The Coming GOP Double Speak on Contraception

One of the quickest ways to reduce the number of abortion is to have safe, modern, effective, accessible contraception  and science and fact based sex education for teenagers.   Yet for decades Republicans and their evangelical/Christofascist base have opposed fact based sex education - they prefer to push ludicrous "abstinence only" sex education - and have sought to make contraception less available/affordable  through funding cuts and even suggestions that the Supreme Court ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut which legalized contraception for married couples be overturned.  Now, post Roe v. Wade, Republicans find anti-abortion positions to be an albatross and a sure way to meet possible electoral defeat.  Ever disingenuous, some in the GOP want to now shift the conversation to contraception and their feigned support for the same from abortion that is proving to be toxic with a majority of voters.  Among those leading this effort to change the topic is the ever reprehensible Kellyanne Conway.  The problem this GOP effort faces is that the GOP track record and funding cut efforts show their supposed new fund support for contraception to be a lie.  A piece in Politico looks at this effort at double speak.  Here are highlights:

Kellyanne Conway is going to Capitol Hill on Wednesday with a message for Republicans: promote contraception or risk defeat in 2024.

The former senior counselor and campaign manager for President Donald Trump is part of a group set to brief Republicans on how they might get ahead of Democrats’ attacks that the GOP is anti-woman by talking more about protecting contraception and less about banning abortion.

The visit comes as GOP presidential and congressional candidates have struggled to craft a salient message on the fallout from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

Trump himself has blamed anti-abortion groups and the strict laws they support for electoral defeats in 2022 and 2023. And several prominent conservatives have implored Republicans in the post-Roe era to focus on issues such as contraception and maternal care to improve perception of the GOP’s approach to women’s health as Democrats have wielded the issue to notch several election wins.

Conway, lobbyist Susan Hirschmann and Independent Women’s Voice CEO Heather . . . . warn that if they don’t talk about birth control and work to make it more accessible, they risk losing voters and confirming arguments from the left that the party that outlawed abortion in much of the country is coming next for contraception.

The group will share polling commissioned by Independent Women’s Voice and conducted by KA Consulting, Conway’s firm, that shows overwhelming public support — including from Republicans and people who identify as “pro-life” — for policies that make contraception cheaper and more available, including implantable long-acting versions like IUDs that some conservatives view as akin to abortion.

The longtime GOP pollster told POLITICO that while it’s no shock that contraception is popular, particularly as states move to outlaw most abortions, she was struck by some of the poll results, including how many conservatives believe Congress should ensure access to contraception regardless of cost.

“I’ve been doing this for over three decades and I’m very surprised that over 8 in 10 independents and over 8 in 10 pro-lifers would agree with that,” she said. “Because some people say: ‘You may have a right to contraception but why am I paying for it?’ That’s the classic libertarian argument.”

Conway plans to tell Capitol Hill Republicans that they “will lose precious political currency and votes” if they do nothing or take steps to put contraception further out of reach — pointing to the poll’s finding that nearly half of conservative women “would consider voting for a candidate from a different political party” if Republicans back birth control restrictions.

But progressives preparing for battles in 2024 to hold the Senate and White House are skeptical Republicans can cast themselves as champions of birth control heading into 2024.

“It won’t work,” said Sara Spain, the spokesperson for the group EMILYS List, which funds and coaches candidates who support reproductive rights. “Actions speak louder than words and voters know which lawmakers stand with the majority of Americans and which don’t. So efforts like this attempted rebrand won’t do much, because we’ve all seen their record and we’ve seen they are willing to ban abortion and contraception.”

Organizations like EMILYS List plan to keep that record firmly on voters’ radar going into next year.

For example, House Republicans’ spending bills, set to come up for a vote early next year, would eliminate funding for the Title X family planning program and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program — both of which provide contraception to millions of people who might not otherwise be able to afford it. And last summer, Senate Republicans blocked the House-passed Right to Contraception Act, which would have enshrined the right to contraception into federal law.

Democrats have also highlighted Justice Clarence Thomas’ call for the high court to “reconsider” the decades-old federal precedent guaranteeing the right to contraception.

Higgins hopes the survey convinces Republican members of Congress that these efforts do not reflect their constituents’ views and play right into Democrats’ hands.

