Are They Really This Clueless?

Regarding Mike Huckabee’s recent “libido” remarks, I’m with BooMan — what Huckabee is saying makes no discernible sense. Whether you agree with him or not.

“I think it’s time Republicans no longer accept listening to the Democrats talk about a ‘war on women,’” Huckabee said. “Because the fact is, the Republicans don’t have a war on women. They have a war for women.”

He said Democrats convinced women they were victims, but Republicans wanted to empower them.

“Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless or hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have a government provide for them birth control medication,” Huckabee said. “Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do.” …

…“If Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government, then so be it,” Huckabee said.

Is he saying that smart, educated, and intelligent women can control their reproductive system without birth control? And what does controlling libido have to do with anything? Does he think that only nymphomaniacs need birth control? And, of course, “government” isn’t supplying birth control except to Medicaid patients. The real issue has to do with mandating that private insurance companies cover birth control, which can be expensive if you have to pay the whole cost yourself.

Considering that about 99 percent of American women use birth control at some point in their lives, I’m not sure which women he thinks he is not insulting.

As with Rush Limbaugh’s infamous Sandra Fluke rampage, Huckabee doesn’t seem to understand how birth control works. Are they really that clueless? Paul Waldman writes,

These kinds of statements tend to come from older conservative men who have no idea how ladyparts work, and really don’t want to know. That extends to contraception, which as far as they’re concerned is something that is women’s responsibility and therefore there’s no need to understand it. That accounts for the bizarrely widespread belief that all forms of contraception work like condoms: a one-use kind of thing that is employed whenever sex is desired. Which is why Rush Limbaugh said that Sandra Fluke was obviously a “slut” if she wanted contraception to be covered by the insurance she was paying for, because “She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception.” And Huckabee believes that you only need birth control every month if you have a rampaging libido, while if you were more chaste, it would be something that would sit at the back of the cabinet, seldom brought out but there if necessary, like that little container of tumeric you once bought for a particularly exotic recipe and might some day use again.

Since Mike Huckabee doesn’t have 18 kids, I’m guessing his wife has used contraception throughout their marriage. But a Baptist minister and his wife have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” arrangement when it comes to that sort of thing, just like millions of other couples, which enables him to continue believing that only a fallen woman would need to take a contraceptive pill every doggone day like she was some kind of insatiable sex machine who barely had time to cook his food and do his laundry in between all that rutting.

Seriously, can they really be that clueless? Do they actually not know how birth control pills work? They certainly sound as if they don’t understand it, but it’s mind boggling. Even after all these years of watching wingnuts’ wacky ways, this is out there.

39 thoughts on “Are They Really This Clueless?

  1. Look at Gohmert and listen to him for a few minutes. All your doubts will disappear, and you will be convinced they know nothing.

  2. Huckabee’s reference to Uncle Sugar should be as big an insult to women as the libido comment. What’s he saying?.. That women are a bunch of free loading ho’s?

  3. Hucka hucka burning love! Watch out ladies, the Huckster is a sexual dynamo. He never meet a libido he didn’t like… Sorta like a rural Arkansas version of Will Rodgers.

    Gohmert is the closest thing to a Hanna-Barbera character that has ever inhabited the halls of Congress. He’s such a dunce. Gohmert says Solomon is the wisest man that “ever” lived.. That’s on par with Jethro Bodine saying that the computer ain’t never ever been wrong.

  4. Ok the term rutting made me laugh so hard it brought tears to my eyes….I thought I had heard it called every name in the book, but I have never been asked to join a guy for a hot night of wild rutting. .I feel like maybe I missed something.

  5. I don’t know where all these horney women are. Over these 39 years of wedded Bliss, I’d say I chased her around the house in persuit of some lovin’ 10/1. And I think that’s about right for most couples.(unless you’re on welfare, then the women just want to pop about 15 babies out so they get more “uncle sugar” money). What a clown show.

  6. “Are they really this clueless?”
    SATSQ:
    Yes!

    This ends today’s exciting edition of “SATSQ.”
    Stay tuned for tomorrow’s borin… EXCITING edition of, “SATSQ!”

    Also too – “The Huckster,” a great grifter, is telling his griftee audience what it wants to hear.
    You don’t get that sweet, sweet, misogynistic griftee money, by squeezing men’s balls.
    You get it by telling men that their “little ladies” like having their teat’s squeezed – if not by them, then, by someone else!
    A paranoid and scared male griftee is a cash cow – plenty of moolah to squeeze from their man-teats!
    I call it, “Milking the rubes.”

  7. “Because the fact is, the Republicans don’t have a war on women. They have a war for women.”

