Paul Waldman tries and mostly fails to explain to me what the hell Mike Huckabee was trying to say. I agree that all most women heard was Huckabee calling them sluts, but I am pretty sure that that wasn’t his intended message. He was trying to say that Democrats think that women are sluts, but I can’t really understand why he was making that argument. Yes, I get that women are not supposed to want to have sex, but that wasn’t quite what Huckabee was saying, either.
The bottom line is that Huckabee said a bunch of words that didn’t really mean anything and the takeaway was that he is eager to have a national debate over whether a woman who uses birth control is only doing it because she can’t overcome her desire to have sex. Since 99% of women use birth control at some point in their lives, Huckabee came pretty close to insulting every women in the country.
His best defense is that he’s stupid and doesn’t understand that women use birth control for health reasons other than avoiding pregnancy, that they use it even when they aren’t having any sex, and that Democrats don’t think less of women who take steps to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Someone might point out to him that the most common female contraceptive (the pill) is taken orally once a day and that women don’t use it like PEPCID®.
As for why Republicans continue to say offensive things about women, it’s because they’re sub-mental. They’re convinced that there is such a thing as illegitimate rape, for example, which can definitely result in pregnancy if you don’t eat enough contraceptives beforehand.
Home-schooling is overrated.
His meaning strikes me as pretty clear.
The only reason women need birth control is if they have non-procreative sex–ie, they’re libidinous sluts.
Democrats think that women need birth control, hence, Democrats think women are libidinous sluts.
Republicans, having a higher opinion of women, don’t think they’re sluts, so know they don’t need birth control.
It makes sense, if you accept the Taliban-esque presumptions.
Really nicely laid out (no pun intended).
As I said on the other post on this subject, he was saying that women are too stupid to see how the Dems view them and that the GOP is the real pro-woman party.
In what he probably considered praise for women, he did a pretty good job of cutting them down.
And remember, this from a guy who represents a party where a woman who gets raped is usually blamed for the rape because she somehow encouraged a guy or wore seductive clothing and she should know better because, as everybody knows, men can’t control their libidos.
It’s the exact same argument they try and fail to make with minority voters: the Dems think you are stupid and are just using you. What the GOPers making those arguments are too dim to realize is that the logic only works if Dems (and minority voters) share the same assumptions as the GOP, which they obviously don’t or they’d already be part of the GOP.
It all goes back to that empathy thing. The lost souls on the right are completely incapable of putting themselves in anyone else’s shoes and seeing things from their perspective.
I think that some of this is only supposedly addressed to women and minorities, but it’s really put out there for white men to hear.
“We’re trying to be reasonable but (of course) they’re too stupid and/or too emotional to get it. Unlike you, who are smart enough and rational enough to vote for us.”
For comparatively blatant examples of this, see the speeches given by the Repub presidential candidates who speak to the NAACP. They’re “reaching out to them”, but what most of what they say is really meant for the white people who’ll see a two-sentence clip on the news.
Bingo!
.
If so, it’s a really piss pour strategy to get to the White House.
Looks like the 2016 presidential campaign will feature lots of mansplaining and whitesplaining from the Republicans, just like 2012. I can’t say I’m dismayed by this.
One of my favorite quotes from the 2012 Republican
primaries;
“Newt is what a STUPID Person thinks a Smart person
sounds like”!
Huck is a worthy successor.
Isn’t it another version of the Duck Dynasty blurt that he used to work alongside the blacks in the fields and they were always singing so obviously they weren’t being discriminated against.? I mean, the two comments are so distant from any sliver of reality they defy the reason for communication.
Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t unintended irony that allows all pretense to fall away a good enough reason for humans to have language.
Good explanation here of why Republican are compelled to keep calling women sluts.
No, it’s not. What he was saying is that poor women are not supposed to want sex. (That’s odd. Why are all these dogs running toward us?) Or, more precisely, that if they do, they’re too sluttish to control those desires.
In other words, he’s being not only blatantly misogynist, but there’s also not-very-subtle race and class components.
Thirty years of message discipline has taught these guys a lot about condensing all their bigotries and hatreds into pretty little soundbites. These days, they don’t even notice any more when they’re doing it.
“These days, they don’t even notice any more when they’re doing it.” This. In large part it’s because of the closing of their bubble. Everyone in it talks that way, so saying this sort of thing in public is unremarkable to them. .
Seriously, his comments make no sense at all but I think he’s trying to say:
The Democrats think women are sluts by offering them govt. mandated health care that includes contraceptives, but the Republicans know women are better than that because they understand that women are more virtuous, and will/can “control their libidos” and avoid immoral sex.
Wha? Say what?
It’s just more of the same old fundamentalist Baptist bullshit that sex is sinful, and it’s doubly sinful for women to enjoy it, because if they do too much they may become promiscuous and that means that men can’t control them.
Hey, we can’t have THAT now, can we?
Of course, this problem isn’t limited to American Baptists or Christian fundamentalists. Conservative male Muslims, Hindus, West Africans into FGM, Central American men who are so notorious for beating their women with impunity, etc., etc. are all obsessed with keeping the wimmen under control so that they are properly submissive sex objects.
I think the flaw lies in human nature, in particular an innate male tendency to view women as property rather than equal human beings. Every time a clown like Huckabee open his pie hole to utter such nonsense we are reminded how pathetically insecure men like him are.
I think this is Huckabee’s brill attempt to reframe a consistent GOP stumbling block as a counterintuitive position of the Democrats. He just doesn’t know to include the #slatepitch. Admittedly, saying “hashtag slatepitch” is ridiculous, but look what he’s actually saying.
In other words, it can be summed up as “I know you are but what am I?”
See, if I use birth control that means I’m planning on having sex, and you know what that makes me.
A rape is illegitimate if I call it that when I am dressed (or undressed) provocatively and am assaulted despite saying no. Whatever, it’s all my fault.
It’s not really that hard to figure out, and I do hope they keep trying.