The mock outrage and silly opportunism of the Democrat-manufactured “war on women” narrative reached comedic heights today, after some innocuous comments from Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus triggered a ridiculously disproportionate firestorm:
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus triggered a debate on caterpillars Thursday when dismissing the GOP’s so-called “women problem” as a “fiction.”
“If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and mainstream media outlets talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we have problems with caterpillars,” Priebus told Bloomberg TV in an episode of “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing Thursday night. …
The comment “shows how little regard leading Republicans, including Mitt Romney, have for women’s health,” said Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter in a statement. “Women are already abandoning the Republican Party in droves because of their antiquated positions on women’s health and out-of-touch policies on the middle class. Reince Priebus’ comments today only reinforce why women simply cannot trust Mitt Romney or other leading Republicans to stand up for them.”
This is too obtuse to be unintentional. There is no way the Obama campaign or Democratic National Committee really thinks Reince Priebus was comparing women to caterpillars, right? Then again, The Atlantic seems to have bought in:
In this week’s Etch A Sketch moment, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said the GOP’s perceived “war on women” was as fictional as a war on caterpillars. Now, while it’s pretty fun to imagine politicians in suits doing battle with what we can only assume would be enormous, mutant caterpillars, it also reveals the problem with drawing such comparisons: trivializing people’s concerns isn’t the best way to get them to drop an issue.
So now if Republicans don’t admit that the “war on women” they are falsely being accused of waging is real, that’s taken as further evidence that they hate women and trivialize their concerns. That’s some logic.
The entire controversy is right out of that picnic scene from Whit Stillman’s great “Barcelona,” when Taylor Nichols tries to explain U.S. Cold War foreign policy to a group of anti-American pseudo-intellectuals by using an analogy about ants. “That’s clearly the most disgusting description of U.S. policy I have ever heard,” shoots back one artist. “The third-world is just a lot of ants to you.”
I can imagine that trying to explain the fallacy of the “war on women” narrative to Debbie Wasserman Schultz is about as futile as trying to explain the reasonableness of American foreign policy to anti-American Europeans. No matter what anybody says, she’ll just turn back to Priebus and exclaim, “So women are just a bunch of caterpillars to you?”
The women I know did vote for PO, do think he’s not nearly enough of a quick study but think the GOP is unable to understand time, place and Country. They might not phrase it the way I just did, but their foreboding amounts to that. Contraception is a very small piece of the puzzle. Its salience lies more in the fact that so many women view Santorum’s view as a prurient peek into “once upon a time in America.” n nThey don’t want to be anywhere near even a partial restoration of GW’s admin and the best thing the GOP can do is pull an Obama and make foreign policy an issue they’re “open” to. Do what’s necessary once elected, but in the meantime talk about home and hearth issues: PR’s “moral” budget with its sumptuous, restorative dream of “territorial taxation” and unspecified means of “broadening the tax base” isn’t considered one of them.
That the GOP takes war casually is a credited meme. One colleague asked me the other day if I knew how many widows and orphans in the making I had supported. She meant (maybe was even right) to shame me. She went on to vent that while WW II vets conjure up images of liberated camps, Afghan and Iraq war will conjure up images of lone-wolf GI going door-to-door sardonically insisting “women and children first” and Abu Ghraib: “why don’t you whip it, baby, whip it good!” n nIn order for the GOP to win, its members need to hope for event forcing similar situation to the one that caused PO’s election. PO didn’t win the debates, he won the confidence of the electorate (over and against an old and erratic man and an unprepared VP candidate) before the debates ever took place. n nUnless Romney begins to show how a Baker’s scholar can tow the American cake in out of the rain, he’s not going to get the people he needs to rally to him. Some of us, out of desperation, are likely to write in “The Fonz likes Ike. The Fonz’s Bike, likes Ike.” n
I don't know who PO is; I assume you mean BO–you do understand that "president" is not his first name, right? he has to give that up when he's booted out of office–that is to say, if he is not reelected. n nI have to take issue with your colleague. my memories of the Afghan war will mostly be of our brave men fighting and dying for a bunch of savages who are still living in the 7th century. as for Iraq: Bush won the war, but Obama managed to lose the peace.
The charge, if that's where it ends, will no doubt hurt Republicans (as any blatant charge tends to hurt the target initially); however, if the Dems (and they have this habit) repeat the story thousands of times with their especial glee and little jig of happiness with themselves, people will eventually get the whole story and recognize it for inane Democratic politics as usual. It's true that a majority of women lean Democrat just as it's true a majority of men lean Republican, but it's not blind and robotic and the fall election can (and should, one would hope for America) turn everything around. If women overwhelmingly believe that freedom of religion must be destroyed for everybody to have free contraception and they are willing for gas prices to keep rising and jobs to keep disappearing and America to be at the mercy of our enemies besides, in order to get those free contraceptives, then Obama has succeeded in destroying our country.
I am reminded of the old story about the "boy who cried 'wolf'" — time and time again he shouted 'wolf' — this back before guns and someone being able to solve the problem with a simple .30-'06 round and when the entire village was needed to drive the wolf away. n nHe did this every day and was impressed with the attention which he could draw by doing this. n nEventually, the village grew tired of this and started to ignore him. n nOne day, there really was a wolf, and he cried for help, and no one cared. nAnd he was eaten. n nThis is something that women need to be aware of — this is something that young single women need to be really worried about because when something really harmful to women comes down the road and *they* need to call for help, no on is going to hear their cries above the background noise of the feminist diatribes. n nReality 101: a married woman with children focuses inward, to her home and family. The term "Soccer Mom" was not quite appropriate but effective — these women identify themselves in the context of their relationships with their children, husbands, families — the feminists themselves argue that women are different than men and that women do this. See _Women's Ways of Knowing_, etc. These women are more worried about their children — including their sons — than themselves. n nAnd at some point the collective male consciousness will simply decide that the feminists have lost all credibility and simply not care about any woman he doesn't have a personal relationship with. And at that point, it will be the single women versus everyone else and they will be ignored. And when someone rapes them and no one cares, they will only have the radical feminist movement to blame.
American women to Republican Party: "WE will decide whether or not our rights are being assaulted by conservative policies, thank you very much."
American women?? Elections decide who wins, not the throw away term "american women"