Reince Priebus Doubles Down on the 'War on Caterpillars' Rhetoric

Ladies?  The GOP thinks we're stupid:

On Wednesday, MSNBC host Thomas Roberts gave Priebus a chance to revise his remarks.

“I’m not going to walk back,” the RNC chairman insisted. “I’ll double down on it. This war on women is a fiction that the Democrats have created. And the real war on women is the war that this president has put forward on the American people by not following through on his promises, by having women disproportionately effected by the Obama economy.”

“How can you say that it’s a fiction, though, if you stand of the record of what the Republican Party has said and done?” Roberts wondered, noting that all of the remaining GOP presidential candidates had promised to eliminate funds for family planning and Republican-controlled state legislatures had pushed through 90 anti-abortion bills in 2011.

“Because it is a fiction, Thomas,” Priebus replied. “It’s a fiction because, number one, there is no war on women. … The fact of the matter is that the real war on women, the actual thing that I think most women in this country are most concerned about, which is a good job, a good family, being able to live the American dream, provide for your kids and your family, that war on women is being perpetrated by President Barack Obama.”

Republicans will repeat this lie ad nauseum until it becomes fact, and they will do so in the most illogical manner possible.  Notice how Priebus cannot respond to Roberts's question, so he simply restates the premise: "How can I say the war on women is fiction?  Because the war on women is fiction, that's how!" Oh, tautology! Thine infinite majesty!

When Roberts forces the issue, and points out that Republicans took the government to the brink of disaster in a failed effort to defund Planned Parenthood, Priebus makes light of it:

“You can’t discount the fact that we almost took the government to the brink of closing Planned Parenthood,” Thomas pressed.

“The world will continue,” the RNC chairman quipped. “I don’t buy your argument. I happen to believe that you can be pro-women and pro-life. You don’t. That’s the problem, Thomas.”

And with that final statement, Priebus lays bare his and the GOP's utter mendacity. Most assuredly, you can be pro-women and pro-life. You cannot, however, imprison women for decisions they make about their own bodies and call yourself pro-women. You cannot restrict access to life-saving healthcare for women and call yourself pro-women. You cannot repeal equal pay laws and call yourself pro-women. You cannot redefine rape and call yourself pro-women. You cannot call women sluts and prostitutes and call yourself pro-women. You cannot mandate that women undergo medically unnecessary vaginal probes and call yourself pro-women. You cannot strip women of the right to bodily autonomy by claiming that women consented "to be vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant" and call yourself pro-women. And you sure as hell cannot compare women to pigs and cows and call yourself pro-women.

No, Mr. Priebus. When you are the chair of  the political party attempting to submit women, women's health, and women's bodies to tyrannical rule by the state (small government!), you're not being pro-women -- you're waging a war on women. Period.

And, as MSNBC contributor Krystal Ball points out below, you may have liked it better when women weren't paying attention, but we're paying attention now:

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We will not be distracted. We will not be silenced. And you can take your war on caterpillars and shove it directly up your own ass.

Semper uteri.