Completely ignoring Cal Thomas' very ugly remarks about Rachel Maddow at CPAC, where he said that "she is the best argument in favor of her parents using contraception" Fox News Watch host Jon Scott asked the panel this week if there really is a "war on women" or if it's just a ploy created by the left.
The segment opened with some video of Hillary Clinton weighing in on the matter at the Women of the World Summit and the best Jim Pinkerton could come up with was to say it proved she's running for president in 2016, because she dared to weigh in on "political" matters instead of staying above the fray in her position as Secretary of State.
Judith Miller shot back and talked about all the sorts of sexist attacks Hillary Clinton has had to endure over the years and applauded her for speaking out. Cal Thomas responded by citing some poll that was supposedly quoted by The New York Times, saying that 46-44 percent of women agreed it was alright for employers to opt out of contraceptive coverage and that you don't see enough conservative women having a chance to speak out on the matter (I guess he doesn't watch his own network) as proof that somehow conservative women aren't being given the same treatment as liberal women in the media.
Alan Colmes reminded the panel that Hillary Clinton was also the object of some extremely nasty, violent, sexist rhetoric by Ted Nugent and that the media has largely been ignoring all of the legislation being passed at the state level which restrict women's access to abortion services and the bills being passed that would actually allow doctors to lie to women about problem pregnancies, and Cal Thomas' response was to try to poo-poo what Colmes was saying wasn't true.
Judith Miller backed up Colmes' assertion and cited the number of laws passed around the country restricting access and Jim Pinkerton responded by going back to the poll numbers Thomas cited and then tried to draw a correlation between President Obama hammering the Republicans and Rush Limbaugh over this and a recent poll that showed his approval rating going down, which Colmes pointed out, may very well just be an outlier. Apparently Pinkerton forgot about Fox's unrelenting attacks on President Obama, blaming him for the rise in gas prices and that being the reason for a supposed sinking approval rating.
And what would any conversation on Fox be on this topic without managing to bring in the topic of poor old maligned Sarah Palin and how terribly the media has treated her. Surprisingly, Cal Thomas came to the defense of the movie "Game Change" and said he didn't think it made Palin look all that bad.
Thomas is going to find himself at odds with most of the people who watched it, whether they thought it was fair, or just a "hit piece" on Palin. If Thomas and Pinkerton really believe that a couple of polls saying there are actually women out there silly enough to believe it's alright to discriminate against them is somehow proof that most women, and men who are supportive of women's reproductive rights for that matter, aren't going to make Republicans pay a price for what they've been doing over the last year in the next election, I think they're in for a rude awakening, especially if Republicans continue to dig in their heels from now to November and as more people pay attention to the type of policies they've been advocating for on the national level, and voting for on the state level and the fact that they're trying to take us back to the 1950's.
