A GOP War on Women?

At times it seems as if the Republican Party is striving to alienate all but the most insane Kool-Aid drinking religious extremists and the most greedy of the 1%. Why else support the Christianist anti-contraception campign and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while seeking to slash spending on everything then benefits the 99%. Obviously, these policies and the resulting uproar are a gift to Democrats that keeps on giving and deserves to be utilized against the GOP to the maximum extent possible. Especially when it comes to exposing just how extreme and anti-freedom of religion the GOP has become. Kathleen Parker, one of the few thinking conservatives not yet tarred and feathered and ridden out on a rail by Republicans has a good column in the Washington Post that looks at the GOP's self-created PR disaster. Here are some highlights:

Introducing her husband on Super Tuesday night, Ann Romney said that women this election season are interested in jobs, the economy and the debt. Translation: So could we shut up already about contraception?

Republicans might wish nothing more than to stuff birth control pills back into the bottle, but Democrats aren’t about to let them. The narrative already has a title: “The Republican War on Women.” Cue theme from “Psycho.”

One can hardly blame Democrats for taking advantage of a perfect storm of stupefying proportions. The only thing Republicans failed to do was put a bow on this mess. Consider the headline-grabbing events that came together almost at once:

Virginia’s pre-abortion sonogram law that could have required women to undergo a transvaginal probe; the debate over religious liberty vs. contraception mandate, prompted by health-care reform; Rush Limbaugh’s commentary about a female law student in which he called her a slut and a prostitute and, in a final flourish, suggested she provide him sex tapes so he could watch her in the activities precipitating the need for birth control.

[C]ombined their effect on female voters is that of a Tyrannosaurus rex approaching a Gallimimus herd. (Picture the stampede scene in “Jurassic Park.”)

War has been declared, and there’s hardly any way to change the impression among a growing percentage of women that the GOP is the party of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. It’s a smart move for Democrats to keep replaying the message . . .

[C]ontrary to what the White House insists, Rush Limbaugh is not the leader of the GOP. Even so, he does have a large audience and it is disconcerting that so many seem to share his obvious hostility toward women. Several of his cohorts in discourtesy are snorting and grunting in my inbox even now.

One who wrote in defense of Limbaugh informed me of my place in God’s hierarchy, slightly above goats, and gave me a tutorial . . . . “Pagan women like yourself,” he patiently averred, “have no regard for the natural order of God’s plan and shamelessly promulgate the ‘we are goddesses’ bile that has infected the entire country and pretty much stopped it in its tracks from incurring God’s blessing.” I’m leaving out the best parts.

Unfortunately, the conservative governing principles that traditionally attracted level heads to the right side of the aisle have been incrementally subsumed by social issues — a bull’s-eye for Democrats and a black eye for Republicans. Inasmuch as women are the ones who most urgently require access to family planning, any opposition can be conflated to be anti-woman. Hence, Ann Romney’s well-placed remarks.

She is right, of course, but the problem she was implicitly trying to address is not short-term. The GOP long ago made its bed with social conservatives, a large percentage of them Southern evangelicals, and now must sleep with them. After marriage, of course. In Laurens County, S.C., where the local GOP recently tried to create a purity tribunal to screen and monitor aspiring Republican candidates, this is more than a punch line.

Although the state party ruled the county initiative inconsistent with state law, the Laurens mind-set burbles just beneath the surface of the once-Grand Old Party. And that is a problem only Democrats could love.

The GOP leadership knowingly made a pact with the Devil - i.e., lunatic Christianists - and they deserve to pay the price that has brought with it. Many, like myself, can never consider a return to the GOP until the Christianists extremists and greed driven people like the Koch brothers are driven out. And I don't see that happening any time soon. The result will be that the GOP continues its downward spiral into insanity and, hopefully, electoral defeats.