Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Cantor Courts Girls!


That would be Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader (R-Va).  I started chuckling when reading through his recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute (which is like Santa's workshop for the capitalists).   The speech, always excepting the policy bits which are opposite, sounds like one of Obama's when his staff has harried him to talk more about women.  There's even stuff about women in the labor force which is not judgmental!  Mentioning daycare without droning on about its evils!  Cantor getting in touch with his feminine side!

And of course the Republican Party should put its open misogyny on a back-burner (like polite people do), and of course I'm glad to see Cantor try to do just that, because it's not terribly good for the party to be remembered partly as the party which worries about rapists' fatherhood rights.

Now that was mean of me.  But let's dig a little deeper into what Cantor's conversion to feminism might be all about:

In response to accusations that he is to blame for stalling the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) continued his efforts on Wednesday to soften his and the Republican party's reputation with women.
"You know, I as a gentleman care very deeply about women in the abuse situation, that we need to get them the relief that this bill offers," Cantor said on the House floor in response to a question from Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) about the status of VAWA. "That's what we want to do, that's our priority, we must move and act on this bill."
Words are cheap.