Republicans had another Bright Idea. They’re going to win women voters by branding the Democratic Party as the party of Weiner, Spitzer and Filner, thus making the Democrats the Party of the War on Women. Take that, feminazis.
Buzzfeed reported on the Republicans gleeful roll in the mud, “RNC officials say the strategy is to make the “war on women” narrative boomerang by pointing out the failure of Democratic party leaders to call out bad behavior within their own ranks.”
RNC communications director Sean Spicer knows how to appeal to women, and he proved in with this Family Values tweet, “@MikeCzin how hard has this scandal been? Any idea when @anthonyweiner will pull out?”
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Oh. My. God. Yes, we get your super clever double entendre and we are all so impressed, because nothing says serious about women’s issues like juvenile locker room jokes. I am Sean Spicer, RNC Director of Communications, and this is how I appeal to women voters. HAR. Snicker. Der. Hard. Drool.
Hint for Sean: These are comments we can read anywhere from every single cell adolescent out there; we expect slightly more clever jokes from people who are supposed to be intelligent, and whose title indicates that they are supposed to be somewhat able to communicate in the adult arena.
Pardon me while I find someplace to store my contempt.
Never mind that this strategy is incredibly offensive, because unbeknownst to the GOP, the women they’re trying to appeal to don’t find their only worth in the conduct of their husband. Also, the women they are trying to appeal to might not even be married and don’t give a crap what Weiner does in his free time. They care about how the party/politician votes, what policies they back, and how they view women in terms of rights.
In other words, the very idea that women would hate a male candidate because he’s unfaithful in tweets presumes that women are in the 1950s, and all we judge a politician on is how he treats his wife.
If that were the case, and we were all uninterested in policy (I guess we can’t do math or drive either, eh?), we’d run around voting for “men” and women who are the partner we want to marry, and not the person whose policies align with our own. I would not want to be married to Bill Clinton. But I would vote for him again. See the difference, GOP? No? That’s because you don’t see women as people beyond an extension of their husband. (If forced to pick, I’d take Bill any day over Gingrich, Sanford, Ensign, Vitter because Bill was actually good at his job and that’s attractive.)
Republicans have a lot of nerve thinking they can deflect their policy war on women (it’s not in the rhetoric or the gimmick or the campaign promises, it’s in the policy) by pointing out scummy personal behavior – and if Filner is guilty, scummy professional behavior – when Republicans call themselves the Family Values party and then RERUN their philanderers who used taxpayer money to cheat on their wives and leave their families behind, along with abandoning their post for lust. Sanford, Ensign, Vitter and more ringing a bell boys? The GOP can hardly expect to perch themselves on their busted, broken morality pitch.
The cheap way Republicans are trying to use the behavior of three Democrats as a way to avoid taking responsibility for the Republican Party’s anti-freedom policies is even more offensive than their policies. It’s on par with Romney in dark face for Univsion.
Here’s the ugly truth about the war on women. Women do not have equal rights in this country. Women have been trying to get equal pay since the 60s to no avail. Men like Filner and Gingrich run this country, and women do not. Women are not always treated fairly in the work place because the people who decide whether things are fair or not are usually men. Neither party places women first because neither party is run by women or even a majority of women.
That is the reality women live with. It was “liberals” after all who defended Julian Assange against accusations of rape by claiming that raping a woman while she is asleep isn’t “real rape”, while Republicans tell women that rape doesn’t even exist, and if it does, well make lemonade out of it, girls.
We live in a misogynistic, patriarchal culture. This is not news to us women, Republicans, so trotting out a few sexual addicts and a jerk isn’t going to take our breath away. Doing that and thinking it makes your party look better when your party refused to reauthorize the Violence Against Women’s Act for a year, tried to make it easier to get away with rape and harder for victims to get any help at all, is frankly a new low. Doing so whilst your party is defunding birth control, forcing women to give birth and shoving state mandated transvaginal ultra sounds up our vaginas just so you can inflict pain and humiliation upon women who might want to exercise a Constitutional freedom is despicable.
We see you, and it’s not pretty. We see your greedy, cynical attempts to manipulate us, and your belief that we are so dumb we’ll fall for it. We see that you still think of us as a constituency who only care about the fidelity of a husband, as if policy were irrelevant to us and all of our value were wrapped up in some man’s sexual choices. Maybe we don’t read, either, in which case this column does not exist.
Newsflash, Republicans: Most of us don’t give a crap about what Anthony Weiner did on Twitter. He did not break his vow to all of us because even though we are women, we are NOT MARRIED TO HIM. Again, I repeat, some of us do not even want to get married. Get it? The only reason he needs to get out of the race is because he is not well, and it gives Republicans a chance to embarrass themselves again in black face.
The Republican Party is trying to take us even further back, way, way back, to the dark ages of back alley abortions and women not being able to make their own decisions because they were property. And now they want to pretend there is no war on women, and if there is, it’s the Democratic Party’s fault.
These are the same people telling African Americans that slavery was a good thing.
Yet another epic fail for a party of juvenile delinquents whose biggest ideas consist of pointing their fingers and screaming, “He did it too, mommy!”
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