Scott Walker Disputes Ronald Reagan's Admonitions Against Starting A GOP War Against Women

Now that the Republican primary is over, Scott Brown is trying to present himself to New Hampshire voters as more moderate and more mainstream than his record shows he is— particularly on issues important to women voters (and to men who like and respect women). Brown has been lying, claiming he has always supported women having the ability to get contraception easily. He recently said he has supported that "since I was 18 years old." In light of his anti-women voting record from he was a senator from Massachusetts, Politifact rates Brown’s claims “mostly false.” And even a far more radical right-wing Republican, Wisconsin Governor Rick Scott, has tried to close the gaping gender gap by making the absurd claim— in an ad no less— that he’s stayed out of women’s health care decisions. The ad from NARAL Pro-Choice at the bottom, which will start running in the Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay and LaCrosse/Eau Claire media markets tomorrow is the response to his dishonesty.

The most current polling shows his neck and neck with Democrat Mary Burke, Burke leading by one point. Among women, Burke leads by 10 points. Most Wisconsin women know how toxic Walker’s agenda has been for them and for their families. In Elizabeth Warren’s words, “No governor has done more to hurt working families than Scott Walker. He started by gutting Wisconsin's labor unions— the very organizations that built America's middle class and that would fight back hardest against his radical agenda. When he succeeded, he cut $800 million from the state's education budget, starving schools and laying off teachers. Then he rejected federal funding under the Affordable Care Act, leaving tens of thousands of people shut out of the health care system…This week, I'm headed to Wisconsin to endorse Mary Burke, the smart, tough, and experienced Democratic nominee for Governor of Wisconsin.” She continued: 

For a long time, the political pundits said Scott Walker couldn't be beat. There has been plenty of money flowing in from powerful interests, and they said it would be just too much to overcome— don't even try.

What did Mary take from that? That she needed to fight hard and build one of the best grassroots teams in the country to go door to door, person to person, to talk about why this campaign is so important for Wisconsin families.

That's what she did, and here's what she found: the people of Wisconsin were ready to fight back, too. Now the race is officially a tossup. In every single poll conducted in September, Scott Walker and Mary Burke were virtually tied.

And there's one more issue Mary has taken on: she is not afraid to talk about how Scott Walker's record shows he's just another Republican acting like it's 1954, not 2014.

This is a governor who defunded Planned Parenthood, repealed equal-pay-for-equal-work laws, and even removed the requirement for public schools to teach comprehensive sex ed.

And since we're talking about Wisconsin, let's listen to a few words from the most influential thinker and spokesperson of American conservatism in our lifetimes, Paul Ryan's patron saint:



Being anti-Choice— and generally anti-women— has long been a marker go belonging to the right-wing tribe. It’s sometimes been a difficult one for the Greed and Selfishness wing of the Republican Party to deal with. Many conservatives who don’t care about anything but evading taxes are confused by the Republican Party’s relentless war on women by fanatics like Walker. In his new book, The Invisible Bridge, Rick Perlstein looked at the verbal gymnastics Ronald Reagan had to perform to keep from alienating the crazed anti-Choice fanatics in his party.

In 1967, while governor of California, Reagan signed the most liberal abortion law in the country. He defended it, in a very different way than Ayn Rand would, by claiming that “[i]n our Judeo-Christian religion, we recognize the right to take life in defense of our own. Therefore an abortion is justified when it is done in self-defense. My belief is that a woman has the right to protect her own life and health against even her own unborn child. I believe also that just as she has the right to defend herself against rape she should not be made to bear a child resulting from the violation of her person and therefore abortion is an act of self-defense.”

Scott Walker and the rest of the kook on the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party find Reagan’s ideas on this abhorrent and would drum him out of their tribe party today as a RINO.