    Yeah a “war for women” all right… The immediate image that comes to my mind is barbarian raiders plundering a city and carrying off women over their shoulders: “This is a war FOR WOMEN! The spoils of war! Take what ye can, men!”

  8. I’m assuming that the women Mr. Huckabee knows are also clean and well-spoken.

    And they really want him!

  9. Uncle Sugar? As the Rude Pundit has said, that sounds like either a pimp, a minstrel show character, or a child-molesting clown.

  10. It’s not that hard. I can translate Huckabee’s comments:

    There is something seriously wrong with me. If you are a women, or a man who doesn’t hate women, you will want to do everything in your power to make sure I never become president.

  11. Usually, when it comes to these people, I err on the side of feigned ignorance. A lot of the crap they spew they don’t believe themselves (tax cuts create jobs!) but use it for effect to raise money off the toothless rubes.

    But in this case, what we’re seeing is what should be for them, particularly right wing women, an embarrassing level of clueless. Though clearly, you can see in his delivery, Huck really thinks he’s on to something.

    But I can’t imagine he tried this speech out, that plumbs the lower depths of clueless, on any right wing woman of the non Stepford variety, and got the thumbs up.

    If I were Obama’s spokesperson and was asked to comment on Huck’s threat to “take that discussion all across America” I would tell him, as Obama told Romney in the 2012 debates, “governor, please proceed.”

  12. “Uncle sugar” sounds like a wee bit o’ racism under the radar.

    That’s because it is under the radar racism. It’s a variant of the welfare queen label. It’s a damned shame that these women can’t control their sexual impulses and accept responsibility for their lecherous behavior, and yet they want us morally correct Americans to shoulder their responsibility.

  13. Crap, I hope this isn’t the end of “foreplay” as we know it…this could be the downfall of “Mankind”…

  14. This one goes out to the Huckabee.
    A trip down memory lane of the song that was in his heart and on his lips when returning home from his first date with the Mrs. I think it’s ironic that on their first date they went out for a cheeseburger. And for you curious sorts…No, she didn’t put out. In those days women had a bit more restraint and were able to control themselves. Although, I think Huck asked her if she wanted to go watch the submarine races. Yeah, he was such a cut-up in those days.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olAvmBZi3a4

  15. Swami,
    Her Mom probably gave her three aspirins for your first date.
    Two, so she could claim she had a headache, and take them in front of you.
    And the third to put in between her knees, in case you didn’t care if she had a headache, since your other hea…
    Well, you know…
    Say no more… Say no more! 😉

  16. Oh, Swami, just wait until my previous comment gets out of ‘awaiting moderation!’ 🙂

  17. Damn, swami. The link won’t come up on the mini pad. Huckabee is younger than I (59), and the girls weren’t ‘zactly shy back then.

  18. Every profession leaves an imprint. Lawyers think and talk like lawyers – engineers like engineers – programmers, you could write a book. Every vocation has it’s own language and axioms, which everyone in that vocation ‘gets’. Huck is a Baptist minister – which means he’s a salesman. His stock in trade is salvation, avoiding the trip to hell. Salvation is for sinners – you have to accept that you are a sinner – That leads to the intimate affection conservative Christians have for guilt and shame. You gotta feel those emotions to wallow in your sin and accept your salvation.

    The problem is that society is throwing off the trappings of guilt and shame. People are rejecting (conceptually) the idea of a crime with no victim. Women are becoming as free as men have been for centuries to chose their partner or no partner or a same-sex partner without guilt and shame. Contraception empowers women to select if they will or won’t conceive, a decision that fundamentalists think is God’s will – and punishment for sinful women.

    Huck makes perfect sense to the audience he was speaking to. In his mind, and that of his evangelical base, it IS the role of government to enforce virtue and the role of the minister to define it for the lawmakers. He has delusions of being the minister-statesman. God help us. With the government enforcing the penalties of sin, business should be brisk in the salvation profession. Huckabee is a salesman in that trade.

  19. This one’s kin to the “my abortion is different” thing you recently posted about. The bad women want contraception because they’re doing bad things, while “our” women are doing good and reasonable things. But both sets of women are doing the same things.

    It’s also akin to the “bad welfare, good welfare” idea we’ve seen so many wingnuts entertain, the idea that’s there’s maybe some sort of super secret special welfare that goes to bad people and allows them to live it up, while the welfare, disability payments, food stamps etc. that they themselves have gotten or are getting (for instance by Paul Ryan, Craig T. Nelson, various vocal Tea Party people etc. etc. etc.) were good and barely enough to keep them going during a rough period.

