Liberal radio hosts were not happy with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for her appearance getting sneered at by Joy Behar on "The View" Tuesday. On Wednesday afternoon, Randi Rhodes was angry she insisted women don't care about contraception as much as other issues like the economy. Rhodes summed up: "She told me that I as a woman voter don’t care about contraception. I don’t care about it. Like I’m a cat, and I’m supposed to go into a closet and give birth every nine months."
She repeated the birthing-in-a-closet meme a minute later: "I’m supposed to just you know, go in the closet and give birth like a good little girl and then you know, pray about it. " Rhodes labored to miss the point about the contraceptive mandate violating the religious liberty of Catholic institutions and employers:
There is nothing in the health care law that mandates you take anything. You pay for a health insurance policy. You don’t want to use it? Don’t use it. You don’t want a prescription for birth control? Don’t get one. You don’t want a mammogram? Don’t have one. But if you do want one, it’s covered.
No, it doesn't force a prescription on anyone, but there's a mandate for you to buy an insurance policy that HAS to have full coverage of contraception in it, even if your religion objects. Rhodes attacked Haley for being just like Sarah Palin, covering for those anti-woman Republicans by being a self-loathing female:
Conservative women are going to go out and they’re going to insist that even though 98 percent of the American people, American women, use birth control, we don’t care about it. They’re going to go out there and talk about women’s issues just like Sarah Palin did, and they’re gonna say ‘Well, you know, how can I not be pro-woman? I’m a woman. It’s going to be that old trick again. All to get Mitt Romney elected? Really Nikki? It doesn't seem worth it to me. I just, you know, it doesn't seem worth it to any Republican I don’t think and it certainly doesn't seem worth it to me to even try to get Mitt Romney elected by denying that I am an estrogen-bearing being.
This is not to say that Rhodes isn't nervous about being watched. She called us out in the same hour when she was tempted to whack at elite liberals as sellouts: "Let me just not go there because NewsBusters is sitting there typing with a court reporter right now, trying to get down every word I say, so I won't even go where I wanted to go."
On his radio show, Ed Schultz played a similar clip of Haley saying women don't care about contraceptives as a presidential issue. Schultz oddly made this about him, suggesting to Haley, "when you are managing your reproductive organs and your health care, I, I, I don't, how else do I put this? How else do I talk about this? I don't mean to sound so callous about this. But, you know, I manage my heart, OK? I manage, uh, you know, uh, my intake. I'm doing a better job of that, by the way, you'd be awful proud of me. You manage your health care."
