The Huckabee ruckus
Let’s just stipulate that Mike Huckabee is not exactly a young up-and-comer in the Republican Party. I don’t think he was going anywhere in 2016 anyway.
Let’s also stipulate that his recent remarks were mostly about what he perceives Democrats as doing, and that what he said was twisted almost out of recognition by the left.
But it’s been solid “Huckabee’s hatred of women and their sexuality” coverage for quite some time, now that Bridgegate has lost a little bit of its newness (although none of its future usefulness to the left—ongoing investigations galore will be the gift that keeps on giving). And Huckabee stands, of course, for the entire GOP, which supposedly endorses exactly what he said, whatever it may be.
All a Republican has to do these days is mention women and sex and a firestorm erupts. Huckabee was careful to preface his remarks with a host of “women are strong and wonderful and great” statements, but it did him no good. He had stepped in a meme, and the meme was a big pile of do-do. This will happen to any Republican who dares mention anything of the sort.
For the record, here’s the text of Huckabee’s remarks:
I think it’s time for Republicans to no longer accept listening to Democrats talk about a ”˜War on Women.’ Because the fact is, the Republicans dont’ have a war on women. They have a war for women ”“ for them to be empowered, to be something other than victims of their gender.
Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have a government provide for their birth control medication. Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do.
Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women. That’s not a war on them, it’s a war for them. And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government, then so be it. Let’s take that discussion all across America, because women are far more than Democrats have made them to be. And women across America have to stand up and say, ”˜Enough of that nonsense.’”
Huckabee’s remarks are about the Democratic Party’s message about not birth control but the need for the government to supply birth control. But let a Republican merely say the words “birth control” or “libido” and it’s open season.
The Democrats are not stupid. They know their appeal is to women more than men, and that single women and young women are particularly strong adherents of the party line. They know that the “Republican War on Women” meme—the one that Huckabee was trying to attack in his speech—is a goldmine in political terms. And they know the mine is still full of precious ore.
It’s not what you say.
It’s what is reported you said.
Exactly right that “the Democrats are not stupid”. But, boy, some Republicans sure are if they haven’t yet learned about the power of sound-bites. Frustrating as all get-out to watch this happen over and over again.
Why do women fall for the Republican war on women accusation, or is that a misogynistic question?
Actually the lefties have been waging a war on men for decades. The police are called if a little boy points his finger at someone and says “bang”.
Huckabee has succeeded in demonstrating without serious question that he is *not* ready for prime time — not if he can step in it that effortlessly.
My goodness, even Christian social conservative Rick Santorum never got tripped up on any war-on-wymyn thing like this.
Ann (2:56 pm) is exactly on target when she points out that “some Republicans sure are [stoopid] if they haven’t yet learned about the power of sound-bites” — and about how to spot a mile away, and consequently not step into, waiting sound-bite doo-doo.
But Huckabee did not “trip up”; he did not give some sort of tin ear to sound bites.
He stated a clear, rational position.
If politicians cannot say simple truths, we are done for.
If women are so stupid to be taken in by this sort of infantile agitprot, they are buffoons.
If women find the Dems more attractive, then there is something fundamentally wrong with them.
If they think that there are real such things as “women issues”, and that these have ascendancy over the real issue facing this nation, then we are doomed.
Shame on them–shame on the women of this nation. They are not women in the end–they are merely females.
Do not be intimidated. Do not censor yourself. Sound like commentators here have succumb to the same disease.
It is absurd. We are going to get this non stop this year. They need to be called out. Do not be intimidated by this
Sound
Huckabee should have skipped references to birth control and libido, and simply said women do not need overbearing government to achieve their own success; and stated that government is making it more difficult for not only women, but everyone, to succeed.
I agree with Hattip.
This is another reason among the fundamental reasons the GOP and the Right need their own proper Marxist-method activist popular movement.
If the GOP and Right are only allowed to speak through the Dems/Left’s translators, it’s game over before the game begins.
I agree with hattip. Huckabee not only said nothing wrong he accurately described the democrats unspoken premises. The only mistake is in allowing the twisting of his words to go unchallenged. Every republican should be backing Huckabee on this and the republican party ought to be challenging the media.
Democrats are insulting women by trying to get them to believe that they are helpless without ‘Uncle Sugar’ coming in and providing for them.
Any woman can control their libido if they so choose and since birth control is easily and cheaply obtained, unwanted babies are generally the result of a lack of control or planning.
