I still can't tell for sure if this is happening because of some grand design or is just a series of events that add up to something bigger, but it looks to me as if the Republicans have bet the farm...and their future...on being the extremist, take-no-prisoners, we-never-compromise-no-matter-what-the-result political party in the United States.
Consider the following, all of which happened just in the past week:
1. Rather than support the candidate designated by the local Republican committee, and even though she who was given $1 million in financial backing by the National Republican Congressional Committee, GOP leaders from Karl Rove to Dick Cheney to Sarah Palin supported the Conservative Party candidate in a special election in New York because they considered the GOP candidate to be too moderate. Not only did this force the Republican nominee out of the race a week before the election, but it handed what had been a very safe GOP seat to the Democrats. As a result, House Democrats got an extra vote on health care that allowed them to let one of their more conservative members vote against the bill and, therefore, enhanced his or her reelection prospects next year.
(Anyone know what happened to Ronald Reagan's eleventh commandment of not speaking ill about any Republican?)
2. The House Republican leadership didn't just endorse Michelle Bachmann's tea bagger demonstrations on Capital Hill, it embraced them. These demonstrations then got a great deal of television time and in the process made the whole party look like a conglomeration of the most extreme elements in American politics today. One GOP House leader -- House Republican Minority Whip Eric Cantor -- felt the need to criticize the tea bagger posters that used pictures from a Nazi concentration camp and images of the president as Hitler, although his language was tepid.
3. As Dana Milbank reported in today's Washington Post and as you can see from the clip below, the behavior of the GOP representatives during the House debate on the health care reform bill was as bad as the behavior of the tea baggers. They weren't just boisterous; they were rude and totally disrespectful in a way that would have had them demanding sanctions if the Democrats had done it to them. They made few substantive arguments against the health care bill during the lengthy debate and instead decided to disrupt the proceedings as much as possible.
There will be several things to watch in the coming days:
1. Is Rep. Cantor forced to apologize for his criticism of the tea baggers and, several days earlier, of Rush Limbaugh? Do House Republicans threaten his minority whip position if he doesn't?
2. Is it possible that party identification polls show identification with the GOP falling below the abysmal 22 percent some have shown recently?
3. Does what happened in the New York special election force moderate GOP candidates not to run for election or reelection?
4. Do any moderate GOP House members (Joseph Cao from Louisiana, who voted for the Democrat leadership sponsored health care bill is the most obvious choice) decide to switch political parties?
5. Do Democratic leaders realize that Republicans have gone all-in and decide to stop looking for compromises that will never come?
6. In particular, do Senate Democratic leaders decide that there's no reason not to use reconciliation procedures with health care because the GOP is going to be highly critical and disruptive no matter what they do? Why not just use reconciliation and only need 51 votes instead of needing 60 to stop what now appears to be an aboslutely certain GOP filibuster? That will allow 9 Democrats to vote against the bill if they feel the need to do so.
This is what happens
When college Republicans grow up. Or whatever passes for growing up down there.
Disrespect targeted at women
I watched the clip above (point #3), and it left me reeling with anger. Why were the speakers who were interrupted all women? It leads me to believe that the Republican party doesn't respect women and they don't want us to hear anyone speak on women's and family issues.
Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but geez.
Re: Why were the speakers who
Re: Why were the speakers who were interrupted all women?
You're making an assumption that (1) women speakers were disproportionately interrupted, and (2) based on gender rather than content. I don't know if that's the case or not, but given that what you viewed is an edited video produced by a vocal liberal advocacy group, it would be appropriate (just analytically) to ask what percentage of male vs. female Democratic speakers were interrupted, and if there were any content-related differences. Again, I don't know what was the case (I suppose the original, unedited C-span video is available on C-span or elsewhere, and I suppose there is an accessible transcript somewhere online), but I hate to see someone look at highly edited content from a partisan group of some sort (ideological, party, candidate, and/or issue) and overlook the possibility of cherry-picking to distort some picture. So I'm just making a general caveat emptor point regarding presentations of political content.
