Yesterday Missouri’s Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill went after Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky who, on Sunday’s Meet the Press, voiced his opinion that Bill Clinton’s philandering with Monica Lewinsky, if not the equivalent to the GOP legislative “war” on women’s rights – which he states has been “concocted by Democrats” – is still just the way to silence Democrats who’ve noticed the Republican battle maneuvres in said war. McCaskill, to her lasting credit, took Paul down in short order:

“I think I can speak for most women to say what I found what he said infuriating,” McCaskill said “I think most women understand that they should not be held accountable for the behaviors of their husbands. And you know, frankly, it was a long time ago, and our country did very well under the leadership of Bill Clinton.”

[…]

“I think Rand Paul is grasping, trying to show he can be tough and win the presidential nomination,” McCaskill said. “It was a political posturing and, frankly, what Rand Paul doesn’t get is that women want birth control. What Rand Paul doesn’t get is that women don’t want to be marginalized in the workplace. … The more the Republicans keep talking about how somehow they’ve got it all figured out about women, the more trouble they get in.”

Indeed. For good measure, as TPM reports, McCaskill also got in a salvo at Mike Huckabee’s recent, über-creepy “Uncle Sugar” gaffe, in which he seemed to conflate mandatory contraception insurance coverage with imaginary government subsidies for uncontrollable female libido:

McCaskill also responded to Mike Huckabee’s recent comment on the female libido by reiterating that most women view access to birth control as a basic right. “I don’t understand why these guys don’t get that,” McCaskill told Mitchell.

I can tell McCaskill why most Republians don’t get it – they’re essentially confused about the terms of combat, to return to the war metaphor that functions so well to describe GOP anti-women fervor. They think it’s all about free sex and free-loading. Their world view just doesn’t accommodate the idea that the “war on women” doesn’t involve those concepts per se, any more than it involves the private, sexual behavior of Bill Clinton – or Louisiana GOP Senator David Vitter’s penchant for prostitutes, if it comes to that. That’s why they think they can mitigate the perception of their policies by putting a saccharine female face on them, the strategy adopted last night when Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA) gave a carefully scripted response to the SOTU that was heavy on sentimental cliches and light on policy specifics, a speech that, incidentally, often implicitly belied her own legislative actions and priorities, a fact that GOP leaders seem to think women are too dumb to figure out.

McCaskill did a good job with just the right sound bites, but it’s too bad that when Paul accused Democrats of concocting a war on women, the media constraints meant that no one would ask him specifically which party fillibustered the Paycheck Fairness Act and consistently  fought against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. In which party do the members preclude any discussion of female and family friendly policies such as paid parental leave, and paid personal and family sick leave? Which party has enacted or attempted to enact cuts to child-care subsidies for working women, head-start funding and numerous other programs that act as a safety net for women and their families?  Which party seeks to shut-off unemployment benefits, or chop food stamps, thereby hurting the families of so many poor working or unemployed mothers? The list of Republican policy positions that negatively impact the lives of women directly or indirectly is almost endless.

And yes, Senator McCaskill’s right, the Republican war on women involves restricting abortion rights and access to contraception.  According to the Guttemacher Institute, various states enacted 205 provisions restricting abortion and access to contraceptives over the past three years (2011-2013). The first order of business for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014 was to pass HR7, the “rape-audit” bill that would use the IRS to discriminate against women who have had an abortion. It was Missouri Republican Senator Blunt who, based on a contrived “religious liberty” argument, sponsored a bill that attempted to deny women right to have health care insurance that covered essential aspects of reproductive health. Just about every Republican in GOP-land has tried to restrict funding to Planned Parenthood – which would undercut support for routine medical procedures such as mammograms as well as the more obviously targeted abortion and contraceptive services. All of which suggests a Republican party that is obsessed with controlling female sexuality.

Nor does the Republican obsession with sexual behavior end with denying women the right to control their fertility. GOPers continue to try to redefine rape more narrowly and to make the victims of rape pay the price for what was done to them. A Republican even suggested that rape kits, used in emergency rooms to collect evidence, are used to give abortions!

