Rex Sinquefield’s pet candidate for governor, Catherine Hanaway, fired off a volley in the GOP war on women Saturday. And PoliticMo’s report of the incident tells us lots about how this war is going to be fought:

There are 644 days until Election Day, 2016, but already, Democrats in Missouri are hoping to define a Republican candidate for governor as the next Todd Akin, the former Republican U.S. Senate candidate who earned national infamy for his comments about “legitimate rape.”

What PoliticMO is talking about are Hanaway’s remarks at a conservative Educational Policy Conference in St. Louis last Saturday. And no, Democrats aren’t “hoping” to pass off innocent bon mots as Akin-like, as PoliticMO implies, since Hanaway’s speech could have been given by the Toddster himself. She donned the Akin crazy hat all by herself of her own free will and now she gets to wear it without any overt Democratic help – which doesn’t mean that we can’t laugh ourselves silly at the spectacle.

Hanaway’s target: Female sexual liberation which she blames for out of wedlock-births, poverty and a host of problems such as pedophilia and pornography (which she unequivocally defines as a problem). Hanaway, like Todd Akin, condescends to women whose sexuality she implies must be officially controlled for the good of women themselves not to mention society as a whole:

So, the liberals want to talk about conservatives waging a war on women,” said Hannaway, who is running in next year’s race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon. “But, think about what they’re talking about. When their chief criticism of conservatives, the chief criticism is that we stand up for the sanctity of life. That because we are pro-life we are somehow against women. I am here to say that their culture of permissiveness towards sexual activity is the real war on women. Let’s start with the notion, well it’s not a notion, it’s a fact, that the fact that the culture of sexual permissiveness has led to record levels of out of wedlock births.”

“And what has that done for women? It has impoverished women,” Hanaway continued. “It has reduced their access to educational opportunities. It has impoverished and endangered their children. It has forced those children to grow up in households where their mothers have to work, to make it economically viable for them to exist and with no fathers. How is that culture good for women and children?”

Hanaway proceeded to charge that this “liberal framework,” by affirming “every sexual preference,” fosters pedophilia and child porn.

Remember Akin defending his anti-abortion fanaticism with remarks to the effects that he was fighting against “ideas that leave people in bondage, in slavery, in poverty,”  or identifying liberalism as one of the greatest threats to America’s prosperity. Isn’t Hanaway here defending the “sanctity” of fetal life in terms almost identical to those used by Todd Akin and other devotees of dim-wittery. Remember nutty Cynthia Davis, a close acolyte and admirer of the Toddster, who defended his legitimate rape gaffe, characterizing GOP calls for him to drop oout of his Senate race as “bullying”? Her oft-expressed views on the topic of marriage and poverty:

… Despite Herculean efforts and massive expenditures, the majority of citizens still end up trapped in low-income, marriage-absent lifestyles.  Never before have we had more consequences of marriage-absence such as crime, violence, poverty, and lack of upward mobility.  Taxpayers are weary of taxes.  Now Missouri’s social expenditures are the largest line-item in the budget – 50% more than what we spend on education.

Admittedly it’s one of the standard articles of conservative dogma that poverty is the result of out-of-wedblock births and single-parent families rather than the complex of economic and social policy issues that also seem to figure into the equation. And there is actually evidence of a linkage although it’s not as simple a linkage as conservatives wish it were – poverty is a complex subject and when it comes to the role of out-of-wedlock births, it’s the old chicken vs. egg question all over again, along with the addition of lots of other variables that the conservative fixation on marriage ignores.

One can understand, though, why Hanaway chose this particular chestnut to respond to the GOP war on women meme. She’s got a base to placate. Rightwingers like to blame the victim – and since 70% of out-of wedlock births occur in African-American communities, it is especially appealing to elderly, white Republicans – the current GOP base – to blame “those” particular victims. It’s the GOP way, right? Hanaway has evidently decided that if she wants to get elected, she has to serve up what her public wants. As Michael Tomasky observes in an article on the simple-minded positions advocataed by members of what he terms “still the party of stupid”:

… Let me put it this way. The greatest cardiologist in the world could move to town. But if everybody wants to eat chili-cheese fries all day and nobody wants to have bypass surgery, there’s still going to be a lot of heart disease.

In other words, the GOP is nowhere without the angry dim bulbs of its base. But still, isn’t blaming pedophilia on female sexual autonomy going just a little too far – no matter how many Pavlovian drool-puddles its mention might elicit?  Pedophilia is a classic sexual disorder that has been around a lot longer than the pill and the sexual revolution it initiated. For that matter, pornography, poverty, and prostitution, including child prostitution, were flourishing in Victorian England where rigid mores and female subjugation of the sort Hanaway seems to be advocating were officially enforced.

