Paul Krugman had some interesting things to say about the Republican Trump phenomenon a couple of days ago:

For while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals. If you pay attention to what any one of them is actually saying, as opposed to how he says it, you discover incoherence and extremism every bit as bad as anything Mr. Trump has to offer. And that’s not an accident: Talking nonsense is what you have to do to get anywhere in today’s Republican Party.

Of course, as Krugman goes on to elaborate, the heart of the matter is how one says ridiculous things. Establishment GOP political operatives are sure the nonsense has to be hidden in smooth-sounding rhetoric or in the by-now almost proverbial “dog-whistles.” Trump’s sin is that he has said outright what other folks either present in coded form or in sympathetic, “conventional-sounding” boiler-plate. GOP politicians concerned with maintaining their viability think they can talk mush-mouth to hide the irrational and/or mean-side of the positions preferred by the rabid base they can’t afford to abandon but which is too small to be relied upon exclusively.

Know what that column put me in mind of? Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2) who succeeded certifiably nuts Todd Akin, he of “legitimate rape” fame.  We’re told that Missouri’s GOP insiders believe she’s an antidote to Akin’s craziness, a respectable GOP establishment politician and a woman to boot. But is there really that much difference between the two?

Take the topic of women’s reproductive rights. Akin was not only opposed to abortion in all cases, but attempted to define contraception as abortion. As Amanda Marcotte observed in The Guardian, Akin and his Christian right cohorts:  

… believe that women controlling their own fertility is the equivalent of murder, and will distort the facts any way they can to rationalise that view. Indeed, prior to Akin’s rape comments, he was on record claiming that emergency contraception, which works by suppressing ovulation, is abortion. Presumably the same made-up doctors who told him that rape is contraception were the ones telling him that actual contraception is abortion.

In short, Akin was an anti-abortion fanatic who disregarded science and other inconvenient facts and who did not scruple to use spurious claims to further his aims.

Now take a look at Wagner. She’s on the record not only demanding that Planned Parenthood be investigated but denied federal funding based on videos that have been widely acknowledged to have been  heavily edited by the radical anti-abortion group that filmed them in order to mislead. There can be no doubt that Wagner also knows the videos are BS – she’s really not an idiot – but she’s still willing to characterize the falsified view of Planned Parenthood that they present as a depiction of “the most evil thing I have ever seen.”

If, as a result of cheerleaders like Wagner, Congress actually does cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, it will not affect abortions offered by the organization – it is already forbidden by law to use federal tax dollars to pay for abortions. Instead it will affect the organization’s ability to offer reproductive health care, including contraception – as a Washington Post article observed,  “Planned Parenthood practically invented contraception,” thus earning the persistent animus of the radical right. By going after Planned Parenthood, Wagner is allying herself with the same radical extremists who wish to roll back the clock on women’s right to control their bodies. Doing it by referring to doctored videos is just the cherry on top of the sundae.

If you look at the evidence, it seems that Wagner, like Akin, is also an anti-abortion fanatic who will disregard science and other inconvenient facts and who will not scruple to use spurious claims to further her aims. Remember that when you hear her spouting mumbo-jumbo about how she just wants to “protect” women and their “unborn children” from late term abortions – without mentioning that such abortions are exceedingly rare (1% of all abortions) and almost always undertaken for serious medical reasons. Same ole, same ole.

Make no mistake, Wagner wants Roe v. Wade to go away and take easy access to contraception with it. Like Akin, she’ll lie and obfuscate to achieve that end. Unlike Akin, she’ll smile and coo while she does it.

The House GOP – you know, those folks who just a few months ago were wondering how to attract younger women back to their party – are once again trying to push the Roe v. Wade envelope. Today they plan  to introduce a bill, HR 1797, that would prohibit abortion after twenty months weeks, citing spurious, junk-science claims of fetal pain as justification to change the cut-off point beyond which abortion should be outlawed. The intellectual level underlying this proposed legislation is suggested by the statement of its main sponsor, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who initially refused even to include an exception for victims of rape or incest, declaring that “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.”

A Todd Akin moment? The House leaders must have thought so since a provision for the exception was added and a woman, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), was trotted out to manage the bill on the floor – and presumably to ameliorate the damage done by Frank’s gaffe. The hope seems to be that the female public will only notice Blackburn’s gender, not her strident anti-choice, anti-woman positions. And, indeed, she has refined the rhetoric, declaring that: “we are incredibly concerned about the well-being, safety, the health of these women. The life of women. And these babies. That is why we are doing this.”

Seems like the strategy here mirrors that of the GOP in Missouri when they managed to replace Todd Akin with Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2). But while the rhetoric has softened, just as with Blackburn and Franks, the substance remains the same. Akin was certainly verbally maladroit, but his real sin was making the assumption that his personal, religious beliefs took precedence over the beliefs of others. A corollary sin was his willingness to cite bad science and ignore overwhelming contrary evidence to justify imposing his beliefs on others – a sin that is magnified many times over in this bill which is based on discredited claims of fetal pain.

How will Wagner vote? Do you have any doubt that she will go the Akin route? She’s on the record in regard to her anti-choice beliefs. Recently, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade she declared that she was “‘heartbroken’ by all the lives that have been devastated by abortion,” and added that the Supreme Court decision “has done so much harm to the moral landscape of our nation.” As far as the GOP “war on women” goes, Wagner is by any definition a true-blue soldier:

… She was among 138 House Republicans who voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women’s Act before it was signed into law. She questioned its constitutionality and said she worried it could lead to more abortions [emphasis added].

Todd Akin asserted that women’s bodies could distinguish between rape and consensual intercourse and “shut-down” in the former case; if Wagner votes for HR 1797, she will be endorsing equally false – and often silly – claims about fetal pain – and using them to deny choice to other women. An exception for rape and incest victims is all well and good, but it does not take make it okay to take away a woman’s ability to control her own body and health decisions.

Wagner can join Blackburn and whine all she wants about how she is motivated by concern for women and children, but until she can tell me how her smarmy, feel-good words and empty protestations of concern help women like Beatriz from El Salvador, Savita Halappanavar in Ireland and Dana Weinstein in the U.S., women whose pregnancies not only threatened their lives, but in the case of Halappanaver, resulted in death, I will refuse to agree that she is an improvement on poor, sad, stupid Todd Akin.

ADDENDUM: In case you doubt that Blackburn, the gentler face of the GOP, is as bad as Franks and Akin, here she is today defending the indefensible HR 1797:

Blackburn went on to defend the reporting requirements in the legislation, arguing, “[T]he hope is that that will help with getting some of the perpetrators [i.e. rapists] out of the population that are committing these crimes against women and against minor females. We certainly would hope that we could rid our society of these perpetrators.”

In other words, the Tennessee Republican thinks her bill will reduce rapes. When Melvin asked, “How do you fight rapists with an abortion bill?” Blackburn changed the subject.

She went on to say, three times, “Science is on our side on this.” The American Medical Association disagrees. Blackburn added that “80 percent” of American women support her bill, but there is no poll that supports this argument.