On the US Election - If I Am Not For Myself, Who Will Be For Me?

[danieldwilliam]

I’m not paying too much attention to the US Republican party’s War on Women at the moment.

It’s not that I think that restricting access to contraception or the mandating of unnecessary, deliberately humiliating and invasive “medical” procedures to influence, or to punish, the decision of women seeking an abortion is okay.

I don’t.

It’s not that I don’t think that what happens in the US couldn’t happen here or that US culture doesn’t influence our own.

I don’t.

But what am I going to do about Rick Santorum?

I do think that British voters getting incensed about Rick Santorum or the Virginia legislature is to miss the similar attempts that are being made by some of our own legislators and pressure groups to bring that sort of evil to our country.

So, I’m saving my energy and my outrage for home and for legislators I elect and to defend the universality of medical services that I and my family use.  If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

But here’s what I hope happens in the US.

I hope the Republican Party gets it arse handed to in the US general election. I’m all for consensus politics and reasoned dialogic discussion – but not with these guys.  I hope they get a big fat kick in the nuts.

And I hope that it is the votes of women who deliver that kick. I hope the surge in support for Obama amongst women under 50 translate into a big win for him, and for the Democrats in the House and the Senate. I hope it’s obvious, blindingly obvious, to the both the Republican and Democrat Parties that it was the votes of women who made the difference and that these voters were motivated to vote by the rhetoric and legislation of the religious right-wing.

I hope the Republican War on Women turns USian women into the largest special interest pressure group in the US.

I hope the Republican Party has to sit and watch impotently whilst Democrats win seat after seat, legislature after legislature and then ram through their “left wing” agenda.

I hope this sucks for them. 

I hope they realise that their assault on the fundamental physical integrity of women was the root cause of all their election and legislative woes. I hope moderate Republicans are furious that their party has been frozen out of the political process in order to pander to the prejudices of some of the utter nutjobs they share an election platform with.

I hope they are left for a few years in the political void watching bill after bill pass thinking… 

“If only we hadn’t decided that poking ourselves into the wombs and souls of women was the most important thing we had to do we’d be in government and able to stop this.”