Mental gymnastics.
WASHINGTON — If you ask five Democratic women about San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, accused of multiple instances of sexual harassment, you’ll get five different answers.
It’s a stark contrast with how it sounds when an elected Republican says or does something offensive — then Democratic women speak as one.
The “war on women” has been a charge Democrats have been making against the GOP, as the Republican House and state legislatures have taken up bills restricting abortion rights, causing many Republican men to make some notable and cringe-worthy soundbites. […]
A spokeswoman for Emily’s List, a group that works to elect women supportive of abortion rights, argued the difference between Filner’s — or Weiner’s or Spitzer’s for that matter — behavior and that of Republican gaffe-prone men has to do with the legislative priorities of the GOP.
“The difference is that Republicans’ words and personal actions are backed up by an actual party legislative agenda that hurts women — this stuff goes from infuriating and outrageous to genuinely frightening when they’re trying to back it up with real live laws that roll back the clock to a time when women were treated as second class citizens,” Emily’s List Communications Director Jess McIntosh said. “Akin only mattered because Republicans had already tried to redefine rape in legislation — the Republicans gaffing all over the place when it comes to women are not outliers. They are reflective of their party’s actual agenda.”