On ABC's "This Week," Richard Mourdock's (R) offensive recent comments on rape and abortion were a topic of conversation, and the Obama campaign's Stephanie Cutter noted that Mitt Romney stood by Mourdock, pandering to "the far extreme right wing."
Newt Gingrich shared a different perspective.
Calling the issue "nonsense," the former House Speaker said, "Every candidate I know, every decent American I know condemns rape. OK, so why can't people like Stephanie Cutter get over it?"
I suspect that was a rhetorical question, but Gingrich appeared to be missing the point. To my knowledge, no one has suggested that Mourdock sympathizes with rapists or condones rape.
Rather, there are three other reasons this has become controversial. First, it's just not common for U.S. Senate candidates to argue, out loud and on television, that rape pregnancies are divine creations. Second, the underlying policy point -- that the government should force women impregnated by rapists to take their pregnancies to term -- is quickly becoming a norm in Republican politics, embraced by Mitt Romney's platform and running mate.
And finally, there's the fact that Romney, an enthusiastic Mourdock supporter, has been reluctant to distance himself from the right-wing candidate, and refused to pull his endorsement advertisement, even after the rape comments.
Gingrich's "get over it" comments rankle, not just because he's sympathetic to Mourdock, but because he's suggesting Democrats and proponents of reproductive rights should simply overlook the story altogether. The former Speaker, in this case, not only thinks Cutter is wrong, Gingrich also thinks Cutter shouldn't be bothered by those who think rape pregnancies are "something that God intended to happen."
Leave a Comment:
Jeez, Newt. No one likes bad weather either, but at least there were no bans on evacuating New Orleans during Katrina. You have a reputation for being intellectual. Maybe you should focus more on those space mirrors. And let the free market decide.
Newtie is an "intelleckshooal" in a world where the average inhabitant is a permanent middle school 8th grader in terms of social/mental development.
Lex Luther was an intellectual too. Newt's using his powers for evil.
Since Religous Leaders want Politicians to legislate that ALL sin is illegal, what would happen if they next outlaw Divorce. I wonder how the "Good" race baiting Catholic Gingrich would feel.
I am rapidly coming to view the Republican Party as an odd sort of American Taliban. After all, how much difference is there really between one group of conservative religious crazies and another. Their beliefs may differ slightly (I think the Republicans are more openly hostile to women and freedom of conscience) but the mindset is the same...I sincerely belive this so you have to abide by my beliefs or else.
FTFY
LOL Tealiban Nice!
It's the "I'm so outraged that you even think your moral enough to question me, I'm gonna dodge the actual question" response.
I've heard something like this before...Something along the lines of "Every decent American condems war with Iraq, but there are red herrings there, so get over it."
And I think we're defining the debate too narrowly. Why should any woman have to carry a pregnancy to term that she doesn't want? At what point has she ceded the right to control her own body? And since when does "pro-life" stop at birth? See: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/friedman-why-i-am-pro-life.html?smid=fb-share. To Mr. Friedman's remarks I would add: if the sanctity of life is your bottom-line criterion, then *logically* that includes cessation of all killing -- military action, death penalty, and abortion.
Thank You . Pro life , pro death penalty and war. Hippocracy is thy name. I guess those other lives don't count quite as much and if you think they give a rat's ass what happens after the birth , you are living on another planet
When confirmation of pregnancy results in an automatic travel ban to places where abortion is legal. Or how about requiring women of reproductive age to have a pregnancy test before being allowed to travel? After all, they lie about being raped so you can't trust the <expletive>s to tell the truth about being pregnant.
This stuff is serious after all. There are more lives at stake every month than we lost in the WTC, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined, so it follows that there is even more justification for cracking down than there is for the PATRIOT Act, TSA, and the various other surveillance programs.
lie back and enjoy it.
The whole quote is "If rape is inevitable you should just lay back and enjoy it." That was Republican gubernatorial candiate (in Texas, where else) William Clements running against Ann Richards back when it was still legal to be a Democrat in Texas. If I recall correctly, he lost...it was a more sane and resaonable time...even in Texas.
The saying is attributed to Confucius.
I doubt that Confucius said it quite the way "Wild" Bill Clements did.
I'm surprised one of them hasn't repeated the old forced-birth crowd line that a pregnancy resulting from rape is a "blessing in disguise".
Gingrich is deliberately trying to provoke a knock down drag out fight over this to fire up and solidify the base. It's crunch time and they need every last vote they can get and they don't care what they have to do to get them.
The stench of Republican flop sweat is actually worse than leaving the catbox till kitty comes over and dumps on your shoes in protest. You can even smell it over the intertubes these past few days.
Maybe someone should send the RNC a case of Speedstick or better yet Sure.
Or to keep Democrats FROM getting them.
I guess they need to learn a lesson the hard way, as if Sandy wasn't enough. They need to mind their own business when it comes to women.
Every four years the Right comes up with "something" to stir the pot and drive teh cray-zees to the polls. Willie Horton, Lock box, Swiftboat- it don't matter a whit, because it all goes away on November 7th.
Except they don't go away. Like Frank Rich said in his great New York Magazine article last week, the Right are the "cockroaches of American politics."
That's the problem. In off years the Red State/Blue State Mason-Dixon line gives them a fridge to hide under and FOX effectively makes sure that no kind of actual information gets in so they regroup and swarm all over the American kitchen four years later.
