“Why so stupid?” the Joker must be asking from some corner of Gotham.
Former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee head Howard Dean said Wednesday night that the Republican Party’s political approach really mirrors that of the Muslim Brotherhood, because hey, after all, it’s really dangerous to go all-in on social issues.
“The Republicans on the right are making the mistake that the Islamic Brotherhood made in Egypt,” Dean began.
O rly? Tell me more.
“They get in, and they only focus on social issues. They don’t do anything about jobs. The reason that Morsi went down ultimately is because the public wanted jobs, and all he was talking about was repression for religious reasons. All these guys (Republicans) are talking about is repression for whatever their reason is, and they don’t talk about jobs. In fact, they didn’t deliver jobs.”
A few things. One, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli pushed all of his chips toward Obamacare in the waning stretch of his failed gubernatorial bid. He was not making his campaign about social issues. Democrats were.
Two, the Republican Party nominated a center-right technocrat for president in 2012 who possessed an iffy orthodoxy on conservative social stances. His chosen running mate: a budget wonk.
Three, you have to be a hopeless dope to buy political analysis like that of Howard Dean here. Even if it’s your genuine contention that the Republican Party has overloaded on social issues, its ‘mistakes’ do not mirror those of a group that criticized a United Nations declaration out of fear that it would “[give] wives full rights to file legal complaints against husbands accusing them of rape or sexual harassment, obliging competent authorities to deal husbands punishments similar to those prescribed for raping or sexually harassing a stranger,” and “[cancel] the need for a husband’s consent in matters like: travel, work, or use of contraception.”
And then there’s this Brotherhood ‘family expert’ who was quoted in a March 2013 New York Times story.
“A woman needs to be confined within a framework that is controlled by the man of the house,” Osama Yehia Abu Salama, a Brotherhood family expert, said of the group’s general approach, speaking in a recent seminar for women training to become marriage counselors. Even if a wife were beaten by her husband, he advised, “Show her how she had a role in what happened to her.”
“If he is to blame,” Mr. Abu Salama added, “she shares 30 percent or 40 percent of the fault.”
Video of Dean’s appearance on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC program below. (Go to about 7:30 for the relevant clip.)
