What have the cater­pil­lars been smoking?

I’ve writ­ten before about the “Repub­li­can War on Women”. It’s a meme, to be sure, but one that seems to have some stick­i­ness or even truthi­ness to it, because key Repub­li­cans keep doing things that are so glo­ri­ously tone-​​deaf.

Instead of con­cen­trat­ing on jobs, the Repub­li­cans in the House con­cen­trated on sex. House com­mit­tees inves­ti­gat­ing the con­flict between women’s pre­vi­ously estab­lished right to con­tra­cep­tive ser­vices and the desires of the Catholic Church refused to hear tes­ti­mony from women. When Minor­ity Leader Nancy Pelosi held shadow com­mit­tee meet­ing with George­town law stu­dent San­dra Fluke tes­ti­fy­ing, de facto Repub­li­can spokesman Rush Lim­baugh called Fluke a “slut”.

Faced with the ensu­ing con­tro­versy, Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee chair­man called the idea of a “Repub­li­can War on Women” a false and per­va­sive meme, liken­ing it to a myth­i­cal “War on Cater­pil­lars”. Regard­less of what he meant, the cater­pil­lars were enraged.

Even a Nixon-​​appointed Fed­eral judge failed to see the sense in a suit filed by sev­eral states’ Repub­li­can Attor­neys Gen­eral which advanced the argu­ment of Fed­eral “coer­cion” to drive women towards con­tra­cep­tion that they did not want and were morally opposed to. I’ve writ­ten before how the pro­vi­sion of con­tra­cep­tive ser­vices is required by The Preg­nancy Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act of 1978, not by some imag­ined spe­cial fea­ture of Oba­macare. Yet, that hasn’t stopped Con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans from wrap­ping them­selves in the flag and car­ry­ing the cross before them. Some­times their reli­gious zeal has out­stripped their com­mon sense.

Fresh­man Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kevin Yoder (R-​​Overland Park, KS) went on an Amer­i­can Israel Pub­lic Affairs Com­mit­tee (AIPAC)-spon­sored trip (sup­pos­edly for Con­gres­sional fact-​​finding). I’ve never been com­pelled to dis­robe when vis­it­ing the holi­est reli­gious sites on Earth. That’s why I find it hard to explain why Yoder appar­ently thinks that mixed-​​gender skinny-​​dipping in the Sea of Galilee is a damn fine idea. He has a 100 per­cent solid vot­ing record from National Right to Life, includ­ing votes against Planned Par­ent­hood fund­ing. His moral rec­ti­tude was evi­dent for all to see, along with his pri­mary sex­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics. By cur­rent stan­dards, Yoder is also more fis­cally con­ser­v­a­tive than the aver­age Repub­li­can; his fis­cal com­bined DW-​​NOMINATE is +0.574, sig­nif­i­cantly to the right of the aver­age +0.478.

(Note that the DW-​​NOMINATE scores listed in this arti­cle are com­bined, mean­ing they use the scale designed to be used between the House and Sen­ate; these num­bers appear to be more mod­er­ate than the sep­a­rate DW-​​NOMINATE scores used with just the House, but it’s just a dif­fer­ent scale, and they are there­fore not com­pa­ra­ble to the scores we have used in pre­vi­ous arti­cles. Why do we use the com­bined scale here? Because the separate-​​scale num­bers have yet to be pub­lished for the 112th Congress.)

Repub­li­can Vice-​​Presidential can­di­date and House Bud­get Com­mit­tee chair Paul Ryan (R-​​Janesville, WI) voted for a Federal-​​level “per­son­hood” amend­ment. (I’ve writ­ten before about these amend­ments, which would ban any con­tra­cep­tive med­ica­tion or pro­ce­dure that acts after con­cep­tion, and may well make each mis­car­riage a poten­tial homi­cide to be inves­ti­gated.) Like Yoder, he voted to defund Planned Par­ent­hood. Like Yoder, Ryan is more fis­cally con­ser­v­a­tive than the aver­age Repub­li­can; his com­bined fis­cal DW-​​NOMINATE is +0.567.

Women’s advo­cacy groups, such as Emily’s List, reacted to Ryan’s can­di­dacy with pre­dictable out­rage.

Rom­ney spokes­woman Amanda Hen­neberg shot back:

This is a des­per­ate attempt by Pres­i­dent Obama’s allies to dis­tract from his failed eco­nomic poli­cies, which have been par­tic­u­larly dev­as­tat­ing to women. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of women have lost their jobs; poverty among women is high­est in nearly two decades; and half of recent grad­u­ates can’t find a good job. Middle-​​class fam­i­lies have strug­gled in the Obama econ­omy, and Mitt Rom­ney and Paul Ryan have a plan to strengthen the mid­dle class and get our coun­try back on the right track.

