Here's your daily dose of liberal hysteria, courtesy of New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal's Thursday evening post, "Grand, Old and Anti-Woman." Previously Rosenthal called Republican House Speaker John Boehner a racist for asking President Obama to delay a speech to Congress.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska got it half right on Tuesday when she told her Republican colleagues that their party was at risk of being painted as anti-woman. It would be more accurate to remove the hedges and say flat out that the G.O.P. is anti-woman.
There’s really no other conclusion to reach from the positions Republican lawmakers, and the contenders for the party’s presidential nomination, have taken on contraception, abortion and reproductive health services, including their obsession with putting Planned Parenthood out of business.
But the fight over renewing the Violence Against Women Act may be the most revealing, and disturbing, of all. That law, which provides federal money to investigate and prosecute domestic violence, has had broad bipartisan support since it was enacted in 1994. Congress renewed it in 2000 and 2005 without struggle.
This is far from the first ignorant statement from Rosenthal. He called Republican House Speaker John Boehner a racist on January 3 for asking President Obama to delay a speech to Congress:
You can detect this undertone in the level of disrespect for this president that would be unthinkable were he not an African-American. Some earlier examples include: Rep. Joe Wilson shouting 'you lie' at one of Mr. Obama's first appearances before Congress, and House Speaker John Boehner rejecting Mr. Obama's request to speak to a joint session of Congress – the first such denial in the history of our republic.
Boehner did not 'reject' Obama's request, only suggesting the president delay the speech for one day, to avoid it being held on the same night as a Republican presidential debate. (And that's what happened.) Rosenthal wrote as if he did not realize the speech did take place – whether Rosenthal was being genuinely ignorant or ideologically selective in the omission, neither redound to his credit as a journalist.
