Marching To Pretoria

The country moved a little bit closer to apartheid-era South African-style fascism with Rick Santorum's twin primary victories in Alabama and Mississippi, forcing Mitt Romney - who still leads in the delegate count for the GOP presidential nomination - to become more reactionary in his sociopolitical views. The former supporter of Planned Parenthood now thinks we should stop supporting it. To respond to the inevitable insistence that a President Romney would moderate his views and go back to where he was as governor of Massachusetts once he's in the White House, it should be remembered that the senior George Bush held on to his adopted ultraconservative social views once he was elected President in 1988 . . . because he still had to please the right in 1992.

Liberals and moderate Democrats may be eagerly awaiting the prospect of President Obama facing either Romney or Santorum will full confidence in his ability to clean either of their clocks, but they should check Obama's own timepiece first. It turns out that Obama's approval rating is down to 41 percent in one poll taken this month, and he's only four points ahead of Santorum - yes, Santorum - in a hypothetical matchup, just outside the margin of error. Obama is getting blame for the high gas prices - which Republicans are helping to cause by talking about war with Iran, spooking commodity speculators - that even recent good news about the job market can't seem to neutralize. In an ideal world - France - people would be driving smaller cars and have plausible mass transit options, so maybe gasoline prices wouldn't be such a big deal. Or, at least people would be smart enough to understand that high gas prices are not Obama's fault.

Because of all that - and because of the fact that Republicans hold 29 state governorships, hold the most state legislature majorities since 1928, and are working to make sure fewer Democratic Party-friendly demographic groups vote in November - the sun may be setting on American progressivism (what there is of it) for years, maybe even decades. The GOP has the mechanism and the money to see to that.

And even though female voters in the Democratic party may be energized by the Republican war or women, the battle over contraception has energized Republican women like TV actress Patricia Heaton. By now you may know about her nasty, snide Twitter comments about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke's testimony on birth control coverage. Referring to Fluke as "G-Town Gal" and addressing her in the second person, Heaton wrote comments on her Twitter page like: "Hey G-Town Gal: If your parents have to pay for your birth control, maybe they should get a say in who [sic] you sleep with! Instant birth control!"

How many of you who remember Heaton's performance as the caustic Debra on "Everybody Loves Raymond" got the feeling that she wasn't acting?

Though Heaton apologized for her tone, she's been known to offer nasty right-wing comments for years. She once declared Obama to be "completely wrong" for the Presidency and said she wanted a Republican presidential debate that would include Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved asking "tough and intelligent" questions. The pro-life Heaton also insisted that women who may seek an abortion should give birth instead, regardless, commenting: "A woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserves to experience unplanned joy."

And yet, in spite of all this, no one has called for a boycott of her current ABC sitcom "The Middle." I myself watched it last week after having heard of Heaton's comments about Ms. Fluke, even though that particular episode was a rerun. But then everyone knows that there's a difference between Limbaugh and Patricia Heaton.

Heaton is just an entertainer.

Rush To a Fluke

Rush Limbaugh went so far to the right in denouncing President Obama's health insurance policy for guaranteeing insurance coverage for birth control that he actually, for the first time in a long time, threatened his own career. When Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke testified before House Democrats in favor of Obama's policy to require insurance companies to provide birth control coverage to students of Catholic universities such as herself, in recognition of Georgetown's obvious refusal to do so, Limbaugh called her a "slut" and a "prostitute" on the grounds that any woman who needs birth control is obviously sexually active and that funding birth control coverage through Obama's mandate is essentially asking taxpayers to finance someone's sex life.

This is so wrong on so many counts. First of all, birth control devices such as pills are not taken in anticipation of sexual activity or on a constant basis like, say Viagra. Second of all, providing birth control saves money on health care expenditures in the long term. And third and most important, calling a woman a "slut" or "prostitute" for something as innocuous as supporting birth control coverage is misogynistic and mean-spirited.

Faced with the obvious possibility of losing advertisers - he'd lost two already, both mattress companies, over this - Limbaugh (sort of) apologized and said that he selected the wrong terminology to make his case against federally mandated contraception coverage. I'll let him explain it:

"For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke."

If this sounds like a preamble to an excuse as well as an attempt to cast himself as a purveyor of wit, it is. Because this is what he also said in the same statement he issued today:

"[This debate is] utterly absurd . . .. In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone's bedroom, nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a presidential level," he said.

Wow . . . "posited?" That's a very intellectual word for him! And by the way, if he doesn't think this is an appropriate topic for public discourse or worthy of the "presidential level" (Obama spoke to Ms. Fluke after Limbaugh made his original comments), then why did he dump all over Sandra Fluke in public during a presidential campaign?

And why did he mock her to the backing music of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer?"

Democrats originally wanted Ms. Fluke to testify at a House committee hearing on the need for her to get birth control coverage that her Jesuit school will not provide for her, but the Republican-majority members of the committee holding the hearings refused on the grounds that they were asking about birth control coverage as a religious, not a medical, issue. The Democrats on that same committee held a counter-hearing after the Republican committee hearing heard exclusively from men and had Ms. Fluke testify in the hope of calling attention to her cause. They couldn't have gotten better attention and sympathy for Ms. Fluke than by provoking Limbaugh if they tried.

For one brief shining moment, it looked like Limbaugh would be thrown off the air and the only Rush we'd ever hear on the radio again was a power trio from Toronto. But his quasi-apology may have provided him enough cover to avoid have what happened to Glenn Beck at Fox News happen to him. (And by the way, Beck is still on the radio and hasn't really gone anywhere.)  And, to be honest, Limbaugh must be enjoying the free publicity he's getting for himself yet again. He knows that any press, even bad press, is good press, and when folks like Chris Matthews or Ed Schultz bash him, they're only focusing on Limbaugh's favorite subject.

Oh yeah, in his statement today he tried to explain his opposition to Obama's health care policy:

"I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities.  What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?"

I, for one, would gladly pay for a pair of sneakers for Limbaugh to encourage him to take up jogging (no cracks, please, about encourage him to jog off a short pier).

But I don't want my tax dollars to pay for the golf cart he wants to whiz through art museums in.

Two Victories For American Women

I guess you have to take your victories where you can find them. The Republicans may be winning the war against the middle class - the current stage of this war is comparable to the siege at Petersburg in the final conflict of the Civil War that brought Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to its knees - but the far right had some serious setbacks in the war against women. After fighting increased protections for women in federal health care policy and after trying to defund Planned Parenthood, the right was dealt a blow when the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it will adopt expert recommendations to require health insurers to cover contraception and several other women's preventive health services without charging anyone co-payments. So health care in these United States just became a little more humane - more healthy and caring, in fact.

Meanwhile, in Kansas, Planned Parenthood won a major victory - for now - when U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten blocked the state from denying funding to the state's Planned Parenthood chapter, dealing Republican lawmakers in the Sunflower State their second major legal setback to their recent moves against women's clinics associated with abortion. Planned Parenthood is suing to overturn the Kansas law that blocks funding to Planned Parenthood in order to prevent state funding of abortion services, even though only one Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas - a clinic in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park - provides abortion services and does not use government funds for that purpose. The clinics in Wichita and the town of Hays use funding for health care services, nothing more.

The law, which requires federal family planning money granted to Kansas by the federal government to go first to public health departments and hospitals without any Planned Parenthood funding left over, is still on the books. But now two judges have blocked its implementation while the Planned Parenthood lawsuit against the legislature in Topeka works its way through the courts. This allows federal money to continue to reach the clinics for the time being. With the law on their side in the processing of the case, Planned Parenthood may have a leg up in the final ruling.

To be continued . . .