“If any conservatives believe that this is what the pro-life world actually wants, it might help break through to them and explain to them that even among the most pro-life conservatives, you find this strong support for safe, modern, effective, accessible contraception ... available for everyone,” she said.

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The GOP Doesn’t Really Want a Deal on Border Security

Ukrainians have been fighting a heroic battle against Russia for the better part of two years and have inspired those who support democracy around the world and acting as a bulwark against Putin's asperations to reconquer former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe.  Sadly, many Republicans - especially in the House of Representatives - who actively work to subvert democracy in America and are supporting Donald Trump, a would be dictator, are not inspired and, in fact, are playing political games that threaten to end more funding for Ukraine.  Ending aid would be an enormous gift to Vladimir Putin and harm America's position in the world, but these Republicans do not care.  Instead, their sole concern is performing for the Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, crowd and doing everything they can to avoid a deal on border security, which if enacted could address the surge of migrants at the U.S. border and thereby deprive Republicans of a cudgel to against Joe Biden and Democrats.   Sadly, the best interests of America and its allies are far down the list of GOP priorities that remain focused on thrilling the ugliest elements of the GOP's religious extremist/white supremacist base. The bottom line is that Republicans do NOT want a deal on border security - despite their disingenuous claims - and are ready to throw Ukraine to Putin.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the GOP insincerity.  Here are highlights"

For two years, the Ukrainians have fought heroically to defend their country against Russia’s invasion. The United States and other allies have funded that defense. But Russia has not given up, and past rounds of U.S. aid are nearly exhausted. For Ukraine to keep fighting, it urgently needs more aid.

The Biden administration has sent Congress a request for $61 billion in new funds for Ukraine and $14 billion to help Israel defend itself against Hamas and Hezbollah. The package also includes humanitarian assistance to people displaced by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as assistance to Indo-Pacific allies, and $14 billion for border security (for a total of $111 billion).

Republicans in the House and Senate are resisting this request. The ostensible reason is that they want more radical action on the border than the Biden administration has offered. The whole aid package is now stalled, with potentially catastrophic consequences for Ukraine. Ukrainian units are literally running out of ammunition. If supplies of military equipment are interrupted, restarting them will take a while, which means that Ukraine could be left unaided over the winter unless Congress acts in time. And with both the House and the Senate scheduled to go into recess at the end of this week for their Christmas break, very little time remains in which to act.

How is any of this happening? On past evidence, a clear majority of Senate Republicans sincerely want to help Ukraine. Probably about half of House Republicans do too. In a pair of procedural test votes in September, measures to cut or block aid to Ukraine drew, respectively, 104 and 117 Republican votes of the 221 then in the caucus.

The offer that President Joe Biden is making regarding the border represents a meaningful opening bid. The fundamental reason for America’s present border crisis is that would-be immigrants are trying to game the asylum system. The system is overwhelmed by the numbers claiming asylum. Even though the great majority of those claims will ultimately be rejected, their processing takes years, sometimes decades. In the meantime, most asylum seekers will be released into the United States. This makes claiming asylum a rational bet for would-be immigrants to try their luck, and millions of people are doing just that. The $14 billion of proposed additional funding would pay for some 1,600 new staff in the asylum system.

[I]n the multilateral negotiations among the White House and Republicans in both houses of Congress, the normal process of offer and counteroffer seems to have broken down altogether. I stress the word seems because getting clarity on the state of play is very difficult—as the response I received from the congressional staffer suggests.

On December 6, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer issued the following invitation to Republicans: Write an amendment detailing everything you want, and the Democratic Senate majority will let you bring it to the floor for a clean vote. That offer was rejected by Senate Republicans. How do you get to “yes” when the other side refuses to state its terms?

In a letter to Biden dated December 5, House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted that nothing less than “transformative” border policies would do. The House Republican vision is contained in a bill known as H.R. 2.

H.R. 2 is certainly transformative. It would rewrite the asylum system from top to bottom; . . . H.R. 2 was an easy vote to please the Fox News audience without any need to weigh potential negative consequences.

[T]he impasse on the Republican side is powered by four main impulses:

PLAYING TO THE GALLERY

A lot of House Republicans do not much care about enacting laws and solving problems. They are in Congress to strike poses and score television hits. They do not want to make deals. They want to position themselves as the one true conservative too pure for dealmaking. The only things they’re willing to say they want are the things they know to be impossible.