The worst part of Hanaway’s diatribe is the hypocrisy. It’s galling to hear the representative of a party that opposes making birth-control easily accessible, and who visited us with the expensive failure known as abstinence-only sex education, regurgitating poorly digested and mostly fantastical talking points about the relationship between liberalism, liberated women, illegitimacy, and poverty, while pretending to be advocating for women’s welfare. It’s not just chili-cheese fries, it’s chili-cheese fries gone seriously rancid. At the very least, given her million dollar price-tag, Sinquefield might have procured a better quality meal.  

Today Ed Kilgore summarizes Sean Trende’s analyses suggesting that the GOP can forget minority outreach, deep-six the immigration bill with impunity, and win elections from now until 2040 with the white vote alone. However, if the GOP does decide that more rather than less racial polarization is the way to go, they’ll need every white vote that they can get. Sadly, there’s evidence that their policy positions on social issues are turning off younger white voters and white women, two groups with whom they’ll need to do a little better if they’re to realize success with the whites-only strategy.

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Reince Priebus seems to have decided to work on roping those wandering female voters back into the GOP corral. Evidence? Today marked the announcement of the formation of a Women on the Right UNITE project:

This Friday, six Republican committees will come together to launch “Women on the Right UNITE” – a joint project to promote the recruitment of and support for Republican women and women candidates – at a press conference in Washington. The committees include the Republican National Committee, Republican Governors Association, National Republican Senatorial Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, Republican State Leadership Committee, and College Republican National Committee. Each committee will announce substantive plans to promote the role of women within the party and encourage more women to get involved and run for office.

According to the Atlantic Wire, Republicans claim to be concerned that only 8% of the GOP members in the House of Representatives are women – and, of course, they also want to figure out how to present “a more streamlined and packaged message about why Republican policies are beneficial to women.” Don’t laugh. After all, if the GOP and its corporate allies can persuade a significant number of Americans that man-made climate change is a hoax, they just might pull this off.

Among the nine elected women from the House of Representatives who will be talking up women in the GOP as part of the project will be Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2). Wonder why not Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4)? Could it be that she and some of the remaining ten GOP women in the House might not have mastered the “nicer language” with which the GOP hopes female officials like Wagner will cloak the party’s anti-women policies? Could it be that she cuts a little too close to the fringewing home to be a safe participant in a PR effort to disguise the GOP war on women? I am assuming that the candidate for the “new Michele Bachmann” is not what Priebus wants out front.

It is worth noting, though, that women have actually been out front in the GOP for awhile and it hasn’t done the party much good when it comes creating distance from the war on women rhetoric:

In fact, Republican women have been involved in lots of controversies that helped portray the GOP as anti-woman. Reps. Diane Black and Marsha Roby have sponsored legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. Rep. Michele Bachmann portrayed Texas’s requirement that teens get an HPV vaccination – it prevents cervical cancer – as some kind of weird sex thing: “And to have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong.” That famous Virginia bill that would have required transvaginal ultrasounds before abortions last year? It was sponsored by a woman, Del. Kathy J. Byron. Byron defended the transvaginal ultrasound requirement, saying, “if we want to talk about invasiveness, there’s nothing more invasive than the procedure that she is about to have.”

While it will be interesting to see if the GOP can obfuscate and confuse women about what they really stand for, Republican women are still Republicans – and that includes Ann Wagner. When push comes to shove, there won’t be a hair’s breadth between the way Wagner and Hartzler perform.  

A new ad from the Obama 2012 campaign which will air in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia:

Announcer: The son of a single mom. Proud father of two daughters. President Obama knows that women being paid seventy-seven cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men isn’t just unfair, it hurts families.

So the first law he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to help ensure that women are paid the same as men for doing the exact same work. Because President Obama knows that fairness for women means a stronger middle class for America.

President Barack Obama (D): I’m Barack Obama and I approved this message.

Yep. Can you say: “There’s gonna be a huge gender gap in November”?

A video by Jason Cole:

Courtney Cole: Welcome Missouri.

We have both men and women here and I am so happy that everybody is here for human rights and women’s rights today.

Teresa Hensley: What a fantastic day to have women out fighting for their rights.

Paula Willmarth: We have been fighting this fight for way too long. We’re tired of it. We’ve had enough.

Marchers: It’s important to stand up for the rights of women which I think are being eroded every day.

This is a human rights issue.

We’re here to say that our voices will no longer be silenced. We’ll always be strong and, uh, we’ll always stand together no matter what.

Whether it’s women’s rights today or worker’s rights tomorrow or voter’s rights the day after, uh, we have to stand in solidarity because these are human rights and they’re being threatened.

