Post by illeatyourdates02 on Sept 5, 2014 8:13:48 GMT -5
DNC Chair Overplays The ‘War On Women’ Trope, Doing Her Party No Favors In The Process
September 5, 2014 by Ben Bullard
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Nearly three years ago, at a time when Republicans were circling the wagons to fight a “jobs killing” anti-Obamacare bill, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who now chairs the Democratic National Committee, called for a bipartisan drawdown on savage and violent rhetoric in politics.
But that was then.
This week, Wasserman Schultz abandoned that plan in the name of perpetuating the Democrats’ midterm strategy of accusing Republicans of waging a war on women. In a blistering portrayal of Republican Scott Walker, she criticized the Wisconsin governor for grabbing women “by the hair and pulling us back.”
“Scott Walker has given women the back of his hand. I know that is stark. I know that is direct. But that is reality… What Republican Tea Party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back. And it’s unacceptable.”
Wasserman Schultz offered that assessment on Wednesday during a panel on women’s issues in Milwaukee. The comparisons to language describing domestic violence were immediate.
“I’m thoroughly disgusted that they would use the plight of women who have been the victims of domestic violence to make a case against our governor,” said Wisconsin state Senator Leah Vukmir, a Republican.
“I think the remarks were absolutely hideous and the motive behind them was despicable,” Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, also a Republican, said.
“Attacking and controlling a woman by using her long hair — the shining emblem of her femininity repurposed as a hand grip — strikes a deep chord,” wrote conservative blogger (and University of Wisconsin law professor) Ann Althouse. “It is a chord I believe Wasserman Shultz meant to strike. She wanted to reach through our conscious, critical mind and stir that most powerful emotion, fear.”
The invocation of the “war on women” has become such a Pavlovian trope for Congressional Democrats that many no longer pause to assess the relative costs and benefits of trotting it out to serve a momentary partisan use. Certainly, Wasserman Schultz herself isn’t bothering to take stock of whether comparing Walker to a caveman is really helping advance her supposedly pro-woman ideology, or exposing her insincerity in promoting it.
Here’s what she said back in 2011, when the idea of kinder, gentler rhetoric could be dressed up as a uniquely Democratic one:
I think all of us need to be more careful about the words that we choose to use, including things like the title of the repeal of health-care reform. I’m glad that Speaker Boehner chose to verbalize a different title for that bill, but they, so far, have refused to actually change the title of ‘Job-Killing Healthcare Repeal.’ I think we need to be leaders by example, and when we do that, then hopefully we’re gonna be able to push the shock jocks and others outside our process to take a page from our book. And if we have a more productive civil discourse, then we can really live up to President Obama’s words and Christina Taylor Green’s dreams, her expectations for our democracy.
But that was then. Things are more dire now for Democrats, so Wasserman Schultz is leading by a different kind of example.
WATCH:
personalliberty.com/dnc-chair-overplays-war-women-trope-party-favors-process/
;-)