    And of course this all also boils down to the IOKIYAR belief.

  20. Thanks,swami.that’s a catchy tune; I’ll be humming all day now. ‘Cause I got me a purdy woman’s love.

  21. Swami, where do you come up with these songs? You must have an encyclopedic mind.

    That being said, way back when, I fell in with a group of budding singer songwriters. I wrote some songs that were so horrible, that to this day, I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat, realizing that there are people still alive that may remember hearing them. I talk myself down by convincing myself that the songs were so bad, that everyone would have “tuned them out” in short order. Even, I don’t remember them, except in those waking nightmares.

    Let’s just say that “Wringle, Wrangle” makes me feel a whole lot better.

  22. Poor Huckabuck he’s just a little behind the times. Everyone knows the best way to control a woman’s libido is a good old fashioned forced trans-vaginal ultrasound! Of course uncle sugar can’t pay for that either.

  23. Oh, I ain’t compainin’.

    I had my share of purdy women back in my day!
    I jess never managed to corralled one, s’all!!!

  24. I have to work on my comprehension or else get my mind out of the gutter.. I took the expression of corralling a unicorn to mean the same thing as wrestling with the champ.

  25. erinyes…Gulag referenced about “holding our own” and you mentioned about corralling a unicorn, so I assumed you were talking about the same thing but in a more poetic manner. I don’t know if that makes sense, but when I read your comment in light of that understanding, I laughed my ass off thinking what a wonderfully expressed follow up comment.

    Do you think I should increase my meds?

  26. Since Mike Huckabee doesn’t have 18 kids, I’m guessing his wife has used contraception throughout their marriage.

    The only flaw with that argument is the assumption that Mike and his missus have had sex at least 18 times. Of course someone without a libido is going to criticize everyone else’s.

  27. The only flaw with that argument is the assumption that Mike and his missus have had sex at least 18 times

    Do you mean before or after he put the ring on her finger? I’d wager that he hit the 18 times marker before they even departed the honeymoon lodge. He probably plowed her more times than his great grand-pappy plowed the north forty. He should change his name to Winnie-the-Pooh with his appetite for dipping into the honey pot.

    OK, I’ll be good. Lord forgive me. I must remember my Christian admonition when speaking and thinking about Huckabee.. Hate the sin – but love the sinner, Hate the hypocrisy- but love the hypocrite.

  28. Hey, swami; I got it.the rule of unintended consequences applies.thanks for pointing it out, I got a great laugh. I’ll never think of pink unicorns in the same light.

  29. My perception of the culture of fundamentalism is certainly skewed by my preference for keeping at a safe distance from it, and by retrieval bias, having certain events stand out from the common stock of experiences. But, I think a lot of fundamentalists nurture the concept that sex is inherently sinful in order to enhance the thrill and pleasure. My wife and I have a kind of running joke about “Baptist women,” because in our many years here in the Bible Belt, they have proved to be the most “flirtatious,” and the men, even to the ministers, follow suit. This seems to be a fairly well established view. Doc Watson fans might recall a joke/story he told on one of his albums that had to do with a a visit from a minister. The punch llne was basically, “if it’s the Methodist minister, hide the liquor, if it’s the Presbyterian, hide my wallet and if it’s the Baptist, sit on your mother’s lap.” If anyone knew the culture of the south, it was Doc Watson. 

I guess what I am saying is that the Huckabees might be a bit more passionate than they advertise, and that’s as it should be in my book. Anyone who might make further conjecture in this matter does so at their own risk. I choose not to think about it. Southern ministers, particularly those who hold revivals, have a certain reputation and it’s not for having well governed libidos.

    Along with low wages, and a docile, tractable working class, “conservatives” mainly want to preserve the privileges of the patriarchy. Many seem to take their concept of the patriarchy straight out of the Old Testament and regardless of their station in life, it seems that they can always count on having women to push around and suppress. I’d bet what’s left of my 401K that Mr. Huckabee sees himself as a member of the patriarchy and that he sees the subservience of women as essential to “God’s Plan.” It is particularly galling to see him switch gears into the “women are intelligent … can do anything anyone else can do” boilerplate because he and people very much like him, have fought to keep sex education, including birth control information,
to a minimum in the school system.

    AH, what’s the use? I’m not saying anything new, so I’ll stop. 

I have to admit in the interest of fairness, I also just don’t like the guy, for a lot of reasons.

  30. Let’s talk about “Uncle Sugar” and the epidemic of diabetes in this country. Industry hits the primordial sweet tooth by adulterating our food with too much sugar and now all of us get to pay for an overweight and diabetes prone population. Hey Mike H – how you like them apples?

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