For Politico, everything is the Truman Show and nothing is real:
How much of a difference the deluge ultimately made after Cuccinelli’s surprisingly narrow loss to Democrat Terry McAuliffe is open for debate. What isn’t in dispute is that Democrats and women’s groups believe their “war on women” playbook worked. And they have every intention of using it again in 2014 even as Republicans and some political observers argue that Virginia didn’t provide a mandate on the issue.
[snip]
Democrats took to the Virginia airwaves and the campaign trail this fall to note Cuccinelli’s opposition to abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, and to say he backed legislation that would have effectively banned certain kinds of birth control, drawing on his record in the statehouse and as attorney general.
“Really, given that God does judge nations, it’s amazing that abortion has run as far and foully as it has,” Cuccinelli once said, one of his many comments seized on for campaign ad fodder.
That messaging came on the heels of the 2012 flood of TV ads bashing GOP nominee Mitt Romney on social issues.
I think part of the problem is how we’re defining “attack” ads. Is anything that mentions a Republican candidate’s position on an issue an “attack?” If you go out in front of God and everyone and say “I don’t actually believe ladies are really people, at least not so that they can make the kinds of full decisions about their bodies that I can make about mine” and someone, you know, records it and shows it on TV, is that an “attack?”
Nobody tied up Cooch and forced him to be a backwards-ass ‘neck who ran on these issues. He did that shit all on his own. It’s not like Democrats MADE UP “legitimate rape” or “forcible rape” or “contraception is abortion” or “life begins at fertilization” or any of the other blindingly stupid legislative initiatives Republicans have pushed in the past five, ten, twenty years. It’s not like these things aren’t laws or proposals on the books, with Republican sponsors and co-sponsors, with wingnut money backing them.
It’s not like they won’t have real consequences, for real women, whose clinics are closed or whose doctors are harrassed or whose health care needs are ignored.
But to Politico, it’s all just a Democratic “playbook.”
A.
uhhhh, OhhhKaaaay?
Even though you and I are likely to disagree on a lot in this area, if I look at the working definition used by the general population, “War on Women” for most people would mean anti-abortion, etc.
NO WAY can Politico spin this enough to get that definition changed. It would be easier to make the sky green and the ground blue.
And while I’ve seen way too many attack ads that take a single vote out of a politico’s career and make the most extreme statement about that candidate (Candidate X voted to torture kittens – with the fact that there was one bill they voted against dealing with milk subsidies that included a hostile amendment calling to gie $10 to a group to advertise against torturing kittens). A political add quoting the other candidate’s platform, in context, is perfectly acceptable.
Oooh, those dastardly Democrats! Seizing on a candidate’s own words to remind voters just what sort of person is running on the Republican ticket. At long last, have the Democrats no shame, no shame at all?
Sure, women can die from totally preventable complications of pregnancy or incompetent procedures performed by unlicensed practitioners, but what is that compared to the total underhandedness of quoting a Republican right out of his own mouth?! It’s bashing, that’s what it is. Oh, that we should see such degradation of our political discourse when women’s lives were more important than a politician’s image.
The Gingrich quote iirc is “Anyone who quotes me is a liar”.
I’ll always remember the New York Times describing how the UFT vilified the backers of the local school boards by quoting them, as if that were an awfully underhanded thing to do. There’s an easy way to keep people from posting pictures of you licking rocks in the street. Don’t lick rocks in the street.
Got to give Politico credit: They’ve finally found outstripped the capacity of the electorate for imbibing stupidity. I thought that the principles of Newtonian physics made that impossible.