Birth Control Battle Another Victory in the Repug Long Game

Yeah, stop high-fiving yourselves and start working on a defense. Or better, stop playing prevent defense and go on offense. Start by demanding contraception be free at every corner store to everyone past puberty. And that we tax churches to fund a $100 Billion crash research program to develop a male contraceptive pill.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

Two lessons here:

1) Never underestimate the degree to which othering is central to everything Republicans do politically. Even issues that seem to be straight-up Bible-thumping misogyny are just as much about creating a contrast between "us" and "them", where "them" is dark-skinned egg-headed atheists, and "us" is God-fearing, down home church-going white people. Bizarre as it may seem, most Republican strategists pushing the contraception argument don't even care about gender, religion or contraception per se; they just want an excuse to subtly divide "good" Americans from "bad" ones. Women's bodies are just collateral damage.

2) Never underestimate the importance and value of large-scale argument framing. Many progressives tend to dismiss rhetoric and framing as just so much gobbledygook that doesn't matter if they just bring enough angry people power, or explain policy issues more clearly. People on the left are constantly desperate to win the next media cycle or legislative battle.

Republicans understand the value of sacrificing a chess piece up front in the interest of maintaining a strategy and winning a long-term war, in a way that Democrats often do not. For Republicans, this contraception battle isn't just about pushing the Overton Window on women's health. It's about being willing to potentially lose a media cycle and even a demographic/electoral issue (being perceived as against contraception and thus losing women voters) in exchange for advancing ground on a more subtle ideological war about worldviews (liberals are overreaching, elitist dictatorial busybodies who hate religion and thus hate America.)

They'll worry about the short-term damage later so long as they can cast their opponents negatively over the long term. Denying more women basic contraception is either a good thing from the fundamentalist perspective, or an unfortunate price of waging the larger war from a more cosmopolitan conservative orientation. And wealthier women conservatives could care less, of course: they'll always be able to afford contraception regardless, just as they can surreptitiously send their daughters off to parts unknown for an "intentional miscarriage" or two.

After all, contraception is a privilege that should only be available for the deserving, and the longer war serves the interests of the "producers" quite admirably.