In light of the issues surrounding women highlighted in the latest edition of The Shriver Report - that we focused on Thursday - and in the wake of the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, we had a hope that maybe we'd see a different reaction this week from Republicans, in how they talked about and thought about women.
We might as well have asked for Santa to bring us late Christmas presents of unicorns and flying cars.
The new book from GOP Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico, that says women must be submissive to their husbands for a good marriage was a sign that maybe Republicans hadn't really learned their lessons about women from the 2012 elections. The brain-dead pregnant woman in Texas, being kept alive against her and her family's will under the state of Texas' macabre "pro-life" laws was another big sign. The blatantly misogynistic attacks against Texas state Democratic Senator Wendy Davis added to the other signs, though we did have the thought maybe it was just the crazies in the state of Texas that were the problem.
We even had some hope, initially, that our Republican friends might show some equality of thought in their words and actions at the Republican National Committee meetings this week. Indeed, as we'd heard rumored, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, the highest ranking woman in the House, was tapped to give the official GOP response to the President's State of The Union address next week.
However, when we read the news yesterday, two more Republicans confirmed what we've feared about the GOP since their solid defeat in 2012: The only ideas about women that Republicans learned from the 2012 election cycle are that the GOP hasn't yet made women's burdens heavy enough, and they haven't built tall enough barriers to legal rights women already have.
Our hypothesis about the Republican Party was confirmed Thursday morning when we read that Nebraska state Sen. Bill Kintner has once again proposed another totally unnecessary TRAP law bill in his state's Legislature, in yet another underhanded attempt to undermine the legal rights of Nebraska women to have a medical abortion, if they choose to.
Thursday afternoon, the GOP's position on women was hammered home again, when radio talk show host Mike Huckabee gave a headline address at the Republican National Committee meeting. He attempted to attack Democrats and their positions towards women, but in doing so, revealed his own position - and that of many Republicans - that women only need birth control because they can't control their libidos.
Even after getting drubbed in 2012 because of their misogynist tendencies, Republican extremists are quite obviously working hard to rebuild a wall around their anti-choice, anti-women's rights ideas once again.
Frankly, we hope this time, those extremists are completely successful at building their ideological walled castle of their dreams. Maybe then the rest of us can separate the few remaining sane Republicans from the idiots behind the wall.
