Let me finish tonight with this. I think the Republican Party has gotten trapped in the way-back machine that Sherman and Mr. Peabody used back in the days of Bullwinkle and Rocky the Squirrel.
They and Rush Limbaugh seem to think that young women using birth control is a matter for hot debate, that they can score points attacking those young people for protecting themselves from pregnancy during their college years.
Are they crazy? Are they politically nuts enough to think the way to win votes in 2012 is to head deep into the long-ago territory of attacking people for using birth control? I have not heard a priest give a sermon on this topic since I was in grade school. Why are politicians and their radio ringleader out there in the church tent riling up people about something they put to bed a half century ago at least?
If it was only a old fuddy-duddy argument, that would be one thing. Listen to Limbaugh - calling a young college student a "slut." Just listen to him, this man who leads the Republican Party:
Rush Limbaugh: “What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.”
And he continued today:
Rush Limbaugh: "So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch...I will buy all of the women at Georgetown University as much Aspirin to put between their knees as they want."
I get it, Rush. You think the battle isn't about religious liberty but about birth control - pure and simple - and you don't like young women wanting to have birth control.
This is strange, that Rush Limbaugh doesn't want young women to be certain to have birth control provide in their insurance policies. Why's he getting into this? Why's he so hot to trot about this stuff?
Well, he's attacking people here, reducing them to something very low, calling a young woman he's never met a "slut," talking about making her perform sexually for a video shoot, pretty rough, all because she wanted to testify on behalf of college students getting birth control as part of their health insurance.
This, Ladies and Gentleman, is the guy Republican members of Congress treat like a Pharaoh.