Yeah .. a bit strong I guess.  But that’s pretty much how I feel about the Republican Party and its chances of a good showing in this election year right now after this asinine debacle last week over some law student’s sex life.  Are you freaking kidding me?  Democrats must be beside themselves with pure unadulterated glee right now --- at least those who didn’t laugh themselves to death last week.

You take the average American who has depended entirely on Entertainment Tonight for their news for the last two years and they could easily understand and map out just what the Democrats did to the Republicans over the past few months … culminating with the Sandra Fluke debacle. 

It went something like this: 

Democrats knew, as Republicans should have known, that the GOP would need independent voters to carry the November election.  This meant the Republicans would need a significant portion of independent women.  OK … so what issues are important to independent woman voters?  Jobs?  Sure.  But it’s hard to create controversy over jobs.  Everybody wants jobs, right?  The economy?  Yeah .. especially when it comes to personal family finances.  It’s tough to get the women into open revolt mode on the issue of the economy though. 

There was one hot area that was just rich for stirrin’ the puddin’.  Women seems to be somewhat strident in their protection of their reproductive health choices .. independent women more so than Republican women, and Democrat women most of all.  So the plan was simple … dump a steaming, fetid load of female reproductive health issues right in the middle of the path to the November election, and somehow get the Republicans to step right in it.  I mean really --- how difficult would this be? (considering how eager Republican men are to make reproductive decisions anyway.)

So some Democrat somewhere comes up with a video clip of Rick Santorum saying that contraception is wrong.  “It’s not OK,” he said.  “It’s (contraception) a license to do things in a sexual realm that are counter to the way things are supposed to be.”  Well, that’s pretty much all you need to start your puddin’ storm.  You have a Republican GOP candidate saying that he knows how “things are supposed to be” in the sexual world of women out there, and that contraception is not good.  Surely you have some independent women out there who believe that the way things “are supposed to be” is that they are free to have consensual sex with whomever they choose, and that they should also be free to purchase contraceptives so that the sexual encounter doesn’t end in either an unwanted pregnancy or a disease.” 

Weren’t we all scratching our heads and wondering where that “should contraception be illegal” question came from in an early debate?  Well wonder no longer.  That was George Stephanopoulos lighting the fuse for the carefully crafted reproductive rights bomb the Democrats were preparing. 

Many of us knew that the Republicans would self-destruct and hand Obama a huge advantage if they started their usual obsessing over abortion.  The surprise, though, was that the Republicans would do pretty much the same thing over contraception. 

The first ploy is to get Obama to mandate that the Catholic Church birth control to employees of many Catholic institutions.  Who DIDN’T KNOW this would incense the GOP.  Obama overplays his hand a bit here, so he has to retreat to simply demanding that the insurance companies provide the contraceptives --- free.  The bonus here was that the ploy would take the Democrats a step closer to their long-term goal of destroying the profitability of private health insurance products. 

Once that contraception battle dies down, the Democrats come up with Sandra Fluke.  She was tailor-made for this task.  If some research is to be believed she is a long-time activist dedicated to women’s health issues and she may have actually chosen Georgetown because it is a Jesuit (Catholic) institution – a perfect platform for birth control activism.  Now the Democrats can’t quite get Fluke before an actual Senate or House committee to testify.  She simply doesn’t have either the credentials or a compelling story to tell.  Who, after all, gives a flip about whether or not a woman paying over $50,000 a year for law school can afford the pill or a few condoms now and then.  So the Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi,  having failed to get Fluke before a committee, throw together a little Democrat garden party and invite Fluke to sit before them and spin her tail of woe.  (misspelling intentional).

OK … so she thinks that contraceptives are some sort of an entitlement for college coeds.  Fine …let her say it.  Most Americans .. those who actually hear her statement .. will just cast it off as a typically infantile musings of a college student at that magical point in her life where she has all the answers – par for the college student course – and move on to worrying about matters like Iran, our economy, jobs and tax reform.  Upon seeing a clip of here statement a perfect retort would have been “We wish Ms. Fluke the best of success in her quest for a law degree and a little recreational sex to ease the pressure along the way, and we would like to point out that free condoms are available at the Planned Parenthood office 1.78 miles from her dorm.”

But no … suddenly Sandra Fluke is the focus of all GOP efforts to control women’s reproductive health.  She’s assailed and assaulted on a number of fronts when she should have just been ignored.  Whether or not the attacks had merit is not the point.  The point is that independent women across this country were turned off (at best) or completely outraged (at worse) over the attacks levied against Fluke --- and this is JUST what the Democrats had hoped for. 

Now am I including Rush Limbaugh in this?  Limbaugh has made it clear since he’s been on the air that he likes to respond to absurdities with absurdities.  If someone says something absurd you just respond with another absurdity … it’s actually a pretty good way to get a point across.  The point here is that when Limbaugh called Fluke a “slut” he was following the absurdities-with-absurdities format.  But what about when Ed Schultz called Laura Ingraham a “slut?”  Was it a headline on broadcast news channels and CNN.  You already know the answer to that one.

Frankly, I don’t see a way for the GOP to fully recover from this idiotic debacle.  I think it is quite possible that the number of independent woman votes needed to push Caesar Obammus out of office may very well not now be reached.  Many are gone – and they’re aren’t going to give consideration to returning.  If you want more to go – just nominate Santorum.  That should seal the deal.

Does our Constitution guarantee a right to contraceptives?  Certainly not.  To seek them and use them if available?  Sure.  But to demand that someone else supply them to you?  No way.  This matters not, though.  The bait was cast, the GOP bit, and there are enough genuinely pissed off and/or scared women out there to sink the GOP election ship.

Now … before we move on.  Can you folks now see how much better off our country might be today if liberal women had received care packages of free condoms from concerned citizens for --- say --- the last 40 years?  Not too late to start.