David and I documented in our book 'Over The Cliff' how the extreme right-wing fringe has been transfused into the mainstream of the Republican party in an effort to shred President Obama's's historic victory in the 2008 election. There are many sides to their lunacy, but Colorado's Ken Buck fills the role of Misogynistst in Chief for the religious-right element among them. Just review this horrifying case that happened five years ago and is finally getting some national exposure.
Digby's post says it all: Psychopathic Tea Party Misogyny
I wrote before about creepy Tea Party candidate Ken Buck's harsh views on abortion in case of rape or incest and his bizarre implication that "saving the life of the mother" is open to interpretation:
I am pro-life, and I’ll answer the next question. I don’t believe in the exceptions of rape or incest. I believe that the only exception, I guess, is life of the mother. And that is only if it’s truly life of the mother.
Hey, if a few sperm receptacles have to die, it's a price that's well worth paying to avoid even one fetus being aborted. Plenty more vessels where that came from.
He has a little problem with this sort of thing. (You'll recall that during the primary he said "why should you vote for me? Because I do not wear high heels.") But McJoan finds evidence today that this is just the tip of the misogynistic iceberg:
A 2005 rape case that Ken Buck refused to prosecute indicates that maybe his threshold for what is really rape makes him less pro-life than anti-woman.
When Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck refused to prosecute a rape case five years ago, he probably had no idea that anyone beyond a small circle of people would care. He learned otherwise quickly enough as the victim demanded a meeting with him (which she secretly - but legally - taped), organized a protest and made sure the media knew all about her plight....
The alleged rape victim is back and determined to be heard. She told her story to the Colorado Independent and provided the tape of their meeting, in which Buck appears to all but blame her for the rape and tells her that her case would never fly with a Weld County jury....
He said the facts in the case didn’t warrant prosecution. “A jury could very well conclude that this is a case of buyer’s remorse,” he told the Greeley Tribune in March 2006. He went on to publicly call the facts in the case “pitiful.”
[...]
“That comment made me feel horrible,” she told the Colorado Independent last week. “The offender admitted he did it, but Ken Buck said I was to blame. Had he (Buck) not attacked me, I might have let it go. But he put the blame on me, and I was furious. I still am furious,” she said.
It wasn’t just his public remarks that infuriated the woman. In the private meeting, which she recorded, he told her, “It appears to me ... that you invited him over to have sex with him.”
He also said he thought she might have a motive to file rape charges as a way of retaliating against the man for some ill will left over from when they had been lovers more than a year earlier. Buck also comes off on this tape as being at least as concerned with the woman’s sexual history and alcohol consumption as he is with other facts of the case.
There's more at the link. It's really sickening. But with the ascension of Tea Party values, despite their affinity for certain right wing female politicians, this attitude is becoming more prevalent in mainstream political discourse.
The Huffington Post has the audio posted of Buck's interview with the woman who was raped. It's sickening.
The Huffington Post has obtained the audio of the meeting Buck held with the victim as well as the pertinent police report -- both of which, critics say, make him seem callous and even hostile in dismissing her pleas.
"I know there are a lot of circumstances prosecutors take into account when prosecuting cases," said Kjersten Forseth, the interim executive director of ProgressNow Colorado. "I just think she was treated badly by Ken Buck. As a prosecutor, you are there to be a victim's advocate and not the rapist's advocate, and I just felt he was being more like the rapist's advocate."...listen on.
I have mixed emotions about the prescience of our book because as the months have passed by after our book was released, we have all witnessed these extreme views put on display day after day. And you know in Buck's case, it's all her own damn fault because she claimed rape because she had an abortion.
Today it appears that anti-choice fanatic Buck --- who has expressed skepticism that even "saving the life of the mother" is necessarily a valid excuse for abortion --- believed that the rape victim had had an abortion (which she denied) and thus had a motive for claiming her former boyfriend had raped her. The kicker here is that the accused rapist admitted the rape. The only way any of this craziness makes sense is if he figured that whatever happened, the baby killing whore deserved what she got.
This is a very twisted, fundamentalist misogynist --- and he's not the only one running for office as a Tea Party candidate. And while they may seem like outliers who don't really have an impact on American life, it's foolish to take that for granted. These people are mainstreaming ideas that up until recently were on the fringes of right wing discussion. It wasn't long ago, after all, that the idea that women at least have a right not to bear their rapist father's child was considered to be only common sense. A ban on all abortions, regardless of reason, is now on the mainstream menu.
Any woman who votes for a Tea Party candidate only chips away at her natural rights under our Constitution -- liberal or conservative.
