding, “She is frightened, tight, and so on. And sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be able to fertilize. The tubes are spastic.”
Akin is right in saying this race should be about “who we are as a people.”
It should also be about who they are. They are people who want to be in your life, deep in your life, even when they say they don’t.
They don’t want to be in my life, they want to be right up in the middle of my hoo-hah. With wands. Here’s The Moustache of Wisdom:
There has been lots of talk that Paul Ryan’s nomination ensures that we’ll now have a “real” debate about the role of government. That’s actually funny. The bar for this campaign is so low that we celebrate the fact that it might include a serious debate about one of the four great issues of the day, though even that is not clear yet. And even if Ryan’s entry does spark a meaningful debate about one of the great issues facing America — the nexus of debt, taxes and entitlements — there is little sign that we’ll seriously debate our other three major challenges: how to generate growth and upgrade the skills of every American in an age when the merger of globalization and the information technology revolution means every good job requires more education; how to meet our energy and climate challenges; and how to create an immigration policy that will treat those who are here illegally humanely, while opening America to the world’s most talented immigrants, whom we need to remain the world’s most innovative economy.
But what’s even more troubling is that we need more than debates. That’s all we’ve been having. We need deals on all four issues as soon as this election is over, and I just don’t see that happening unless “conservatives” retake the Republican Party from the “radicals” — that is, the Tea Party base. America today desperately needs a serious, thoughtful, credible 21st-century “conservative” opposition to President Obama, and we don’t have that, even though the voices are out there.
Imagine if the G.O.P.’s position on debt was set by Senator Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who has challenged the no-tax lunacy of Grover Norquist and served on the Simpson-Bowles commission and voted for its final plan (unlike Ryan). That plan included both increased tax revenues and spending cuts as the only way to fix our long-term fiscal imbalances. Give me a Republican Party that says we have to put real tax revenues and spending cuts on the table to solve this problem, and you’ll get a deal with Obama, who has already offered both, although not at the scale we need. True conservatives know that both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush used both tax revenue and spending cuts to fix budget shortfalls. Ryan-led G.O.P. radicals say “no new taxes,” find all the savings through spending cuts. That’s never going to happen — and shouldn’t.
Imagine if the G.O.P.’s position on immigration followed the lead of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of the News Corporation. Bloomberg and Murdoch recently took to the road to make the economic case for immigration reform. “I think we are in a crisis in this country,” The Times quoted the Australian-born Murdoch, who’s now a naturalized American, as saying last week. “Right now, if we get qualified people in, there shouldn’t be any nonsense about it.” Regarding the “so-called illegal Mexicans,” Murdoch added, “give them a path to citizenship. They pay taxes; they are hard-working people. Why Mitt Romney doesn’t do it, I have no idea, because they are natural Republicans.”
Imagine if the G.O.P. position on energy and climate was set by Bob Inglis, a former South Carolina Republican congressman (who was defeated by the Tea Party in 2010). He now runs George Mason University’s Energy and Enterprise Initiative, which is based on the notion that climate change is real, and that the best way to deal with it and our broader energy challenge is with conservative “market-based solutions” that say to the fossil fuel and wind, solar and nuclear industries: “Be accountable for all of your costs,” including the carbon and pollution you put in the air, and then we’ll “let the markets work” and see who wins.
Imagine if G.O.P. education policy was set by former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, without having to cater to radicals, who call for eliminating the Department of Education and view common core standards as some kind of communist conspiracy. Mr. Bush has argued that a conservative approach to education for 21st-century jobs would embrace more effective teacher evaluation and common core standards, but add a bigger element of choice in the form of charter schools and vouchers, the removal of union rules that limit new technology — and combine it all with greater autonomy and accountability for individual principals. When parents can choose and school leaders can innovate, good things happen.
We are not going to make any progress on our biggest problems without a compromise between the center-right and center-left. But, for that, we need the center-right conservatives, not the radicals, to be running the G.O.P., as well as the center-left in the Democratic Party. Over the course of his presidency, Obama has proposed center-left solutions to all four of these challenges. I wish he had pushed some in a bigger, consistent, more daring and more forceful manner — and made them the centerpiece of his campaign. Nevertheless, if the G.O.P. were in a different place, either a second-term Obama or a first-term Romney would have a real chance at making progress on all four. As things stand now, though, there is little hope this campaign will give the winner any basis for governing. Too bad — a presidential campaign is a terrible thing to waste.
And imagine if the Republican party weren’t owned lock, stock and barrel by lunatics…
August 22, 2012 at 8:45 am |
A rhetorical question merits an answer when the debate has legitimate context. Republican men and women who believe the text of their bible is absolute and without interpretation beyond the gospel truth have a narrow bridge to cross and escape reason. It is blocked by neurons which will not jump a charge to any comprehensible rational thought. My son on fellowship at a highly respected ME grad school somewhere in Indiana perhaps W. Lafayette found there were many backgrounds of people. But the most interesting was a bible toting Mormon. I kid u not. She was able to hold Joseph Smith’s “Book of Banking,Part 1″ and the lesser known to Romney’s clan “Book, of Mormon”. There is a third classic studied in med school for proctologists but I digress. This not extremely bright but adequately knowledgeable on the subject of Being and Nothingness told anyone whom she encountered that unless one was a Mormon and took to the bible as written in America on silver tongued plates one would go to hell. No ifs ands or butts. Unless it was the butt of a pig. Let’s not be crass. How my son said can she expect to deal with others of the human flesh? I dunno. Is she smart. Not very he replied. When further we discussed school closings, tuition, athletic fields, coaching salaries and Chris Christie distaste for public education I asked how were the undergrad ME’s at College Park. There were some very bright. There were others whom he said there is only so far one can bend a curve to get a D- and still be a mechanical engineer. My wife added twenty percent of the population carries the rest. She went on and said Republicans who oppose abortion have their right to that thought. But no one has a right to tell a woman what to do with her fetus. I added men should not be allowed to vote on the subject of abortion. Once idle chatter begets at the first sign of a twinkle in Ned’s eye for Nellie it’s open warfare. Neither the Mormon, Evangelists or Vatican have any say in the matter. Nor does Paul Ryan and whom ever he wants to entice to vote for his fairy blue eyes.