SHHHHHHHHHH!!!
That’s the message the Republican National Committee is trying to put out to Republican male sitting politicos if they’re running against women. In recent years, Republicans have been hampered or outright defeated by demonstrating so much foot and mouth disease against female opponents that a shoe-horn for Republican mouths could sell out on Amazon. So they’re being proactive — by offering tutoring:
The National Republican Congressional Committee wants to make sure there are no Todd Akin-style gaffes next year, so it’s meeting with top aides of sitting Republicans to teach them what to say — or not to say — on the trail, especially when their boss is running against a woman.
Speaker John Boehner is serious, too. His own top aides met recently with Republican staff to discuss how lawmakers should talk to female constituents.
Let me put it this way, some of these guys have a lot to learn,” said a Republican staffer who attended the session in Boehner’s office.
There have been “multiple sessions” with the NRCC where aides to incumbents were schooled in “messaging against women opponents,” one GOP aide said.
While GOP party leaders have talked repeatedly of trying to “rebrand” the party after the 2012 election losses, the latest effort shows they’re not entirely confident the job is done.
So they’re getting out in front of the next campaign season, heading off gaffes before they’re ever uttered and risk repeating the 2012 season, when a handful of comments let Democrats paint the entire Republican Party as anti-woman.
Boehner urged his colleagues Thursday in response to this POLITICO story to “be a little more sensitive” when running against women.
“Some of our members just aren’t as sensitive as they ought to be,” Boehner said.
File that your “No Duh” folder.
But the problem is this: getting Republicans to change the way they talk when they run against women or deal with women’s issue is easier said than done. There are layers of sexist, and conservative Republican attitudes to snip away — plus lots of imprinting from gleefully anti-women declarations from the likes of the conservative Republicans’ de facto attitudinal boss, Rush Limbaugh. Booman notes:
When someone asks you if a victim of rape should be compelled by the state to carry a resulting pregnancy to term, it is not a gaffe if you reply that this hypothetical almost never happens because women’s bodies have a way of preventing conception when they are under stress. It’s also not a gaffe to reply that, while it is certainly unfortunate that rape babies are occasionally produced, it’s all part of God’s plan and clearly God wants that baby to come into the world. These responses are not gaffes because they are actually honest responses that reflect what Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, respectively, actually believe.
A gaffe should be understood as an event where you actually say something that you didn’t mean to say or where you are caught being misinformed about some issue. While Todd Akin was misinformed about how human reproduction actually works, it was still how he thought human reproduction works. Call that one a half-gaffe. You can teach politicians what they shouldn’t say, but that won’t change what they believe. That’s why the following will not work very well…
In a sense, the GOP tutors are trying to move Republican politicians to a form of happy talk. Perhaps this song could help — with a bit of a change in lyrics:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.