THE POLITICS OF DOMINATION

On December 4, Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas told reporters: “There’s a misunderstanding on the part of Senator Schumer and some of our Democratic friends. This is not a traditional negotiation, where we expect to come up with a bipartisan compromise on the border. This is a price that has to be paid in order to get the supplemental.” For many Republicans, what mattered was not what they got but how they got it: We demand, you comply; we win, you lose.

INTENTIONAL FAILURE

The border is Biden’s single greatest political vulnerability. A recent NBC poll puts the Republican advantage on immigration at 18 points and border security at 30 points. Suppose Republicans did extract a big border concession in 2023; suppose they got everything they wanted. Then suppose their policy worked, and the flow of asylum seekers really did taper off dramatically in 2024. Would not the result of that success be only to strengthen Biden’s reelection chances and hurt Donald Trump’s? Maybe the reason Democrats are having so much difficulty getting to “yes” with Republicans is that many Republicans are committed to “no,” regardless of what the offer is.

ANIMOSITY TOWARD UKRAINE

The premise of much of the reporting about the negotiation is that Republicans sincerely care about the border and are using Ukraine and Israel as leverage in order to get their way on their higher priority. But for some Republicans, at least, stopping aid to Ukraine seems a priority in itself. A few actively subscribe to the pro-Putin politics of the far right. Others—including Speaker Johnson himself—started as supporters of Ukraine but have bent their view under the influence of anti-Ukraine party spirit.. . . Whatever each member’s motives and story are, the result has delivered them to the point where immigration-for-Ukraine no longer looks to them like a win-win deal.

The story’s not over yet. A last-minute reprieve for Ukraine and for the national honor of the United States may come through. Majorities in both the House and the Senate want this deal to happen. Significant counteroffers for immigration control are on the table, and agreement can surely be found. But the malign forces are strong, and they will not vanish on their own.

We’re headed to a “no” that will doom Ukraine and disgrace the U.S., while doing nothing to remedy the crisis at the border. A “yes” on both Ukraine and the border is still within reach, if only pro-Ukraine Republicans will press their colleagues to grasp it. If leadership was ever needed, it’s needed now.

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Red States Push for a Dystopian Return to the 1950's

Last month, sane and sentient Virginians breathed a huge sigh of relief when Virginia Republicans lost control of the House of Delegates and failed to take control of the Virginia Senate.  Had things gone the other way, a Republican controlled General Assembly working with Glenn Youngkin would have embarked on whirlwind effort to turn Virginia into a warmed over version of Ron DeSantis' Florida which among other things has seen a sharp drop in SAT scores thanks to the GOP effort to censor and destroy that state's education system.   While Virginia dodged disaster for now, across America states fully controlled by Republicans are lurching towards a return to the worse aspects of the 1950's - some, I suspect, would even like to revive segregation. Republican bloviating about "freedom" translates in practice to mean restrictions on the rights of disfavored groups within society, including women, and the empowerment of a minority of extremists to inflict their beliefs on all.  Frighteningly, these GOP policies even shorten life expectancy, not that Republican politicians actually care about the lives of many within their states.  A column in the New York Times looks at the ill-effects of GOP control.  Here are excerpts:

It seems obvious to say, but if you want a real sense of the differences between America’s two major parties — and if you want a sense of what the future could bring if either party wins full control of the federal government next year — all you have to do is look at the states.

Where Republicans have gained this kind of full control over state legislatures and statehouses, they have used that authority in pursuit of policies meant to curtail the ability of people in their states to live as they please.

You know what this looks like. It’s the “anti-woke” policymaking of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s Florida, from laws that stigmatize L.G.B.T.Q. students and teachers in public school classrooms to an assault on higher education that has driven professors out of state. “What we are witnessing in Florida is an intellectual reign of terror,” LeRoy Pernell, a law professor at Florida A&M University, said in an  interview with a special committee of the American Association of University Professors.

It’s not just Florida, of course. Republican trifectas in states across the country have introduced and passed dozens of bills aimed at the public existence of trans and other gender nonconforming people. Republicans in Oklahoma banned the use of nonbinary gender identifiers on birth certificates; Republicans in Tennessee, similarly, banned trans people from changing their gender on their birth certificates. Republicans in Arkansas and Alabama have passed laws that ban gender-affirming care for young trans people and Republicans in Texas have gone as far as to say that under state law, gender-affirming care can legally constitute child abuse.