Does any of this suggest a party that respects women? Or even a party that respects basic human rights and freedoms, much less even understands what those terms mean? We can at least be grateful that Senator McCaskill, Republican-lite on so many issues, well and truly “gets” the issues involved in the GOP war on women and is willing to stand up along with most of her Democratic colleagues and fight.

Seems like just when the Democrats come up with a rare winner in the sound-bite “war” with the GOP – the recent “war on women” meme – it manages to offend the delicate sensibilities of a few folks who carefully try to tiptoe back from the edge. Witness Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver who sounded the retreat from the “war” almost before the first shots were fired. Cleaver did offer one of the better arguments against the use of the war metaphors (and there are some arguments that do need to be taken seriously):

“[The rhetoric is] wrong,” Cleaver said. “I think we need to stop that. It is damaging the body politic and it’s further separating the people in this country.”

McCaskill was more cautious, noting merely that:

…while the phrase “‘war on women’ is probably not the right term,” she thinks it is the correct sentiment.

She can be commended for refusing to give up on the kernel of truth at the heart of the metaphor – and, although I respect the impulse, Cleaver is probably a bit late if he thinks we can constrain the use of the war metaphor at this late date.  

As Rachel Maddow cleverly pointed out, Republicans who profess to be indignant about Democrats drawing attention to their war on women, have been busy for some time raising the troops to fight putative Democratic wars on Christmas, religion, coal, Appalachia, free enterprise, the Catholic Church and carbon dioxide. Just today Mitt Romney promised Tea Partiers that he’d end Obama’s war on the rich (not just war, but “economic civil war”).

Lyndon Johnson initiated a war on poverty; later presidents have pursued a war on drugs. There’s been war on cancer, and nobody can forget the war on terror. If anything, the biggest problem with the metaphor is that by rights it ought to be just about worn out by now; it’s been used for about everything that you can think of for literally centuries.

Nevertheless, the metaphor is used and used and used again because it’s almost always effective. Far from cheapening the idea impact of actual war, which is another one of the more serious objections to the use of the metaphor, it derives its continuing power from the terrible reality, our knowledge of which we viscerally refresh from time to time. There is no better way to define the issue in simple terms, get the juices flowing and mobilize folks to action. (Get it?  Another variant on the war metaphor.) The terms it employs seem to correspond to something fundamental in our conceptual makeup.

In spite of Cleaver’s concern that thinking in terms of “war” will inculcate division, society’s still standing despite the prevalence of the war metaphor over the eons. Nor has it kept us from cooperating when it makes sense. When we don’t, it’s more likely because we disagree in important ways, and the way those disagreements are resolved will have significant consequences for society – the situation we find ourselves in today, and the reason that the word “bipartisan” leaves thinking people prostrate with laughter.  

Which is not to  say that the war metaphor is always appropriate. Metaphor is a type of analogy; it compares distinct objects or ideas in order to explain one in terms of the other.  Analogies are only as good as the correspondence between the concepts in the comparison. For example, the idea of a war on cancer, many have argued, does not work well because it limits the researcher’s conceptual framework to oppositional approaches that may blind him/her to valuable insights. Almost any progressive can tell you why the “war on terror” is a metaphorical bust.

But the political “war on women” is another issue altogether. The bone of contention is clearly delineated. It consists of an effort to turn back the clock on a set of laws that have given women the right to control the disposition of their bodies, their fertility, and their occupational choices as well as equality in the workplace. It involves an economic philosophy that would disadvantage the majority of women and their children. As Ed Kilgore points out, just like real war, this war can also result in death. War here denotes threat. The threat is real. And the need to drum up an equally ferocious response is also real.

Want to know how you can tell that the “war on women” was drawing blood? According to TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro, the efforts of Democratic spokespeople to back away left Republicans “slapping each other on the back,” they were so “happy to hear national Democrats abandoning the ‘war’ rhetoric.”

We’ve had lots of talk about framing over the past few years, and here’s a chance to define the GOP with a very traditional and apt frame, one that has a visceral punch. And if you’re worried that it oversimplifies the issues, cheapens the debate, tell me, how do you play nice with bullies – without going home with a blackened eye, that is?