I guess Aaron Blake just doesn’t want to get it. When Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus denied that the Republicans were waging a war on women, no one was all that surprised. After all, he’s a spin doctor. That’s his job. No one expects him to say something like, “Well, Al, the reason we’re waging a war on women is because ______. ” I think pretty much everyone was prepared to offer the man some space to push back. But what he said was that the concerns of women about the Republicans’ efforts to “limit women’s access to mammograms, cervical cancer screenings, and contraception” were unreal and insubstantial. He said that the whole controversy was totally manufactured. He said women are full of shit. He said women might as well be asking about Mitt Romney’s birth certificate.
HUNT: Let me ask you this. The Democrats of course say you are waging, the GOP is waging a war on women. I know you don’t agree with that, but looking at the polls, you have a gender gap problem. Recent polls show a huge, huge margin for Democrats among women voters. How big a problem is it? How do you close it?
PRIEBUS: Well, for one thing, if the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars, and mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we have problems with caterpillars. The fact of the matter is it’s a fiction and this started a war against the Vatican that this president pursued. He still hasn’t answered Archbishop Dolan’s issues with Obama world and Obamacare, so I think that’s the first issue.
He chose to use caterpillars as an example. He could have picked unicorns or dwarves. The example isn’t important. The point is that he took a serious allegation and used “a fanciful idea (a war on caterpillars) to call into question the idea that Republicans are engaged in a war on women.”
The Republicans are engaged in a war on women. To be more specific, the Republicans are attacking reproductive choice and women’s health care plans in incredibly aggressive ways. They need to explain why, not dismiss people’s reactions.