Listening to the speeches and debates in the Republican camp really takes us back: It is a journey through time that takes us back 40 years. U.S. citizens (and parts of the world) are preoccupied with the economic situation, unemployment and the environment, not to mention the massacres in Syria and the madness in Iran. But the Republican candidates, themselves, are obsessed with what people do in their bedrooms. Contraception, gay marriage, abortion — these are the themes that they obsessed over in the debate, while the majority of Americans have long since moved on to other things. It’s a done deal. But not for Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich, the sorry pack of candidates for the White House. Listening to them is appalling.
The most appalling part, which illustrates well the psychological problems suffered by these Republicans and those who support them, is the contradiction that, blinded by their obsessions, they do not seem to see. On one hand, they don’t want bigger government or a nano-government under the pretext that the state is tyranny; on the other hand, they want a completely intrusive government that would tell us what we must do in our private lives. It’s completely absurd. These Republican voters want to abolish abortion, to ban not only gay marriage but homosexual relationships and now contraception because, according to Santorum, it leads people “to do things.” But Santorum reflects a considerable part of the electorate for which sex that is not strictly for procreation is a sin. When one speaks of the New World, this more closely resembles the Old — that of the Middle Ages.
The Obama administration’s decision to ask companies and universities to allow contraception in their insurance coverage has created an uproar on the right. The demagogue Rush Limbaugh called a female student a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she testified before [the House Democratic Steering and Policy] Committee about the fact that her university, Georgetown, a Jesuit institution, did not include contraception in its mandatory health insurance for all students.
By launching this debate on contraception, the Republicans gave Barack Obama a gift fit for a king. Access to contraception has been a resolved issue for more than 30 years. By calling it into question again, Limbaugh and his cohorts allow Obama to mobilize female voters. Abortion may be as divisive an issue as access to contraception because America is experiencing record abortion rates, especially among teens. Thus, jeopardizing contraception would be to light the fuse on a powder keg. Whether Republican or Democrat, American women do not want this victory of feminism to be called into question. Once again, Republicans — held hostage by a group that represents, at best, 20 percent of the electorate — have lost an opportunity to remain silent.
Actually, this “debate” has been good for something: it proves what women have been saying all along — that misogyny is still widespread in Western culture. Until the Republicans forced it to the surface, women were just dismissed as “playing the victim card.”
Santorum and Gingrich, the self-professed but doubtfully convicted “Christians”, may be obsessed with what goes on in a woman’s pants, but they’re just playing a card in this race, distracting the viewing public from issues of substance because they either don’t have a valid stance, or don’t want to say out loud what they really think of things like foreign policy, small government and being an actual “conservative.
Romney’s doesn’t seem all that concerned. In fact, if you look at his stance over the past two elections, he appears unsure of what his position on many social issues really are.
Ron Paul, an obstetrician by trade, is the least concerned of the four. Though he has his own opinions on abortion, he doesn’t want to force them on anyone, instead returning decisions on these matter to the states and their voting public… where they belong!
If Paul has an opinion on the contraception topic, it’s that we the taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for it, and that the Federal government has no right sticking it’s over-reaching hand into the insurance industry by trying to mandate coverage of anything for anyone.
Personally, I don’t care what women do with their bodies. It is their right to make a decision of what’s best for themselves. I also don’t think contraception should be mandated into anyone’s insurance plans. Insurance companies are a “free market” industry, so if they want to add such coverage, they’re free to do so. If they don’t, it’s not Uncle Sham’s job to force the issue.