Huckabee’s right, whenever democrats accuse republicans and conservatives of conducting “a war on women”, we need to challenge democrats with the truth. How respectful of women is it to treat them like children?
So, Neo, as a woman and a “changling” who has had the opportunity to see both sides of the political coin, do you have suggestions for how conservatives can reach women with their message? Such observations could be a great service, for as Hattip notes above, if politicians can not speak clear rational truths . . . .
Geoffrey Britain: “The only mistake is in allowing the twisting of his words to go unchallenged.”
The Democrats believe – and rightly so – that since they got away with lying brazenly about Bush, most of all about the Iraq mission, despite that the truth was in the open, and they were rewarded for it by the voters, then they can and should apply their brazen anti-Bush/OIF propaganda strategy to everything else.
And why shouldn’t they? It’s a winning strategy.
The GOP’s best chance to counter the Dems/Left strategy was the Tea Party’s insurgent popular movement, but the Tea Party betrayed their promise. Now, the Tea Party just whines and complains about the GOP not doing what the Tea Party tells them to do, even though the Tea Party failed to deliver on their promise of an effective popular movement with which the GOP could counter and compete with the Dems/Left popular movement.
Until the GOP and Right generate their own proper Marxist-method activist popular movement, they will be losers, because the Marxist-method activist game is the only social-political game there is.
They know their appeal is to women more than men, and that single women and young women are particularly strong adherents of the party line.
It’s obvious that liberating women from the authority and protection of their lovers, boyfriends, and husbands has merely made women obey something more inhuman and more totalitarian/authoritarian.
What did they think they were going to get, individual liberty and autonomy?
Has anyone hurt women more than those radical feminists who told women their goals in life should be the ultimate orgasm and breaking through the glass ceiling? Who has created more poor single moms?
I agree that we need to take this WoW stuff on more directly and with more savy. But our candidates may not be the best people to do it. We need grass roots efforts.
There was no reason at all for him to bring “libido” into this. If he wanted to make the point that women didn’t need Uncle Sam to pay for their birth control, he should have said exactly that. Bringing “libido” into it would inevitably be perceived by many as implying that women need birth control because they can’t control their horniness, whereas in reality controlled horniness still needs birth control unless pregnancy is desired. Huckabee fell right into the trap that he set for himself.
Is it even possible to make any kind of policy or political statement that the left and the media can’t distort into something that is ugly and vile? That is what they do. That is who they are.
Anything will suffice to distract attention away from the slow motion train wreck that is the Obama administration.
Hattip, 3:31 pm — “Huckabee . . . stated a clear, rational position. If politicians cannot say simple truths, we are done for.”
We are done for.
To expound, it is necessary to not only say simple truths that are clear and rational, it is also necessary to say them in a manner that will not / can not be twisted by the bad guys into something to be used in their demagoguery machine.
But as kaba asks (6:19 pm), “is it even possible to make any kind of policy or political statement that the left and the media can’t distort into something that is ugly and vile? That is what they do. That is who they are.”
They control the microphones and the zeitgeist. Their memes are the ascendant ones.
We are done for.
But Neo… the Left keeps salting the mine.
!
The MSM supplies the spin … even the monologue …
We even have agents of disruption trolling the blogs …
As seen here.
Expat,
Do you realize that if you turn the WoW on its head you get MoM?
As neo said in another thread (to loosely paraphrase and with an apology for unintentional distortion), we are in a Cassandra era where the truth simply will not be heard.
There is no immediate thing non-Leftists can do about it. We have been beaten on so many cultural fronts, disputing what is and what is not the factual truth (something which should never be abandoned, regardless) is mostly futile.
Many centuries of culture have been successfully pinned back, and the Left is circling for the kill. Ironically, it may be the slightly premature exuberance of a not quite yet victory which is the greatest risk for Leftists, who are over-playing their hand.
Even more ironical is that the Left (in their superficial understanding of the real world) may be simply preparing the way for an equally brutal and totalitarian point of view to over take them.
5000 thousand years from now, when a similar set of men to The Founders arises, they may also be motivated by the centuries of violent religious governmental ignorance inadvertently spawned by that historical yet consequential blip, the Left.
The left will take things out of context.
The left will lie by omission, lie by commission, selectively edit and even Make Shit Up ™ in order to twist the context, or the message itself.
Trying to find a way to word things that is unassailable is foolish.