Yes, women were the target
I watched most of the debate online (streaming). The second video I posted features my rep (Michele Bachmann -- the female repeating "I object" is her very distinctive and familiar voice).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDiBJML16gw
I can tell you that there are more males in Congress than females (76 women out of 435), so yes, the harassment was disproportionately directed at the female Democrats.
There was a simple strategy, orchestrated by conservative Republicans -- to gag women from speaking on behalf of some of the greatest beneficiaries of this bill -- poor women and children.
The bullying objectors are protecting the profits of the private insurance industry . . . my rep, Michele Bachmann, was among them. They receive campaign money from those sources.
"Women are more likely to be uninsured for several reasons; among them are lower incomes that leave them unable to afford individual health insurance, as well as a greater likelihood of working in service professions and/or small employers less likely to offer health insurance. In this respect, the House's bill promises to help assist them in becoming insured."
How many women vs. men there
How many women vs. men there are in Congress is irrelevant. What is relevant is what percent of the female Democratic speakers (small "s") were interrupted vs. what percent of male Democratic speakers were interrupted. If you have the time, I'd be interested in the tally:
1) # of Democratic women who spoke.
2) # of Democratic women who were interrupted.
3) Same as #1 and #2 for Democratic men.
Again, I don't know the answers to the above, but I'm reminded of the time in college when a friend of mine, an African-American, was protesting (as he often was; it seemed to be his hobby) with a handful of others against the "racist" co-op/bookstore manager's "racist hiring policies". He was telling me with outrage that there were only 3 black employees. I asked him how many total employees there were. His answer: 80. I asked him what percent of the campus community was black. His answer: 4%. I said "So the racial composition of the employees pretty much reflects the racial composition of the campus community". He responded "Yeah, but why are there so few blacks on campus?!" I told him snarkily that I didn't think that was a decision by the bookstore manager. He just resumed protesting the "racist" bookstore manager and "racist" hiring policies.
Can you please provide the C-span link if you have it.
By the way, you have my sympathies for living in the district that elected that moronic whack-job* Bachman.
* or brilliant person pretending to be a moronic whack-job for political and/or personal gain.
As follow-up, I checked parts
As follow-up, I checked parts of what I think is the correct c-span video and also grabbed some info online, and it seems that most/all of the Democratic speakers during that exercise were women, which would answer your question "Why were the speakers who were interrupted all women?" Because all (or perhaps most of) the Democratic speakers.
See http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/house-debate-objections/ Excerpt below, emphasis added:
Ahead of formal discussion of a rule that will govern debate of the health care bill, the Democrats sent out a parade of women lawmakers to make a series of points in praise of the legislation and its potential benefits for female Americans.
The statements, in the form of unanimous consent request to revise and extend their remarks, provided an interesting bit of theater. But Republicans furiously complained that it was a stunt by the Democrats to delay formal debate of the rule.
Now, I suppose you could question why Republicans did that to this group of speakers on this occasion, but in fairness to them, before throwing out the charge that they acted out of sexist disrespect for the speakers, you'd have to consider and address the possibility that it could have been for reasons that have nothing to do with disrespect based on the gender of those Democratic speakers.
No excuse for rudeness
To be quite honest, I don't care how many women vs. men spoke on behalf of women's health issues during this debate. The point is that the Republicans bullied ANYONE who spoke on behalf of women.
What message does that send to women?
You should care about the
You should care about the possibility (actually, pretty strong likelihood) that you made an unfair charge of sexism based on an erroneous assumption. And you can now say that anyone "bullying" anyone who is speaking "on behalf of women" (whether or not that's a fair characterization of what transpired) is sexist, but that is quite different from your original charge, which seemed to be that they chose to bully only the women speakers and that doing so was sexist. You might want to acknowledge that it was unfair for you to make that charge. If it helps, admitting that mistake wouldn't affect the level of value or validity of your other argument(s).
Proud sexist here
The reason I say it is bullying is NOT ONE of the objectors has stepped forward to publicly explain their objection. What were they objecting to? Why won't they tell us?
The only conclusion to be drawn is that they have no good reason for the objection, and this was used as a bullying tactic.
Forgot this
"but that is quite different from your original charge, which seemed to be that they chose to bully only the women speakers and that doing so was sexist. You might want to acknowledge that it was unfair for you to make that charge."