New abortion restrictions in Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas — to name just a few states — have left millions of American women without access to abortion services, even in the face of life-threatening complications. Republicans in Texas, in fact, waged and won a legal battle against Kate Cox, a 31-year old woman who sought to terminate her essentially nonviable pregnancy or face potentially deadly complications. This week, she left the state to receive care. Or put another way, Texas decided that Cox’s life was not threatened enough to relent.

The state-level Republican agenda also includes efforts to restrict voting or gerrymander political opponents out of representation. Taken all together, you could say that Republicans are engaged in a comprehensive effort to limit the freedom of entire categories of people.

Compare this with the legislation passed in states that, after the 2022 elections, became Democratic trifectas.

Late last month, Michigan Democrats overhauled the state’s election laws, with a set of bills designed to increase access to the polls. Most groundbreaking is a bill that would automatically register incarcerated people upon release from prison, unless they opt out.

Within months of the start of the new legislative session, Whitmer had already signed laws to increase the state earned-income tax credit, expand anti-discrimination protections for sexual and gender identity, repeal the state’s right-to-work law — which hindered the ability of unions to organize — and repeal a 1931 statute criminalizing abortion care.

Upon winning their trifecta in 2022, Minnesota Democrats — led by Gov. Tim Walz — embarked on a similar effort to make life better for most people in the state. In the face of largely united Republican opposition, Minnesota Democrats mandated paid family and medical leave, barred employers from holding anti-union captive audience meetings, strengthened workplace protections in warehouses and meatpacking plants, curtailed wage theft and gave free breakfast and lunch to all children in Minnesota public schools.

Maryland Democrats, for their part, have used their new trifecta to speed up the state’s transition to a $15-per-hour minimum wage, expand tax credits for low-income residents, limit where people can carry firearms in public places and protect abortion rights.

Over the long term, state-by-state policies have a measurable impact on life expectancy. Writing for The American Prospect, Paul Starr summarizes the results of a 2020 paper looking at the disparity in life expectancy between the most liberal states and the most conservative states, singling out Connecticut and Oklahoma as two states where policies shifted the most, either to the left or to the right. “Their model,” Starr writes, “indicated that if all states’ policies were the same as Connecticut’s in 2014, U.S. life expectancy would have been two years longer for women and 1.3 years longer for men — and if all states’ policies were like Oklahoma’s, Americans’ lives would have been shorter.”

Americans are often taught to think of the differences between Republicans and Democrats as a set of reasonable disagreements over how to tackle agreed-upon problems. But what we can see, in the divergent agendas of Republican-led states and Democrat-led states, is how the differences have far more to do with the actual purpose of government. For Democrats, that purpose is usually the public good. For Republicans, that purpose is harsh social regulation, with little apparent regard for the lives of those who have to endure these policies.

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Hallmark Movies and the Red State Brain Drain

I have long argued that one of the biggest problems facing Southwest Virginia efforts to improve its economy is its residents and their support of Republican politicians who do nothing to better their economic circumstances and instead play to their hatreds and prejudices.  Meanwhile, the reactionary citizenry and closed minded social climate make the region unattractive to new, progressive business.  This phenomenon is not unique to Southwest Virginia and can be found across many red states which are seeing college educated individuals abandon their small home towns and states for big cities and blue states in order to escape abortion bans, "don't say gay" laws, book bans, racism, and a generally stifling social climate.   A piece in Salon looks at the ongoing exodus and the inability of parents and older residents to look in the mirror and realize that they are the problem. Instead they watch Hallmark movies with comforting themes, cling to the right wing media noise machine and vote for ever more reactionary Republicans and continue to worsen the problem.  Here are article excepts: 

Hallmark's popular, if painfully corny, Christmas movies, definitely have a casing formula for their heroines: Mostly white, clean-cut, and of an in-between age. That is, young enough to be plausibly short of middle age, but old enough to sell the standard Hallmark plot: Urban professional leaves the city to get a new lease on life, by returning to her parents in small town America and marrying the boy next door. But the women who actually watch Hallmark movies are much older than the stars. Over 70% of the Hallmark audience is past 50 years old. This breakdown of the most popular Hallmark Christmas movies shows they're mostly a hit with the Medicare crowd, with over half of the audience aged 65 and up. 

The audience for Hallmark movies, in other words, doesn't look quite like its heroines, but more like their mothers. It's also a very white audience that is more concentrated in Republican-voting areas.

