GOP becoming the party of Fred and Barney
Centuries from now, archaeologists will discover that long-extinct species that had been so adept at shooting itself in the foot, it nearly became a monoped. There were the Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals – then the Republicans.
They’d devolved from being hunters and gatherers to blatherers. A case can be made that they’d been forewarned of their own demise.
The national elections of 2008 and 2012 sent some of them down the path to self-examination. They’d lost both elections so badly, that even Republican stalwarts like Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal called it the “stupid party.” They even released a report commissioned by the Republican National Committee that indicated that in order for the party to regain its competitiveness, a bit of reinvention had to be part of it.
According to the head of the RNC, Reince Priebus, “There’s no one solution. There’s a long list of them.”
Preibus couldn’t ignore the fact that before the November elections, some of his fellow Republicans used language straight from the era of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.
Indiana’s candidate for the U.S. Senate, Richard Mourdock, was a Tea Party-backed, pro-life candidate who talked himself right out of the race. He saw no need to exempt rape victims from bans on abortion, because “God intended it (rapes) to happen.”
Todd Akin had been considered to be a favorite to unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri, but his inner Neanderthal dashed those hopes. Whenever there was a “legitimate rape,” opined Akin, “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Or, Yabba Dabba Do!
Todd Akin, the supposed favorite, lost to McCaskill by 15 points. It pays to avoid having prehistoric views that are both offensive and wrong.
Since the supposed Republican acknowledgement of its fossilized agendas, they’re resorting to the same rhetoric that put them on life-support to begin with. “The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are really very low,” says U.S. Rep. Trent Franks (GOP-AZ.)
The fact that Franks was pushing another Republican-backed anti-abortion bill during a hearing before the all-male House Judiciary Committee is key. Not just because Franks believes sperm are smart enough to swim downstream and out of eggs-way, because they’re aware that they’ve arrived as the result of a rape. But the bill he proposed would restrict abortions (and without exemptions for rape and incest) 20 weeks after fertilization. A federal ban.
There was such widespread Republican embarrassment about Franks’ remarks, that an amendment had to be tacked onto the proposed measure that would permit (but only under certain circumstances) abortions for rape victims.
Predictably, it was a Republican woman, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who was tasked to lead the Republican floor fight for the bill, even though she wasn’t one of its sponsors. The bill eventually passed (all together now) nearly along party lines.
I somehow get the image of Franks and his fellow Republicans carrying clubs, dragging women by their hair. But that’s just me.
Here we have the Republicans — staunch advocates for limiting the role of government, fashioning national bans on abortion — again.
And worse, the bill, if it reaches the floor of the Democratically-controlled U.S. Senate, really has zero chance of passing. Even if it did, President Obama has already vowed to veto it if it reaches his desk.
Republicans knew that when they embarked upon this folly-filled excursion into caveman politics. But they did it anyway. Wasting time has become the new agenda of the “New” Republican Party. Reinvention be damned I guess.
The Party of Lincoln is gradually becoming the Party of Extinction. And soon it’ll become the Party of Fred and Barney.
Despite all of that talk about voter outreach, they can’t seem to avoid perpetual voter outrage.
Say you’d like to enhance your pitiful support by women (they lost by 55 percent to 45 percent among women in 2012 presidential balloting) then continue to try (and with obvious futility) to make decisions about their lives, without little of their input.
That’ll win you a lot of votes — but only among cave dwellers.
Uniontown native Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net