Previously:

Stephen Webber 4/28/2012 Unite Against the War on Women Jefferson City (May 3, 2012)

Rebecca McClanahan 4/28/2012 Unite Against the War on Women Jefferson City (May 1, 2012)

Peggy Cochran 4/28/2012 – Unite Against the War on Women – Jefferson City (May 1, 2012)

Senator Ken Jacob speaks at Unite Against the War on Women in Jefferson City (May 1, 2012)

Missouri – Unite Against the War on Women – Jefferson City march and rally – photos, part 3 (April 29, 2012)

Missouri – Unite Against the War on Women – Jefferson City march and rally – photos, part 2 (April 28, 2012)

Missouri – Unite Against the War on Women – Jefferson City march and rally – photos (April 28, 2012)

Unite Against the War on Women – march and rally in Jefferson City – April 28, 2012 (April 21, 2012)

We Are Women March 4.28.12 – Susan Montee (D) and Courtney Cole (D) (April 19, 2012)

Approximately three hundred individuals from across the state gathered Saturday morning near the James C. Kirkpatrick State Information Building in Jefferson City for a march to a rally at the Capitol in support of women’s rights.

State Representative Stephen Webber (D) and current candidate in the 46th Legislative District.

State Representative Stephen Webber (D) made a brief speech at the rally:

Representative Stephen Webber (D): Welcome to central Missouri. Glad to have so many progressives in Jefferson City today. [laughter][cheers]

I’m glad that Courtney [Cole] mentioned this started on Facebook because I read something on Facebook that really sums up this march for me today. Somebody had one of those signs that said, don’t ask someone for equal rights, as if your rights are theirs to give to you. [voice: “Yeah.”] [applause][cheers] We’re not asking for anything today. We’re here to stake claim to the human rights that already are ours. [voice: “Right.”] [cheers] [applause] We’re not asking that people like Peggy [Cochran], that people like our mothers and sisters and wives and daughters be paid equal pay for equal work. We’re saying that’s the way it’s gonna be. [voice: “Yeah.”] [voice: “Right.”][cheers][applause] We’re not asking that women have the ability to go get medical advice from their doctor without politicians in this building standing in the way.  We’re saying that when women go get health care they should be able to leave their copy of the Missouri Revised Statutes at home because rights to health care are the same rights as citizenship. [cheers] [applause] We’re not asking for equal rights for women. We’re saying that when God gave man rights he gave women rights at the same time. Now put the damn amendment in the Constitution. [cheers] [applause] And we’re not asking that women have equal opportunities to work and that when they do work that they have, we’re not asking for an ability to have a harassment free workplace, we’re saying that’s the way it’s gonna be. And God help you if you try to stop that. [voices: “Yeah.”][cheers] [applause]

I just want to say one last thing. The war on women is a war on ourselves. [voice: “That’s right.”][applause]….

No one in attendance was in any mood to ask for that which was already theirs.

Previously:

Rebecca McClanahan 4/28/2012 Unite Against the War on Women Jefferson City (May 1, 2012)

Peggy Cochran 4/28/2012 – Unite Against the War on Women – Jefferson City (May 1, 2012)

Senator Ken Jacob speaks at Unite Against the War on Women in Jefferson City (May 1, 2012)

Missouri – Unite Against the War on Women – Jefferson City march and rally – photos, part 3 (April 29, 2012)

Missouri – Unite Against the War on Women – Jefferson City march and rally – photos, part 2 (April 28, 2012)

Missouri – Unite Against the War on Women – Jefferson City march and rally – photos (April 28, 2012)

Unite Against the War on Women – march and rally in Jefferson City – April 28, 2012 (April 21, 2012)

We Are Women March 4.28.12 – Susan Montee (D) and Courtney Cole (D) (April 19, 2012)

Previously:

Missouri – Unite Against the War on Women – Jefferson City march and rally – photos, part 2 (April 28, 2012)

Missouri – Unite Against the War on Women – Jefferson City march and rally – photos (April 28, 2012)

Unite Against the War on Women – march and rally in Jefferson City – April 28, 2012 (April 21, 2012)

We Are Women March 4.28.12 – Susan Montee (D) and Courtney Cole (D) (April 19, 2012)

Approximately three hundred individuals from across the state gathered Saturday morning near the James C. Kirkpatrick State Information Building in Jefferson City for a march to a rally at the Capitol in support of women’s rights.

Arriving on the Capitol lawn.

“Keep Your Religion Out Of My Uterus”

“I Am A Woman! Not A Special Interest”

“Rock The Slut Vote”

State Representative Stephen Webber (D) and current candidate in the 46th Legislative District.

Former state Senator Ken Jacob (D), the Democratic Party candidate in the 44th Legislative District.

“Respect Women”

That’s the whole point.