On Monday, Bill Kristol said that Mike Huckabee would beat Chris Christie in a race for the Republican nomination, and I don’t really doubt that that is true. But that’s not a good thing for the Republican Party. At the RNC’s winter meeting in Washington DC this morning, Huckabee made some provocative remarks:
“I think it’s time Republicans no longer accept listening to the Democrats talk about a ‘war on women,'” Huckabee said during a speech at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Washington. “The fact is the Republicans don’t have a war on women, they have a war for women, to empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”
Huckabee said Democrats rely on women believing they are weaker than men and in need of government handouts, including the contraception mandate in Obamacare.
Huckabee said Democrats tell women “they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government.”
Let’s deconstruct this. I understand that he’s putting words in the Democrats’ mouths, but what is he really saying? I think he’s saying that anyone who can’t afford birth control pills needs to remain abstinent. And he’s saying that women are strong enough to go without sex for their entire lives unless and until they have enough money for birth control. I don’t think he’s even contemplating the possibility of a woman being coerced into having sex, or feeling that they have no choice but to exchange sex to alleviate their poverty. He definitely isn’t thinking about poor women’s desire to avoid having more children than they can afford, which may well be none.
Now, it’s also possible that Huckabee is just opposed to birth control regardless of who pays for it. He’s not Catholic, but maybe he feels that way. I don’t know. I just think it’s a strange argument that poor women should go without birth control. And it’s an even stranger argument that women should just go buy it in cash rather than having it covered as part of their preventative health care package. I don’t know if Huckabee is aware of this, but pregnancy can be hazardous to your health. A lot of woman cannot safely carry a baby to term, and many others can only do so at great personal risk. So, it’s not like this isn’t a valid heath care concern.
Finally, insurance companies know that pregnancy is expensive and potentially complicated, which is why they are perfectly happy to help women avoid unwanted pregnancies.
I don’t even know who Huckabee is talking to. Who are the people who think he makes sense?
Misogynists.
Next question.
Stupid misogynists.
Ted Nugent. He and Huck have jammed together.
That’s redundant.
Huck, the nominee? Oh please, God! Please, please, pretty please!
Sounds to me like the Huck is preaching. He wants to get back in the church. There must be an opening at some mega church somewhere in Ark.
Careful what you wish for. He’s a good taker, like Reagan. And, unlike Obama, he knows how to talk to white working men. I don’t know hoe Latinos feel about his message, but if he can split their vote, WATCH OUT.
Now you are just being silly. He would get under 40% of the vote.
Americans know a sanctimonious prick when they hear one.
.
Like Reagan?
There’s a vast difference between Reagan and Huckabee in both form and substance. Reagan talked a really good game. Huck talks like a loon. He tries to be affable like old Ronnie and it could work if he could yank his head out of his ass every now and then. Of course by now he’s said crazy things many times and there video tape so the guy would be lucky if he didn’t lose in an epic electoral landslide.
I agree with VITW’s take on Huckabee. He’s someone of whom we should be wary, if not afraid. He’s as far right as any of them, yet he’s able to appeal across the spectrum of the entire GOP and will have appeal in a general election. He has more of a “core” than Romney (borrowed that apt Romney characterization from a Balloon-Juice thread earlier today).
Early in 2008 there was a poster at DKOS who thought he was the strongest and most dangerous possible GOP nominee and made a good case for it. Huckabee is not dumb and knew exactly what he was saying wrt to women and birth control and Obamacare. Lying, yes, but making sense to his audience.
A commentary worthy of Sarah Palin, word garbage lightly tossed with oily sentiment dressing.
“Uncle Sugar”? He had to dig through dusty archives for that one. Apparently only married women are allowed to have sex, and married women don’t need birth control because their husbands will provide!
So sure, it’s about “good” women having sex when the husband demands, while (insert dog whistle) “bad” women need to keep their legs together. Funny, having a baby (because NO ABORTION!) costs a lot more than birth control. These Republicans have no logic.
Huckabee is and always has been ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag. I thought he was out of the running, but apparently he’s back at it. I hope he gets humiliated, if that’s even possible for him.
Yes, I hear that whistle too, “bad” women = black women.
>I hope he gets humiliated
wish granted
Who are the people who think he makes sense?
Old white men. Now get off my lawn.
Young white men too.
I doubt very much that there are very many young men who don’t want birth control readily available.
It’s the huge mistake the republicans make when they make this argument. They don’t just lose the ones that Rush feel are ‘sluts’, they lose virtually ALL young males, even those that describe themselves as republicans.
They are telling young males that they want the women they are dating to get pregnant.
.
They like the message that it’s the girls fault.
Huckabee said Democrats tell women “they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government.”
No, I think he’s telling them that their Republican women don’t need no gummint buttin’ into their sex lives because they are perfectly capable of writin and singin country & western songs about their uncontrollable libidoes, and some of these songs will generate a lot of cash.
I think he is trying to say it is the Dems that think women are sluts and the government needs to save them from the consequences of their acvtions and it is the GOP that believes that they are all honorable women. But, and this is the big but, women are too stupid to realize that Dems think of them like that.
Same argument the GOP makes about minorities, that Dems use government prgrams to keep minorities down, but the minorities are too dumb to realize it.
In other words, the GOP has higher opinions of the dumb women, black and latinos than Dems to. If they just weren’t so stupid they would realize it.
Great rebranding.
