Todd Akins and Paul Ryan’s 2011 bill has two GOP Congressmen cosponsoring legislation about what is or is not “legitimate rape”.
The stridency of anti-government and anti-tax rhetoric coming from Tea Party activists within the Republican Party has its roots in Ronald Reagan’s two Presidential campaigns and what is known as the Southern Strategy. In 1984, Reagan’s political messaging operation leveraged the Southern Strategy as masterminded by the campaign’s deputy director Lee Atwater.
What is the Southern Strategy? (Make no mistake, it is still being employed with a vengeance.)
Wikipedia notes: “Though the “Solid South” had been a longtime Democratic Party stronghold due to the Democratic Party’s defense of slavery prior to the American Civil War and segregation for a century thereafter, many white Southern Democrats stopped supporting the party following the civil rights plank of the Democratic campaign in 1948 (triggering the Dixiecrats), the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and desegregation.”
This approach to converting longtime Democratic voters to the GOP was evident in Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. But it was in the 1980’s that the Southern Strategy was formalized as a central Republican political strategy by operatives like Lee Atwater. He knew that he could turn out white Southern voters by leveraging racial code language delivered in the carefully nuanced political abstractions of the Republican Party.
Wikipedia quotes from political scientist Alexander P. Lamis’ book titled Southern Politics. In that book, Atwater framed the Southern Strategy this way: Atwater: “You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Atwater’s no holds barred street fighting style of electioneering continues today in the ongoing influence of Karl Rove, Ed Rollins, Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, and others who have helped drive the messaging of the Republican Party. This emotionally volatile, wedge issue driven style of politics has, over the last thirty years, increased in stridency to the degree that Ronald Reagan’s conservative credentials would fall far short of what is required in present day Tea Party politics. This increasingly ideological hardening of the Republican Party that has fostered the rise of the present day Tea Party anti-tax, anti-government, and virulently anti-immigrant platform. The highly emotional framing and messaging Lee Atwater encouraged and Karl Rove carried forward, the wedge issues, the southern strategy, the use of anti-big government rhetoric, have been amplified in subsequent elections to the degree that they have dramatically shifted the ideology of the Republican base to the far right, alienating independent, Latino, and Women voters.
With each ensuing election, the Republican Party has, out of the need to again energize its base, pushed further and further to the ideological right, encouraging its supporters to attack gay rights, public education, abortion, birth control, environmentalism, immigrants, social security, and a range of the Democratic Party’s core ideological strongholds.
This strategy has proven to be highly successful over the last 30 years, shifting the political center in America to the right. But the endgame of Atwater’s anti-government Southern Strategy is now playing out in a much different way than he might have hoped. Because as the political rhetoric of far-right candidates continues to shift ever further right, we are seeing that no matter how far those ideologies go, there is always an additional step they can take, and as they express these next ideological shifts, they are imploding their political prospects at crucial moments in state wide and national campaigns.
Four years ago, Sharron Angle failed in her run for U. S. Senate in Nevada. By all rights, it was a year in which Democrats like Senator Harry Reid were very vulnerable. Two years into Obama’s first term, the economy was in tatters. The House of Representatives shifted Republican by huge margins, often due to Tea Party candidates who, because they were not running in state wide or national elections, could leverage their extreme rhetoric to win in limited regions of the country where voters shared their philosophy. But Angle’s race was state wide. Meaning that her political platform needed to appeal to more than just the Tea Party base that was instrumental in her nomination.
Angle has stated:
• She does not believe Constitution mandates the separation of church and state.
• She favors the privatization of Medicare.
• She opposes abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, saying that it is against God’s “plan”.
• She says that the Social Security system should be “transitioned out”.
But what was most alarming during the campaign was Angle’s repeated mentioning of what she calls “second amendment remedies;” a direct reference to the right to own guns. For example, On Bill Manders’ radio show, she stated that the Second Amendment is there “to defend ourselves. And you know, I’m hoping that we’re not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.”
On Lars Larson’s radio show, she stated “…but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, ‘My goodness, what can we do to turn this country around?’ I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”
And so it has been going in elections across the country. Again and again, the Tea Party is showing it has the muscle to nominate candidates, but in many cases, those candidates once nominated in the much more ideologically dogmatic party primary are supporting policies that make them unelectable in a general election. And now we have the implosion of Congressman Todd Akins, who until a few days ago was competing successfully against embattled Sen. Claire McCaskill, in the race for the U. S. Senate seat from Missouri.