The only thing that works is to hit back when they distort, instead of covering one’s head and running.
Really, isn’t that why Newt Gingrich had any chance at all last cycle?
In order to do that well, the person must be a fairly good speaker, must be able to think on their feet, and must have a command of the subject. No off-the-cuff remarks…which also implies self-discipline.
The problem with most Republicans, I suspect, is either only a loose familiarity with the subject matter or they just don’t really believe what they’re saying.
@T
“…do you have suggestions for how conservatives can reach women with their message?”
I’m not Neo-neocon, but how about we find out what they care about? (and really, that goes for any constituency we are wooing)
So, what do single women care about?
First, recognize they are not homogenous. Some are single mothers. There will be other divisions.
But most, IMO, care about security.
For those without children, it is mostly financial security for themselves. Demonstrate to them that the economy has never really recovered for the middle class. They now have less security under Obama than before. Demonstrate the failure of Obamacare. Tell them that if we continue with Democrats, things will continue to get worse.
For the single moms, it is security for their children. Recount for them all the horror stories about education in America. Tell them about generations that can never leave poverty under Democrats (who use them for votes). Tell them about the promise of charter schools and how the Democrats try to shut them down so there won’t be competition to the teachers’ unions. Tell them that skyrocketing tuitions are a direct result of government subsidies. Their kids will never be able to afford college.
That is, if their kids aren’t killed in gang warfare crossfire, like happens in most of the major cities controlled by Democrats. Democrats who haven’t lifted a finger to stop it.
On the other hand, I’m just a man…so what do I know? How’s about we ask the single women themselves?!?
@Eric
“Until the GOP and Right generate their own proper Marxist-method activist popular movement…”
Yeah, because conservatives are all about storming the barricades.
Tell you what…We’ll join you on the ramparts just as soon as we finish paying off our mortgages.
So the problem was the use of the word “libido”? I guess Republicans need a list of words that cant be said and make sure all the candidates know them. But it’s going to be an awfully long list – Romney was pilloried for using the word “binders”.
Probably a lot of people here don’t like Huckabee and I’m not a big fan myself. But this isn’t about Huckabee. It’s about the unrelenting, dishonest propaganda war by the left. The female “journalist” who first went ballistic about this later admitted she was wrong – after the damage was done. Just like Candy Crowley.
“…even though the Tea Party failed to deliver on their promise of an effective popular movement with which the GOP could counter and compete with the Dems/Left popular movement.”
Er, no.
The election sweep of 2010, which was fuelled by the TEA Party volunteers and voters, was the most massive swing in an off-year election since the 1920s.
There’s your delivery on that promise. Now, tell me: Just what the hell have the Republican politicians DONE with that victory? Were we supposed to deliver the votes and the results and just shut up? Oh, sorry: I guess that constitutes whining.
It’s bad enough when the enemy rewrites history to make American patriots look bad: let’s not pile on.
Althouse, commenting on Rand Paul’s appearance on Meet the Press today, says David Gregory tries to drag Rand Paul into the war on women, and then goes on to offer good advice, I think:
Take advice from David Gregory? No. Sorry, Ann, but with all due respect you are falling for the con. This is not about the nonexistent “Republican war on women” it is about the all-too-real Democrat war on America. Republicans *can’t* extract themselves from “question traps” because no matter what they say they will be slimed by Democrats and their disgraceful toadies in the MFM will enable them all the way. Anyone who looks like they may appeal to a broad swath of the public will have their career unfairly destroyed and then months later they (MFM) will say, “Well maybe he didn’t really mean it that way” to show how “even-handed” they are. This relates very closely to neo’s other post about the US beginning to resemble Venezuela.
I don’t blame Huckabee for saying what he said, or even for how he said it.
The blame rests squarely on the news media (and others on the left) for twisting, misreporting, and otherwise lying about what he said.
Republicans cannot win with a news media that is nothing more than an arm of the Democratic Party.
Blame should also be placed on the shoulders of the low-information voter who falls for this nonsense.
FOAF, I didn’t phrase my comment above about Althouse properly — I meant to say that that was her advice, not David Gregory’s. Like he’d ever give the GOP non-snarky advice!
They’re implanting triggers in Huck’s mind. Maybe they’ll activate those triggers once they find something about his family or kids. If not, they’ll have to push harder on the mental indoctrination.
Republicans are not immune to propaganda and mind control. The politicians are especially vulnerable given their close proximity to the death cult.