Exactly. As this story is circulating, apparently Gohmert was caught ranting angrily about the gubmint “luring” high school girls to dropout, have babies, and collecta welfare check. And he’s ‘outraged’ that when they find out that check’s not enough to live on, that the government pays them even more to have baby after baby until they’re trapped – by the nefarious government!
They are desperate and swirling the electoral drain. Having lost VA, with Corbett and Scott walking dead men, their 2016 chances are already slim to none. Now, with a convicted cokehead in the House, Christie slow-roasting on an unforgiving public spit, and O’Donnell whining about being held accountable for his and his wife’s ostentatious greed, the establishment GOP have to be frantic about 2014.
Gohmert and Huckabee today – and who knows who’s next – at the microphone with more crazy and offensive anvils for the wounded and limping GOTP are going to force more drastic action (to cut them off) from the GOP-E sooner rather than later.
Forgot the link to Gohmert’s stupidity: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/23/1272005/-Louie-Gohmert-says-goverment-lures-poor-women-into
-high-life-of-single-motherhood
I love your reference to Christie slow roasting. Classic, right up there with the bumper sticker, “Oink if you like Rush.”
Speaking of Corbett, this new item from the Christie substrata
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/christie-rockefeller-charity-daytop
reminded me that some connection between Corbett and Sandusky’s charity was being discussed a couple years back.
Wait. I’m confused. I thought the “pro-life” crowd wanted women to have “baby after baby.” (And no need for footwear.)
Oh. They’re not so enthusiastic about brown babies. Never mind.
Even more confusing: the only young adult cohort that has very little desire to use birth control, just like they want, is Teh Gayz. But they never seem to approvingly cite that example.
Misogynist and racist. And homophobic. I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Could the Huckster be mangling a classic to his own idiotic ends?:
Now she wants a butter and egg man
From way out in the west
She wants somebody who’s workin’ all day
So she’s got money when she wants to play.
Now pretty clothes they’ll never be mine
But what she told me the other day
I hope she don’t change her mind
Now she wants a butter and egg man
A great big butter and egg man
From way down south.
He also forgot that a lot of women – and a few men – take birth control pills for the hormones, and their benefits!
And that without them, there can be some dire circumstances!
But, who cares, if you can “slut-slam” women, and, at the same time, try to make the Democrats look like the REAL misogynists!!!
WHAT AN ASSHOLE!!!!!!
Rebrand FAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Women who are in control of their libido don’t have sex except for procreation.
Hence, women who have sex for reasons other than procreation are not in control of their libido.
Good girls don’t do it, you know.
Yeah, that’s definitely who he’s talking to. We shouldn’t help bad girls because they’re bad. It’s simple.
Toot toot. Beep beep.
NOT likely Tookabee will be nominated.
The GOP doesn’t want a Jesus freak candidate; not this time.
These people are like a woman I know at work, who complained with a straight face that she didn’t “want to pay for other people’s birth control”. This woman has had 2 babies since she’s been employed with us. On our insurance plan.
Those are Huckabees base. Those people.
Look at his pedigree. A protege of James Robison the TV evangelist:
Robison and Tony Perkins organized an effort to defeat Barack Obama in 2012.
Huckabee played guitar that Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church.
Huckabee went from taking over the Presidency of the Arkansas Baptist Convention during the rolling conservative coup in that denomination to thinking he could bump off Dale Bumpers in 1992. He then won the special election for Lt. Gov. when Clinton became President and the Lt. Gov. became governor.
The Whitewater scandal caused the indictment of Jim Guy Tucker and Huckabee, re-elected as Lt. Gov. was elevated to governor. He was re-elected to two four-year terms in 1998 and 2002.
And he replaced Paul Harvey as a radio talker.
At least 2016 will have some of the comedy of 2012.
What annoys me the most about men like Huckabee who make these comments about women and sex make me think that they seem to have totally forgotten that it takes two to tango. From the time I started dating at 16, I had a constant battle with the guy I was out with wanting more than just a goodnight kiss. That battle continued even when I dated at the ripe young age of 62. This particular ritual which I am sure the majority of women have been through was immortalized in a great rock tune by Meatball called “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” When I took the pill in the 70s, it cost me about $15, which was a ton of money for someone who only worked 20 hours a week at around $1.91/hour. I also was prescribed the pill for other medical reasons than birth control. Men are the horny bastards in this scenario, not the women. Always have been, always will be.
I’m a guy, but thought the same thing. The right wing religious fundamentalist obsession is always with female “libido” and the age-old trope about “controlling” it so that they can hang their hat on “wives, be submissive to your husbands.” These clowns never talk about men keeping it in their pants.
Huckabee is a religious nut who won’t sell well outside flyover, Bible-belt country. No way this idiot has a real shot at the Presidency.
Interesting to apply his logic here to how he would grasp foreign policy or climate change. He seems to be obsessed with translating issues into irrelevance. Strange man.
I wonder if Huckabee and other assholes like him realize that for a very large percentage of women birth control kills women’s sex drive? So in fact, in many cases, BC == less sex, and sometimes no sex at all.
Another reason why Huckabee has no realistic shot at the Presidency: He has his own Willie Horton.
Gomer is the Protestant Santorum.
Each has great appeal to his own but limited appeal to the others’ troops because of the very real, abiding theological divide.
I would expect a live mike to eventually pick up Huck saying the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, and the pope is the Anti-Christ.
That’ll do wonders for the guy.