As reported by the Washington Post, “Akin, an engineer by training, was asked about his staunch opposition to abortion even in the case of women getting pregnant after a rape.
“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Akin said. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”
The implication that Adkins has clear ideas about what does or does not qualify as “legitimate rape” has created a firestorm of public anger and once again reinforced the message that where women’s issues are concerned, the Republican Party just doesn’t get it.
If this were a singular instance, it could be viewed as an anomaly. But it is not. The daily drumbeat of extreme comments by GOP candidates is reinforcing the view that the GOP is being dominated by ideological extremists.
In California, the Republican Party has simply collapsed. The New York Times reports: “It’s no longer a statewide party,” said Allan Hoffenblum, who worked for 30 years as a Republican consultant in California. “They are down to 30 percent, which makes it impossible to win a statewide election. You just can’t get enough crossover voters.”
“They have alienated large swaths of voters,” he said. “They have become too doctrinaire on the social issues. It’s become a cult.”
By creating the perfect storm of conservative religious fervor and anti-government zeal over the last few decades, the Republican Party has shifted its base past a political tipping point. In order to be nominated, national and state wide candidates supported by the Tea Party wing of the party hold political beliefs that alienate cross over voters in the context of a general election. What once was a guarantee of national election viability, the building of coalitions between the southern red state voters and disillusioned independent voters, has moved incrementally further right to the degree that independents have begun the flee the ideological shift of the Republican Party. Meanwhile, Democratic politicians, in their own rightward shift have filled the vacuum with what Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council called New Democrats. Democrats that have moved away from the left leaning democratic politics historically epitomized by Presidential candidates like Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. But Democrats continue to reach out to women and minorities.
In two very specific ways, increasingly vitriolic Republican rhetoric has already had a significant impact on the 2012 election cycle. First, what has come to be framed as evidence of the Republican “war on women” is Rush Limbaugh’s notorious attack on Sandra Fluke wherein he called her a slut for wanting access to birth control via her health care benefits.
That coupled with the aging white Tea Party’s virulent anti-immigration stance has set the GOP on a path veering toward political irrelevance. And now, with Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his VP candidate, the GOP Presidential ticket is one degree of separation away from Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment. Why?
ABC is now reporting: “Akin and Ryan cosponsored a 2011 bill, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act, that would redefine rape as “forcible rape,” narrowing the scope of what’s considered rape in cases of abortion. Akin and Ryan also cosponsored a personhood bill and the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act of 2004, which would require abortion providers to “make a specified statement to the pregnant woman that Congress has determined that there is substantial evidence that the process will cause the unborn child pain.”
Todd Akins and Paul Ryan’s No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act which seeks to legally redefine rape as “forcible rape” puts them both in the room during discussions about what is or is not “legitimate rape.” This is only the beginning of the public’s growing awareness of Paul Ryan’s extreme positions on a range of issues outlined in his budget proposal and other legislative efforts.
Sometimes endgames are planned. Sometimes a particular endgame is the result of events set in motion by limited vision and an obsession with short term gains. And unless I miss my guess, the 2012 Presidential election will be another example of the declining fortunes of the increasingly extremist GOP, which in its growing stridency and dogmatic inflexibility, will lose critical races in a political and economic environment in which they should be winning and winning big.
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Remaking Manhood is a collection of Mark Greene’s most widely shared articles on American culture, relationships, family and parenting. It is a timely and balanced look at the issues at the heart of the modern masculinity movement. Mark’s articles on masculinity and manhood have received over 100,000 FB shares and 10 million page views. Get Remaking Manhood IN PRINT or on the free Kindle Reader app for any Mac, Windows or Android device here.
Read more by Mark Greene:
The Ugly and Violent Death of Gender Conformity
When “Check Your Male Privilege” Becomes a Bludgeon
Why Are Death Rates Rising for Middle Aged White Americans?
When Men Keep Demanding Sex From Their Partners Over and Over
How the Man Box Can Kill Our Sons Now or Decades from Now
Why Traditional Manhood is Killing Us
Why Do We Murder the Beautiful Friendships of Boys?
