Republicans have been scrambling trying to come up with a counterattack against the Democratic Party's charges that they have been waging a "war on women" and their bodies. Mike "Uncle Sugar" Huckabee tried to meet these charges last week and in so doing so, angered the GOP everywhere and made a fool out of himself.
Huckabee said Democrats rely on women believing they are weaker than men and in need of government handouts, including the contraception mandate in Obamacare.
Huckabee said Democrats tell women “they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government.”
Despite his later protestations, the man was not misquoted because by trying define what he claimed Democrats were doing to women, (dependence, libidos, etc.) he used his own belief system to paint that canvas.
You would figure that only the likes of a Glenn Beck would support Uncle Sugar's words and he did, though not without calling him a progressive.
Next up on the dumb f*&k GOP merry-go-round is Senator Rand Paul. He was smart enough to stay away from women's private parts, but took a different --and not entirely successful-- tact altogether.
In an interview that appeared in Vogue magazine a few months ago, his wife Kelley brought up Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski when they were discussing Hillary Clinton and the presidency.
Kelley gives the famously dour senator something more than merely a pretty image-softener. The 50-year-old mother of three is an impassioned defender of her husband and his ideas. But she'll also speak her own mind. While her husband jokes that his "gut feeling" that Hillary Clinton will not run for president is a good thing since "all the polls show her trouncing any opponents," Kelley practically cuts him off to say that Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky should complicate his return to the White House, even as First Spouse. "I would say his behavior was predatory, offensive to women," she tells me.
David Gregory brought this up on Meet The Press this morning.
Gregory: Are these issues something that you really think will be fair game and an appropriate part of a campaign, should she be the nominee?
Paul: Well, you know, I mean, the Democrats, one of their big issues is they have concocted and said Republicans are committing a war on women. One of the workplace laws and rules that I think are good is that bosses shouldn't prey on young interns in their office.
And I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this. He took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office. There is no excuse for that, and that is predatory behavior, and it should be something we shouldn't want to associate with people who would take advantage of a young girl in his office.
This isn't having an affair. I mean, this isn't me saying, "Oh, he's had an affair, we shouldn't talk to him." Someone who takes advantage of a young girl in their office? I mean, really. And then they have the gall to stand up and say, "Republicans are having a war on women"? So, yes, I think it's a factor. Now, it's not Hillary's fault. And, I mean--
Say, what? Was Rand Paul so stoned out on weed in the late 90's that throughout the next decade he failed to watch or read what happened to Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky experience? Journalists went on a feeding frenzy like never before, trying to dig up any little tidbit to sell papers and appear on TV. The Lewinsky affair was a ratings bonanza for Fox News and Bill Clinton was impeached by the Republican Party on two charges for God's sake even if he was not removed from office.
How can he look into a camera with a straight face and say that the media was easy on Bill Clinton? And to tie that into the war on women is ludicrous because no matter how you feel about the Lewinsky affair, she did what she freely wanted to do. This isn't the argument that is being made at all. Concepts like "legitimate rape," "rape babies are God's will," and contraception access is for those who like being a prostitute have become the norm for GOP politicians and their pundits ever since they were taken over by the religious right.
And Republicans in Congress have been trying to deny access to birth control for millions of women while legislating forced transvaginal ultrasounds and passing as many vicious laws preventing women from having agency over their bodies as they can.
Nobody has made the claim that Rand Paul is a deep thinker, but he shouldn't lie about such a public incident like that even if David Gregory is such a weak excuse of a host that he wouldn't bring up the obvious to him as a rebuttal.
