Monday, March 4, 2013

The Next Target



The GOP’s overtures to women in 2012 were rebuffed convincingly at the ballot box last November, thanks in no small part to the party’s romantic embrace of older white men with little or no knowledge of women, biology, or common sense.  When your party becomes synonymous with the term “legitimate rape”, it’s time for an intervention – a non-invasive one of course.

It is too early to tell if Republicans as a political party learned anything from their disastrous embrace of far right candidates for vacant Congressional seats in the last cycle.  But what remains crystal clear is that those people who hold extreme social views are most comfortable identifying themselves with the Grand Old Party.  

To wit, so far in February 2013, Republicans have been busy working towards smaller, less intrusive government, unless you have the misfortune of being a pregnant woman:

·         Michigan Republicans have introduced a bill requiring all women to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound before obtaining a legal abortion.  The bill states that the “performance of a diagnostic ultrasound examination of the fetus at least two hours before an abortion is performed” is required by law (not by medical necessity). 
·         A bill approved by Indiana’s state Senate Health and Provider Services Committee would require clinics to conduct trans-vaginal ultrasounds on women both before and after dispensing the pill RU486.  The bill would require two medically unnecessary ultrasounds – one before and one after, to double the shaming no doubt.
·         The Alabama Senate is debating a bill that will require women to undergo either an external or transvaginal ultrasound, and women would not have a decision as to which procedure would be used.  I guess that’s up to the doctor or the governor.  Transvaginal ultrasounds are needed to detect an embryo in the earliest weeks of pregnancy.

To improve the party’s electoral fortunes, it’s time the GOP stops focusing on women and turns their attention to men and their contribution to societal decay.  Maybe disgraced candidates Akin and Mourdock from 2012 could lead the charge in the not so distant future on men’s issues.  Then we’ll be reading about attempts to kill the real demon seed of all sexual and moral impropriety:

GOP Moves to Outlaw Male Masturbation as “Assisted Suicide”

The Republican Party’s favorite candidates from the 2012 election cycle are back in the national news, and this time, they plan no apology tours.

Former Rep. Todd Akin (MO) and former Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock have teamed up to combat the scourge of male masturbation in America, calling the legal practice the moral equivalent of “assisted suicide”.  They have drafted a bill for Congress that would outlaw the practice and carry heavy fines and mandatory jail time for habitual offenders.

Akin and Mourdock explained that life begins at ejaculation and must be respected at all levels of civil society.  Opponents believe that this sticky issue will haunt the election campaigns of fellow Republicans in 2014, and they are mounting an aggressive thrust against what some describe as too rigid a position.  

Richard Hertz, an unemployed GOP political consultant specializing in building the party’s credibility with young voters, said, “Clearly these gentlemen have chosen to take a hand’s on approach to a private and personal issue, and I believe that is what rubs voters the wrong way.  They should stop spouting off and resist the urge to touch on this sensitive subject.”

Akin and Mourdock appeared defiant at the announcement news conference.

“No potential life should be choked off before it has an opportunity to grow into a child.  It’s in the Constitution, I’m pretty sure.  The right to the pursuit of happiness does not give a person the right to kill,” said Akin.

Questions about enforcement problems being a slippery slope towards sanctioned privacy invasion were brushed off by the pair.  “We have a firm grip on this issue, trust us.  If a man cannot delay his own gratification at the expense of thousands of little potential human lives, he deserves to go to jail.  Jail is the only solution to stop this madness,” Mourdock said, choking up while he spoke.  “The only way to teach these deviants that masturbation is murder is to send them to prison.  That experience will teach them never to do that again.”

Akin and Mourdock stated that they hope this focus on men will help repair their standing with women.  In order to demonstrate the party’s renewed focus on the women’s vote, the pending legislation would only target men who Akin explained have a genetic predisposition to exercise more self-control than women.

Akin said, “The male body has ways of shutting that whole thing down.”

Democrats were in a tight spot, now having to defend an act as legal and natural that nonetheless makes people feel icky talking about.  Sen. Harry Reid focused on the challenges that would face law enforcement.

“I do not believe in the concept of nullification and I believe that question was settled by the Civil War; however, I can tell you that, should this proposed measure become the law of the land, it is likely that authorities in my home state of Nevada will refuse to enforce the law and will publicly take a hand’s off approach,” whined Reid in remarks to an empty Senate chamber.  “Nevadites or Nevadians believe it is a man’s choice.”

It could happen.

The GOP: when it comes to women’s rights, GOP should stand for Got Other Priorities.

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