Headed Straight for Gilead

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is probably the only thing that comes close to describing what the freakazoid-led repugs have in mind for young women who have sex.

Yes, ladies, you are whores and assumed guilty of blastocyst-murder, making false rape charges, sullying the chastity of pure young men and generally destroying the moral fiber of the nation.

And don't think they're not going to punish you for it.

Digby:

It has long been obvious to me that most anti-choice zealots think women who have abortions are whores, but I've rarely seen it demonstrated so clearly --- and by a Republican Senate candidate no less -- teabagger Ken Buck.

Yesterday I posted about the story McJoan at DKos put together in which his failure to pursue a rape case looks more and more like a belief that the woman had it coming. Today it appears that anti-choice fanatic Buck --- who has expressed skepticism that even "saving the life of the mother" is necessarily a valid excuse for abortion --- believed that the rape victim had had an abortion (which she denied) and thus had a motive for claiming her former boyfriend had raped her. The kicker here is that the accused rapist admitted the rape. The only way any of this craziness makes sense is if he figured that whatever happened, the baby killing whore deserved what she got.

This is a very twisted, fundamentalist misogynist --- and he's not the only one running for office as a Tea Party candidate. And while they may seem like outliers who don't really have an impact on American life, it's foolish to take that for granted. These people are mainstreaming ideas that up until recently were on the fringes of right wing discussion. It wasn't long ago, after all, that the idea that women at least have a right not to bear their rapist father's child was considered to be only common sense. A ban on all abortions, regardless of reason, is now on the mainstream menu.

Granted, only hysterical, unserious women who don't understand the important issues seem to care about this, but it's having an effect on serious "real" politics whether Democratic political consultants like it or not. Liberal women, especially young liberal women, are among the least enthusiastic voters among the electorate and yet they are essential to the Democratic vote this fall. Apparently, the strategists have belatedly figured out that it might be useful to stop using women's bodies as bargaining chips (at least until the election.) You can't blame women for feeling that this late concern isn't exactly a profile in principled sincerity:

Republicans have won points with many voters by promising a conservative overhaul of taxes and spending, but Democrats are working hard in the closing weeks of the campaign to convince voters that a conservative social agenda is waiting in the wings, too, should Republicans be elected in large numbers.

Abortion rights is the flash point, being wielded by the left in hard-fought races from New York’s contest for governor, to Senate races in Florida and California, as Democratic candidates or groups try to rally their base and attract moderate Republican or independent women — a slice of the electorate that is even more coveted than in years past.

[...]

New York Times/CBS News national polls also say that the political divide between men and women — more men than women gravitating toward Republican candidates, a pattern dating back to Ronald Reagan’s election as president in 1980 — is bigger than average heading into November. And between Mr. Bennet and Mr. Buck, that gender gap is immense. A CNN poll released in late September said that men were 15 percentage points more likely than women to support Mr. Buck, while women were 16 percentage points more likely than men to prefer Mr. Bennet.

“This isn’t a gap, it’s a canyon,” said Susan Carroll, a senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, who said the average gender difference in presidential races was about seven or eight percentage points.

This new Tea Party GOP is going to be much more hardcore on women's issues. And the more flaccid and overly compromising the Democrats are in return, the more they will turn off one of their largest voting blocs.

Have you made phone calls for your Democratic Congressional candidate today?