It wasn't unfair. They clearly chose to target the Democratic women's caucus. Every one of those women was bullied using this same tactic. Male speakers didn't get the same treatment.
So yes, it was targeted at women, and specifically at Democratic women who were making statements about the benefits of this bill to women (and, for poor women and single mothers with children there are huge benefits -- they are an under-insured population).
Do a Google search . . . you'll find that I'm not the only one making the sexism charge, not by a long shot.
Re: Do a Google search . . .
Re: Do a Google search . . . you'll find that I'm not the only one making the sexism charge, not by a long shot.
Geez, Louise, I sure hope you don't often use that as substantiation of / support for your arguments.
As for targeting the women's caucus, again, it seems that that group is whom the Democratic party chose to have speak on that occasion to voice the Democratic side, so doesn't it occur to you that the Republicans may have chosen that tactic for that occasion regardless of the gender of the Democratic speakers, rather than because they were women? I guess not, but you're just looking to make assumptions that fit your charge.
Oh come on. You know I'm
Oh come on. You know I'm addressing your charge of sexism and your basis for it, a basis which turns out to be invalid. It's up to you if you don't want to admit your mistake.
Basis is sound
It's not invalid. They went after the women in the House. I'm not the only one who observed it. Check out Kilroy's statement. Republicans attacked women and tried to gag them on women's issues.
Good luck with the damage control on that . . . your attempts are valiant, but you'll have to do better to convince this woman that it wasn't an orchestrated attack on women.
"damage control"??
"damage control"?? "valiant"?? If you think I'm acting as some biased or disingenuous hyperpartisan, you're projecting. I'm just trying to be objective and fair. You are the one whose argument was essentially "All the speakers they acted that way toward were women, so their behavior must have been sexist (sexism directed toward those speakers)". When it turned out that (apparently) ALL the speakers were women, so women speakers in that debate, so within that debate there was no disproportionate maltreatment of women, you shifted to the argument that it was sexist anyway because it was a group of women that they were acting toward, yet as I said, you are just presuming that the gender of the speakers -- and sexism in particular -- was the reason Republicans used that tactic on that occasion, as opposed to Republicans wanting to use that tactic either regardless of the gender of the Democratic speakers or perhaps because they were women, but to counter what they thought would be an effective Democratic tactic, not out of sexism vis a vis the Democratic speakers. Anyway, I'm done. You want to say what you want to say, even though your original basis was shown to be invalid, even though you have no reliable basis now, and even though you are obviously just grasping for whatever convenient assumptions you find or think of. I'll leave you with whatever beliefs and statements make you feel good.
Why be needlessly offensive?
Why do you have this blog? From the roster of contributors, and the generally high level of discourse, I thought the intent was to present ideas to those who may not already agree with you, in attempt to shift the debate towards your way of thinking. Being needlessly insulting and offensive to a large portion of those who disagree with you is no way to do that.
The Tea Party crowd is looking for responsible economic leadership; they might not agree with the positions expressed at this blog, but I believe they are a lot more open to economic arguments that the vast majority of Democratic and Republican partisans. Using the offensive label 'tea baggers' is no way to invite discussion. For the most part, I write off anyone who uses that label as an unthinking Kossite or DU type, not worth the time it would take to read and then discount their drivel. Only the fact that I have been reading this site since its inception, and believe its contributors worth considering, keeps me from dong that again. If this had been the first post I read here, however, I would not return.
Is that the reaction you are looking for?
The national polls can be
The national polls can be misleading. There are a fair number of states where a majority of voters, come election day, will not press the button for a D candidate, no matter what they have told the pollsters earlier. There are a fair number of marginal D House districts where a large minority of voters are that way, so a small swing in the independents can put an R in office.
Just my opinion, but those voters, plus just a couple of the right policies cloaked as states' rights, and the Rs could hold a majority in the Senate for the next 50 years and elect the occasional President. As for the House, well, long-term demographics are working against them, and if they were smart, they'd just write it off as a bad deal.
Better video of Republicans bashing women in the US House
Many more than in your video . . . it was an orchestrated attack to gag voices in support of women's and children's issues:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDiBJML16gw
Unbelievable.