Now cometh Mis­souri Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Todd Akin (R-​​Wildwood, MO), who (at least until yes­ter­day) was favored to win over incum­bent Mis­souri Sen­a­tor Claire McCaskill, with a five-​​point Akin advan­tage in the Real Clear Pol­i­tics aver­age (with the usual sparse polling data). For exam­ple, in Michael’s lat­est Sen­ate Watch, he rates the Mis­souri Sen­ate race as “Leans Repub­li­can”. Akin is an engi­neer and a mem­ber of the House Sci­ence Com­mit­tee. He’s lever­aged that posi­tion to invent a new sys­tem of human repro­duc­tive biol­ogy, claim­ing that women who are raped release Magic Uni­corn Dust from their ovaries which stops con­cep­tion in its tracks:

It seems to me, from what I under­stand from doc­tors, [con­cep­tion from rape is] really rare. If it’s a legit­i­mate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or some­thing: I think there should be some pun­ish­ment, but the pun­ish­ment ought to be of the rapist, and not attack­ing the child.

Con­fronted with the rank stu­pid­ity of this remark, Akin’s cam­paign web­site tried to walk back the quote but failed to fol­low The First Rule of Holes. His cam­paign released a state­ment, which reads in full:

As a mem­ber of Con­gress, I believe that work­ing to pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble in our soci­ety is one of my most impor­tant respon­si­bil­i­ties, and that includes pro­tect­ing both the unborn and vic­tims of sex­ual assault.  In review­ing my off-​​the-​​cuff remarks, it’s clear that I mis­spoke in this inter­view and it does not reflect the deep empa­thy I hold for the thou­sands of women who are raped and abused every year. Those who per­pe­trate these crimes are the low­est of the low in our soci­ety and their vic­tims will have no stronger advo­cate in the Sen­ate to help ensure they have the jus­tice they deserve.

I rec­og­nize that abor­tion, and par­tic­u­larly in the case of rape, is a very emo­tion­ally charged issue. But I believe deeply in the pro­tec­tion of all life and I do not believe that harm­ing another inno­cent vic­tim is the right course of action. I also rec­og­nize that there are those who, like my oppo­nent, sup­port abor­tion and I under­stand I may not have their sup­port in this election.

But I also believe that this elec­tion is about a wide-​​range of very impor­tant issues, start­ing with the econ­omy and the type of coun­try we will be leav­ing our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren. We’ve had 42 straight months of unac­cept­ably high unem­ploy­ment, tril­lion dol­lar deficits, and Demo­c­ra­tic lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton who are focused on grow­ing gov­ern­ment, instead of jobs. That is my pri­mary focus in this cam­paign and while there are those who want to dis­tract from that, know­ing they can­not defend the Democ­rats’ failed eco­nomic record of the last four years, that will con­tinue to be my focus in the months ahead.

Instead of admit­ting he just Made Stuff Up, he claims he merely failed to cap­ture his empa­thetic spirit in his remarks.

Akin’s com­bined DW-​​NOMINATE is +0.623, to the right of Reps. Ryan and Yoder.

DW-​​NOMINATE scores for the 112th Con­gress. I’ve also left in Poole’s orig­i­nal plot of the numer­i­cal loca­tions of Rep. Pelosi, Pres. Obama, Vice-​​Pres. Biden, and Vice-​​Pres. can­di­date Rep. Paul Ryan. Source: vote​view​.com

To give the reader an idea of where these three Repub­li­can House mem­bers stand rel­a­tive to their col­leagues, here’s a graph by DW-​​NOMINATE devel­oper Keith Poole which he posted on his blog. All three of these caterpillar-​​hating Rep­re­sen­ta­tives lie well to the right of the mean Repub­li­can House mem­ber, which puts them amongst the most con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians in the coun­try. It would seem, based on this evi­dence, that hat­ing cater­pil­lars is highly cor­re­lated with DW-​​NOMINATE.

Pres­i­dent Obama has a 14-​​point lead among women in Vir­ginia, a 23-​​point lead among women in Wis­con­sin, and an eight-​​point lead among women in Col­orado, accord­ing to an August 8 Quinnipiac/​CBS/​New York Times poll. I don’t know what the President’s lead among cater­pil­lars in swing states is. But based on what I’m see­ing here, I’m think­ing Reince Priebus might want to take another look at that cater­pil­lar prob­lem he’s having.

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