A lot of the critical reaction to the popularity of Hallmark movies assumes they are selling a comforting, if reactionary reverie of retreat from urban life to small town simplicity. In light of these demographics, however, I'd argue the story being sold is even narrower than that. Hallmark is selling a fantasy to older, mostly Republican viewers: That their wayward daughters will give up on life in the big city and return home to live near their mothers.

[T]he actual daughters in question are way more invested in the Taylor Swift narrative: Daughters who have flown the coop and are very happy living their busy lives with a cat in the big city.

The sad irony in all this is that the Hallmark-loving grandmothers of America, by voting for Republicans, are working against their own dreams of having adult children — and grandchildren — who live next door. As Timothy Noah wrote recently in a cover article for the New Republic, the increasingly authoritarian policies passed by Republican leaders are leading to what he deems the "Red State Brain Drain": "an out-migration of young professionals" from GOP-controlled states to the more welcoming pastures of blue state America. 

There are many reasons the under-50 set are taking their college degrees and robust contributions to the tax base out of red states into blue ones. The biggest concerns are for their own school-age children. They want their kids to go to schools without book bans, to have access to reproductive health care, to be safe from violence and, should they identify as LGBTQ (as many in Gen Z do), that they will be affirmed instead of bullied. But for people in professions like teaching, medicine, science or the arts, it's just increasingly hard to feel safe and supported in red states. So they leave. 

Noah's focus is on how the brain drain is impacting life in red states, which are seeing massive shortages in teachers, doctors, and other necessary educated professionals. "And much as Republicans may scorn Joe (and Jane) College, they need them to deliver their babies, to teach their children, to pay taxes," he writes. But, if the popularity of Hallmark movies is any indication, there's another loss a lot of Republicans have brought upon themselves by relentlessly electing authoritarian leaders: The loss of their own children's presence.

The first couple that Noah profiles — Kate Arnold and her wife, Caroline Flint — are a good example. The two were both doctors serving in Oklahoma, which is in desperate need of more medical professionals. They lived in the state because they have roots there. But after abortion was banned, the familial connection to Oklahoma could not overcome their anger and fear at living in a place that makes it so hard to live their lives and do their jobs. So they moved to D.C. They easily named four other friends who had left Oklahoma for similar reasons recently.

There's a lot of angst in red state America over the loss of young people in general, but especially with those MAGA voters whose adult children have moved to far-flung places. Right-wing media outlets clearly understand this, because they churn out an endless stream of propaganda about how all those young white people who go to college and move to the big city are brainwashed idiots who will rue the day they left their hometowns behind. 

Fox News is an endless drumbeat of stories falsely painting American cities as hellscapes where residents have to hopscotch over sleeping junkies in between enduring armed robberies at the hands of Black Lives Matter protesters. This narrative has long been a mainstay of the right-wing noise machine. . . .

In these segments, the villains are educated white "elites" — like many of the children of Fox viewers — whose supposed youthful idealism has allowed crime, drug addiction, and homelessness to run amok. Another flavor of this hate comes in right-wing scare stories about dystopian police states created by liberal overreach in the name of public health or environmentalism.

And, of course, the increasingly loud right-wing war on education is a big part of this.

The Republican attacks on college professors, the fear-mongering about "woke" college kids, and the substantive efforts to run off faculty and/or deprive them of free speech flow directly from years of conservative messaging treating college itself as a threat. A big part of this is that it's college, of course, that freed so many young people to get the hell out of red state America. 

It's messaging that fits with Donald Trump's "retribution" style of politics. Rather than asking why young people are leaving and how to get them back, it's about lashing out at them and entertaining fantasies of revenge.

The truth is a lot of younger professionals would be open to living in red states if the political situation weren't so terrifying. The housing is cheaper and often the job opportunities are more plentiful, especially in education and health care. And many people would like to be closer to aging relatives, to help them out and have them in their grandkids' lives. 

But by voting for Republicans, red state denizens are making sure their Hallmark dreams will never come true. In the real world, your harried urban professional daughter will never come home to Oklahoma or Texas or Florida, because, for one thing, she can't get an abortion if she needs one. Or her own child will be punished for saying "gay" in school. Or she will worry every day about her kid getting killed in a mass shooting. . . . . The word they use for blue states is "safe."