Akin And Mourdock Were Not “Outliers”
by tristero
It truly is breathtaking, the depth to which Republicans can’t distinguish appearance from reality:
“We have a significant problem with female voters,” said John Weaver, a senior Republican strategist. Mr. Akin’s comments, Mr. Weaver said, “did not seem like outliers.” Nor, he added, were those made by Richard E. Mourdock, whose Senate campaign in Indiana was derailed in spectacular fashion after he said in a debate that it was “God’s will” when a pregnancy resulted from rape.
“They did not seem foreign to our party,” Mr. Weaver said. “They seemed representative of our party.” (Bold added.)
No, Mr. Weaver, it’s not an appearance problem. It’s not that Akin and Mourdock did not “seem” like outliers. It’s that they aren’t outliers. The Republican party platform doesn’t even have rape exception, for goodness sakes! And if the very position paper Republicans have agreed to run on isn’t central enough, let’s not forget that their standard bearer talked bizarrely about “binders full of women” and pointedly refused to disown supporters like Mourdock.
Forced birth, unequal pay, coat-hangers, and vaginal sonograms – that is precisely what the Republican party stands for when it comes to women. The real outliers are remarks like this:
“It has never made sense that my party, the party of individual freedom and personal responsibility, thinks the government should be involved in issues” like abortion, [Susan] Collins said.
This, of course, is an attitude the current Republican party dismisses as liberalcommunistmuslimgayatheist blasphemy and makes Collins a despicable RINO.
Republicans don’t have a problem with their appearance. They have a problem with their reality.