Democrats Dump Filner While Republicans Still Don’t Give A Crap About Women

war on women

After refusing to deal with the sexual harassment accusations waged against 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain and Republican former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger — and bullying anyone who brought it up — Republicans have the poor taste and desperation to try to use the Filner sexual harassment scandal as proof that the Democratic Party is waging a war on women.

If Filner is guilty of the things he’s accused of, he’s certainly a scumbag, though not a particularly imaginative one.

However, the actions of one person do not define a party’s platform and no one but a hack defending a party without a platform would suggest otherwise. The war on women is a policy war, and it’s real. It belongs to the Republican Party. This is a fact, not a matter of opinion. The Republicans are the party who refused to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act for a year because it offered too many protections. Their version of it was so bad it was referred to as the Pro Violence Against Women Act.

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Bob Filner’s actions do not suddenly make the Democratic Party the party of anti-women legislation, just like the actions of several Republicans do not make the GOP the party of anti-family values. Although it matters that the Democratic Party gets rid of their bad apples whereas the GOP tends to elevates theirs. The GOP happily ran South Carolina Republican Mark Sanford after he deserted his office to chase his mistress in another country, leaving his family in the dark to boot. Then he violated a protection order while the GOP was running him for yet another office and he still got elected to the U.S. House. Did Republicans try to distance themselves from him?

Maybe Republicans don’t get it – but we see that the harmful policies they push are the policies that benefit scumbags like Mark Sanford. It matters to us. We’re not going to be buying Republican ideas like legitimate rape for our sisters or reporting miscarriages for our daughters.

The Republican party has become the anti-family values party by embracing policies that are harmful for average American families and denigrating families that don’t look like an Aryan fantasy, not because their elected representatives can’t seem to live up to their image. They built that.

California Democrats are falling into a Republican trap by thinking that they need to run a woman to replace Filner, as if ovaries make up for Filner’s misogyny. I get the need to dispel bad optics, but let’s hope the Democratic party doesn’t fall victim to the stupidity and hubris of the Republican party. Women are not this simple or dumb. We will not think the problem of sexual harassment is solved because a woman is replacing Filner. Seriously. We know better. We just want someone whose policies will work to protect our rights.

The real news ought to be that this kind of behavior is not unusual and it’s culturally acceptable, unless a Democrat does it (precisely because Democrats are supposed to be more evolved and have a larger responsibility to be grown ups). Clarence Thomas ringing a bell?

Most women have encountered plenty of men like Filner and worse, and that is precisely why we want to be guaranteed certain freedoms under the law (as in, legislation not rhetoric or personalities). We know that too often our sisters have to work around a boss like Filner.

Republicans don’t give a crap about women, and they don’t believe sexual harassment is any more real than they believe rape is. They treat women like errant farm animals when they dare to speak up and out. This is yet more crass opportunism and an attempt to win voters over to the GOP by smearing the other side, instead of embracing policies that would attract women voters the honest way.

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