In the Lewinsky Redux, a Religious Message

[cbayer]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/7581/in_the_lewinsky_redux__a_religious_message_/

February 11, 2014 5:29pm
Post by SARAH POSNER


Led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Republicans are reprising the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, as an odd reaction to Democratic charges they are waging a war on women. The conservative Washington Times sees it this way:

The Kentucky Republican and likely 2016 presidential candidate is making a habit of ripping former President Bill Clinton, dubbing the 42nd president a "sexual predator" and suggesting that it is hypocritical of Democrats to cast the GOP as anti-women when they celebrate someone who preyed on women working under him in the workplace.

At the Washington Monthly, Ed Kilgore has a theory:

There is, however, a meta-message here that is worth thinking through. Many conservatives sincerely believe that abandonment of a stoutly patriarchal society has been a disaster for women: they've lost the stability of "traditional marriage," the presumption men will be held accountable for their material welfare, the chivalric accommodation of their weaknesses, the ability to concentrate on child-rearing and home-making, and most of all, the exemption from the terrible burdens of bread-winning, decision-making, and sexual autonomy. In exchange they have obtained all sorts of empty tokens of independence—some actively unnatural, like the "right to kill their babies"—while men have been liberated to act out on their true nature as perpetual children and sexual predators.

My theory is a bit different, and, like Kilgore's, requires forgetting for a moment that Rand Paul's favorite new-old thing is to go after the Clintons. That's so horse race! Think instead about the GOP's strategy to portray its own elected women as virtuous patriots who put family and Christianity first—making them not just better exemplars of biblical womanhood, but better exemplars of political leadership.

The Republicans don't have a lot of women to work with for this rebranding campaign (there are only 23 Republican women in the House and Senate combined), but they're deploying what they've got in the anti-war-on-women effort. First came Cathy McMorris Rodgers, with her faith in God, family, and a fundamentalist education. Another example is South Dakota Rep. Kristi Noem, whose 2013 interview700 Club is being replayed on the network's The Brody File.

more at link

[No Vested Interest]

1. The especially odd thing about Rand Paul's rant is that he quotes his

wife's opinion, as though that would be anything anyone would be interested in.
I, for one, do not have the least interest in Mrs. Paul's opinion of anything.

[cbayer]

2. As far as I can tell, she brought it up first and he was cornered by a question

about it on Meet the Press.

This whole path they are pursuing with Republican women makes my stomach turn. The SOTU rebuttal was particularly sickening.

[rug]

3. If their strategy is Benghazi and Lewinsky, no republican in the White House before 2025,

by which the their party will have dissolved.

[cbayer]

4. Extremely weak platform, huge divisions in the ranks...

not looking good at all.

[No Vested Interest]

5. Boohoo. nt