GOP hard at work on women’s vote

If you’re a Democrat, or lean left, or happen to be pro-choice, you’ve got to love the Republicans’ recent efforts to shoot themselves in their collective foot. Again. And again. They are trying soooo very hard to destroy any chance of getting women’s votes in November and, by golly, they’re doing a bang-up job of it this week.

First, they want to make absolutely sure that women don’t forget the Todd Akin debacle of 2012. You remember ol’ Todd. Gosh darn it, he tried so hard to explain women’s reproductive systems with that “legitimate rape” explanation. You remember the one, right? When he said, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Poor Todd. He was a valid GOP senate candidate until he made that itty bitty little mistake and everybody made such a big deal out of it.

Well, he didn’t want you to forget that, now that we’re in another election year. He feels compelled to revisit those remarks and explain himself. He’s hawking his new book and he wants to set the record straight, of course, so that his sales won’t be hurt by it. To that end, his more recent explanations include saying that “legitimate rape” is actually law enforcement shorthand for “legitimate case of rape” (denied by several law enforcement officials), that Bill Clinton is a rapist, and that a number of his staff members were conceived by rape. (See video below.)

Way to go, Todd. We needed some new material for this election year. It was good of you to provide some.

Assisting Todd in his effort to sink help Republicans was North Carolina Rep. Renee Ellmers. She spoke last week to the little-known Republican Study Committee about how to win/retain the women’s vote this fall. That’s a big deal for Republicans, you know. No dummies, they. They know they’re in trouble with women. And obviously, Renee, being a woman, would have some really insightful things to say about how women think. So this was her suggestion to the panel:

Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level. Many of my male colleagues, when they go to the House floor, you know, they’ve got some pie chart or graph behind them and they’re talking about trillions of dollars and how, you know, the debt is awful and, you know, we all agree with that … we need our male colleagues to understand that if you can bring it down to a woman’s level and what everything that she is balancing in her life — that’s the way to go.

Poor Renee. But what else can she do? She’s cursed with being a woman. She can only understand her male colleagues if they bring the conversation down to her level. And bless her heart, she must assume that what is true for her is true for all women.

Republicans. Gotta love ’em. The gift that keeps on giving. To Democrats. And especially to women. As long as stand-up folks like Todd Akin, Renee Ellmers, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell (sweet little Christine, gone but not forgotten) keep speaking out for Republicans, the women’s vote is assured. For Democrats.

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Akin’s Thursday interview with Chuck Todd: