Republican Culture War Against Women, Blacks
In the Republican Party’s America, the rich pay less while the poor pay more; blacks are more likely to vote repeatedly on Election Day; and unless a rape is deemed “legitimate” by some unknown governmental entity, a women must carry the offspring of her rapist to term because everyone knows if she was really raped, her body would have secreted a spermicide to prevent the pregnancy in the first place.
Add the rants and musings of conservative entertainers like country singer Hank Williams, Jr., – who believes that President Obama is a “Muslim who hates farmers, the military” and America – rich industrialists like Donald Trump who still doesn’t believe that Barack Obama was born in this country, or former Fox News pundit Glenn Beck who went on national television and called America’s first African-American president “ a racist” who “hates white people,” and you have a conservative movement and Grand Old Party that seems not to be able to control its true feelings about why some of its most vocal minions want to “take the country back.”
For anyone thinking that conservative Republicans here in North Carolina have been immune to some of the questionable pronouncements and behaviors of their national brethen, only have to look as far as the recently ended legislative session. Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert had a field day after the Republican-led NC General Assembly considered a measure, “that would prevent scientists from using modern, scientific models to accurately predict what might happen to sea levels if climate change continues unabated,” wrote Care2 online last June.
Scientists say the sea level rise at the NC coast will be five feet.
State lawmakers say the official estimate is more like eight inches, and passed a law prohibiting any projections that differ until 2016.
The Winston-Salem Journal put it this way:
Tea-party Republicans put the environmental movement and climate science on the wrong side of the culture war that is gripping the United States. Therefore, they refuse to recognize that the planet is getting warmer, seas are rising accordingly, and man is playing a part in both. It matters not that the vast majority of real scientists provide hard data to support their projections. To the tea drinkers, facts and science don’t count, only anger at the left does.
And yet, thanks to Missouri Republican Congressman Todd Akin, the nation got a further gander at that “anger at the left” this week when the arch-conservative went on local television, talking about possibly repealing the 1965 Voting Rights Act that secures the voting rights of African-Americans; ending funding for student loans and school lunches for poor children, and then the big comment about victims of legitimate rape not getting pregnant because their bodies won’t let it happen – a scientifically asinine and factually baseless remark that has had everyone from the chairman of the Republican Party to conservative cheerleader Sean Hannity, to even Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to demand that Akin, who is in a tight race with Democratic US Senatorial incumbent Claire McCaskill, abort his candidacy.
Akin, who is known for his strong religious views, has refused, saying he’s putting “principle over politics.”
The Missouri congressman embarrassed the Republican Party this week with his ignorance, until it was determined that he wasn’t the only Republican to share such beliefs.
If the party standardbearers, and many of the GOP rank-and-file believe likewise, not only about women and rape, then what do they really think of African-Americans, Latinos, and others?
The plethora of voter ID laws in at least 34 states where Republicans rule either the state legislature or the governor’s mansion, is clear indication that despite all evidence to the contrary, the GOP holds firm that there is “rampant” voter fraud among black voters, thus their justification to cut early voting, demand birth certificates, and curtail voter registration drives.
The question is how will the black community respond to the GOP culture war come the November elections? It did not respond well at all during the November 2010 midterm elections, that saw the virtual takeover by the conservative Tea Party, which almost brought the government down during the debt ceiling debacle last summer.
The answer is far from clear.