A female member of my family has encountered both of the details Gingrich so casually dismissed. She is still voting for Romney. Ears and minds have been closed long before the voting booths even opened.
If you vote based on lies, your nation will be governed based on lies. It isn't complicated, if you think about it. But apparently what is even less complicated is to swallow the party line and not think at all.
I presume you mean rape and abortion. Well, as Ed Brayton puts it, "Hypocrisy is a far-right sacrament."
Put another way, it's different when it's about you.
$HERSELF recounts the story of her grandmother, who arrived home from a gathering of suffragists who were celebrating the passage of the Volstead Act and asked her husband ($HERSELF's grandfather) to go out and get her some beer for the two of them to to celebrate. She was shocked when her husband pointed out what should have been obvious.
Move along people nothing to see here! -Newt Gingrich separated at birth from Officer Barr Brady of South Park, CO! -Kevo
We can't let the right wing continue to split this hair. This isn't about rape, this is about abortion, and the rape exception.
For a very long time, the anti-choice movement has had to concede that ground because people had this unfortunate habit of sparing two thoughts for the woman involved and imagining how awful it must be to forced to carry a daily reminder of your rape to term. And that made people uncomfortable, and that was a weakness in their argument, because logically, it is more intellectually consistent to declare that if abortion is Murder Full Stop, then you can't murder someone just because their daddy was a rapist. And because people had enough sympathy for women who did not affirmatively sign up for the sex, it didn't seem just that a little blob of dividing tissue would, in fact, have that much say in the matter. From there it's just a hop, skip and a jump to understanding that this isn't about "life" at all, but rather about punishing women for having sex.
So of course the right wing is falling all over itself to try to shut down this argument about how they're "pro-rape" because if they succeed, they've managed to shut down the last little bit of empathy that has stood in the way of people forgetting about the woman altogether. If people can stop even considering the plight of the rape victim, it makes it a whole lot easier to remove the reproductive rights of all women.
I've said it many times this is a gateway issue for them. If they can control things like this they will be guaranteed to go off on a "Moral Crusade" and outlaw things like being gay, sex toys, and pornography.
Which might sound ridiculous but think about it, This is your right to Privacy in your own home freedom of association and your freedom of speech. Ask yourself seriously do you think these people will stop or exercise restraint.
Jon Stuart had a graph showing when reasonable politicians should have learned that pontificating about women and rape became anathema 1920.
Let's see, teapubs say something new about birth control and abortion every day, have made all kinds of efforts to ban both including probing the vagina of any woman that wants an abortion. Think that's why people can't "get over it", Noot?
We have a national anthem we stole from another country, but we can't change it to God Bless America or America the Beautiful because God in it, but you can propose laws banning birth control and abortion because it's God will?
You can bite me, Noot, as soon as I get my tetanus shot.
The War on Women is not a distraction from the economy, it’s one more reason besides the economy that you should vote for Pres. Obama. Pres. Obama has proven he can handle more than one thing at a time and either way this issue is going to come up when it's time to nominate Supreme Court judges so it is critical to consider.
First off, WHO THE HELL would listen to Newt??? NOBODY 'likes' rape. The problem is RAPE IS A CRIME and the victim PAYS in Mourdock's (and the GOPs) scenario. Period. It is an act of violence and the GOP is telling women to 'suck it up and get over it'.
The war on women is the economy. How many families need both parents working,or are led by a working single mother? It costs a middle class family over 200k which includes a modest 75k home, to raise a kid til 17. Unintended pregnancy can destroy financial security. as well as the child,s growth potential. Having time and resources are necessary for a parent to give their child the best chance at a good future.
Gingrich shouldn't claim to speak for God. I really doubt this guy knows God. There is a better chance of the Second Coming of Christ than Gingrich being religious. His gods are money and power and of course Tiffany. Secondly he's being really cold and insensitive by saying "just get over it. He has a lot of growing up to do. God does not intend rape to happen to anyone nor does he condones it. Rape has and will always be a crime. A woman shouldn't be forced into having a kid because of a crime committed against her. How much more should the victim has to pay because of a crime committed against her? 9 months of pregnancy and giving birth and then raising a child that is a constant reminder of the crime is just too much for anyone to endure. These old men are really starting to give me the creeps. All they seem to want to talk about is women's genitals and how they want to control them. Creepy Republicans.
The reason this statement (like Akin's) is outrageous is not because no other conservatives believe it, but because lots of them do, but they know not to talk about it out loud because it's not good for getting elected. Gingrich is trying to move straight from "we have this belief that we don't want to talk about because most voters find it abhorrent" to "we have this belief, so it's commonplace and shouldn't be worth talking about." So the objective of all this BS is to have no one talking about it, which tells us that Gingrich knows it's still a loser for them.
RACHEL STAFF: I'd bet my house that one or more of these idiots is on tape somewhere, telling us about the evils of sex education.
Just an idea...
I'm sure those on the right like the fallout from the lack of sex education. It gives them more opportunities to wax moralistic.
Rachel and Team -please check out this article by Nicolas Kristof!
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/kristof-Outrageous-Policies-Toward-Rape-Victims.html
The war on women and rape victims goes much deeper than right wing sound bites.
Who is suppose to take care of the child of a 13 year old rape victom? I hope its not the dad who must be a great citizen. Or a 13 year old girl. Sounds like a percect case of a kid growing up with a very horrible cituation.