How America’s Culture of Shame is a Killer for Boys
The Culture of Shame: Men, Love, and Emotional Self-Amputation
The Man Box: Why Men Police and Punish Others
The Man Box: The Link Between Emotional Suppression and Male Violence
The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer
Touch Isolation: How Homophobia Has Robbed All Men of Touch
Boys and Self-Loathing: The Conversations That Never Took Place
The Dark Side of Women’s Requests of Progressive Men
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I’m a naturalized Canadian… I came to Canada as a a refugee back in the 80s escaping from a brutal civil war Mr. Reagan subsidized. I came to Canada because through the generosity of the Reagan administration, my old country received millions in “humanitarian” aid… Mostly in the form of bullets, automatic weapons, helicopters, napalm, and military training. My brothers were constantly harassed on the streets for being young and dangerous at the ages of 16 and 13. They left the country at that age, on their own to avoid getting killed during the war. One lives in the U.S.,… Read more »
The Noble Second was part of the Bill of Rights insisted upon by the voting populace after the first con-con. It was done in the shadow, so to speak, of men who knew the first shots fired in the War for Independence were fired by individuals with personally-owned firearms along what is now Battle Road out of Boston. They were fired against agents of what was seen as a tyrannical government. Consider that the Brits had been in charge in New England since 1620, a period of time equal to the time from the war to the middle of the… Read more »
“They’re hostage to the radical extremists of the Tea Party, who can force primary challenges and nominate candidates, but not win general elections.”
– Correct Copyleft….execpt for Scott Brown, Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, Susanna Martienez, Rand Paul, and many others, but keep on drinking that kool-aid, kid!
Mark, please stick to men-centric issues. Politics obvioulsy isn’t your bag.
It’s true that the Confederate Party–oops, I mean, the Republican Party–has very limited mass appeal. They’re hostage to the radical extremists of the Tea Party, who can force primary challenges and nominate candidates, but not win general elections. Ordinarily, that lack of popular appeal would spell trouble for a party. But the GOP isn’t really worried about popular appeal. They’re the party of the rich, and the rich control our government. They don’t have to have good positions on the issues, because they can hire spin doctors to ‘massage’ the issues. They don’t have to have broad appeal, because they… Read more »
It’s true that the Confederate Party–oops, I mean, the Republican Party Looks like you flunked high school history. The DEMOCRATS are the confederate party. My Republican abolitionist Union-Army volunteer forefathers must be rolling in their graves, hearing their party falsely accused of being Confederates. The Democrats are, and always have been, the party of race baiting. It’s just in the 1960s, they saw that their future opportunity lay in bashing whites, instead of bashing blacks as they’d done for 110 years prior. So they get to rewrite history, and pretend that it was US behind slavery, Jim Crow, etc, even… Read more »
Mark, It honestly pains me to vote Democrat; yet I cannot disagree with anything you have written here. I have no idea what I am going to do come November. As someone in his 20s, I desperately want to see reform of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, so that I don’t have to spend the next four decades paying into a system that will be long broke by the time I retire. At present, the only person with a credible plan to fix any of these is Paul Ryan. I should note that by “credible” I specifically mean “is likely… Read more »
Again a Democrat bemoaning the death of the GOP…so what are you really afraid of? Getting everything you’ve ever wanted politically?
And do we really need the GMP to become just another political website? Please don’t go down that path.
I asked the same question in my GMP post “Should The {Project} Discuss Politics.” Actually, I don’t see how it can be avoided. If you’re going to talk culture, arts, sociology, trends, policy attitudes etc., I think the pointed exclusion of politics would eventually become the elephant or donkey in the room.
There’s enough of a mix here that I doubt this will become just a political website. And we are coming up on a very important election. If you don’t come here for partisan politics, don’t click on the story.
It’s not an important election. The seeds of serious damage have already been sown and are well on their way to maturation. The culture will only be changed by bitter reality. Of course someone comes up with really cheap energy and the game change is on. What problems will we then create for ourselves?
Just keep trying to convince yourself, Mark, that the Republican party is on the decline, etc., etc..
All it will take to revive the GOP’s fortunes will be a few years in which the Democrat party controls both Congress and the White House.
The Democrats are always riding highest when they have a Republican in the White House to blame the country’s problems on.
Republicans have called on Akins to step aside and are mounting plans to take defeat him if he stays in. Pro-lifers truly believe in the sanctity of life. As such, they will try to avoid exceptions for things like statutory rape. Angle is also a nut, but I enjoy cherry-picking too.
Both sides fight dirty. It’s politics. Obama’s team are bare-knuckle boxers themselves.
Movement has been toward rather than away from the pro-life side.
Finally, for those in metropolitan areas, you might want to ruminate upon 2010 while googling “the Taranto principle.”