AOC: This is so clearly a patriarchal theocracy that has embodied itself in the DNA of an entire political party

[kpete]

AOC: Not only do they want to go after reproductive freedom, they are going after ivf and contraception. They also want to control what they call recreational sex. This is so clearly a patriarchal theocracy that has embodied itself in the DNA of an entire political party

Link to tweet

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I could sense this was the direction the Republican Party was taking

when they nominated Ronald Reagan in 1980.

He cozied up to the Moral Majority which hated abortion and wanted it gone completely. Jerry Falwell et al.

His conventional second marriage to Nancy where her eyes shone with adoration at him. Wives should be submissive.

His off-the-cuff remark that there would be more employment for men if "ladies" stayed at home.

He believed the ERA was the wrong way to guarantee gender equality.

There was more. My point is that Reagan was the footprint of the republican platform.

[TwilightZone]

3. That's the genesis, yes.

Everything they've become started with Reagan. The goals are largely the same -- Reagan was just significantly less overt about it, as were other Republicans of that era.

Trump made it OK -- mandatory, in fact, on the R side -- to be overt about extremism.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. Quick look back at Gerald Ford.

Not perfect, but you could tell he was pro-ERA, regarded his wife (Betty) as a partner (and not a submissive wife), and focused on running the country rather than putting women back into the 1950s.

[TwilightZone]

21. Yep.

Ford gets a bad rap because of Nixon, of course, which is deserved, but he was mostly inoffensive, for lack of a better word.

What we wouldn't give for a little inoffensive on the GOP side now.

[bamagal62]

9. Reagan ruined many things.

[3catwoman3]

18. Nancy, who was 2 months pregnant when they married.

Her daughter Patty thinks Nancy got pregnant on purpose.

[Think. Again.]

2. I see it the same way...

...I'm hoping that, after the 24 election, the Democratic party starts focussing on eliminating the republican party entirely.

I know people say "but we need 2 parties!", but what we "need" are multiple parties that are actually serious about applying their points of view FOR THE WELL-BEING OF THE COUNTRY.

The republican party has NO interest in that.

[TwilightZone]

4. How are you going to do that in conservative states?

Our ability to eliminate the Republican party is grossly over-exaggerated. The best we can do is blunt their power and hope that we can control the agenda. As long as state legislatures and the electoral college are in place and have power, the GOP isn't going anywhere.

If this is the kind of stuff that people really think Democrats can accomplish, it's no wonder that many are constantly and vociferously disappointed.

[Think. Again.]

11. Yep,...

...figuring out how to do things is usually the first step.

[Ocelot II]

5. We need two parties but neither can be insane.

A rational two-party system assumes that both parties are operating within a continuum of ideas and policies consistent with our constitutional government and are intended to support and improve the lives of the people (all of them, not just a few). Inevitably there will have to be a balancing of interests, but if representatives of both parties act in good faith within the law, each will keep the other from overreaching and becoming extreme and the results will be generally positive. In a parliamentary system multiple parties can form coalitions, but the way our electoral system is set up (elections are pretty much a zero-sum game in the US) that doesn't work, so unless that system changes substantially we will always have just two competing parties. But when one of them jumps the rails, as the GOP has done, catering only to the fringes of the electorate and interested only in power, the whole system collapses. We now have a conventional political party trying to compete with a cult.

[Yavin4]

8. What is the Republican party after Trump?

What is their economic agenda? Their foreign policy agenda? What is their healthcare plan? What is their education plan? What is their plan about SS and Medicare? Climate change?

I could go on and on, but without Trump, what are they? Who are they?

[Ocelot II]

10. I don't think it will exist any more in its current form. It will fall apart

and eventually will be replaced by another party, as has happened in the past. Political parties come and go. In the early 19th century there were a number of parties that came and went, the Whigs being the largest of them. The Whigs were "conservative" in the older meaning of socially cautious, but they supported government intervention in the economy, where the old Democratic party did not. The Whigs became factionalized and couldn't hold any kind of majority, and fell apart. What was the original Republican party, created as an abolitionist party just before the Civil War, is nothing like the GOP now; it just retains the name. It took on some of the Whigs but was generally was the more liberal party at the time of its creation. Now the GOP is just about full-on fascist. For the current GOP to call itself "the party of Lincoln" is absurd on its face. The party's rightward move was gradual but it had become apparent by FDR's administration; the GOP hated FDR and the New Deal. By the '60s Democrats in the South went GOP because that party supported racist policies while the mainstream Democrats supported civil rights legislation. Since then the GOP has become more overtly racist, exclusionary and fanatical than ever, and no national political party can survive indefinitely by excluding all racial, ethnic and religious minorities; LGBTQ people, immigrants, and women who value their reproductive freedom. They are already coming apart at the seams, fighting among themselves, competing for TFG's favor and generally making asses of themselves.Trump will kill the GOP as we know it.

[Yavin4]

22. I don't see a future either. Kevin McCarthy and House Rs gave us a preview of what it's going to be like.

Tons of infighting. Factionalization. Back-biting. They lack organizational discipline and intelligence.

[Yavin4]

7. After Trump, the Republican party will completely collapse.

Their flacks in the media will try their hardest to keep them alive, but the party is beyond help. Look at how they've run the House. Look at the dysfunction on the state party level. Look at the grifting. Look at the lying.

They cannot be trusted to govern a nation.

[malaise]

12. AOC is one of the most intelligent of the young

Congressfolks - love her

[redqueen]

14. I agree.

And yet AIPAC is donating to an old white man to get rid of her.

[gulliver]

13. It probably doesn't lose us any net votes to express it that way I guess

Folks who like to use charged fifty-cent words (thanks Google) will enjoy seeing "patriarchal" and "theocracy" used in a sentence with a sciencey DNA allusion. Sophistication, accusation, and a toot of the social justice trumpet.

Folks who think it's counterproductive will point to the obvious idea that reproductive freedom is best expressed positively using the phrase, well, "reproductive freedom." Easy to agree on that. Those who usually ignore the counterproductive (and therefore indirectly and unintentionally immoral) social justice noisemaking will still want to vote Dem to get reproductive freedom.

[redqueen]

15. you think labeling things accurately is immoral?!

Fucking hell

[Scrivener7]

23. First, are you aware that you are letting us know that you didn't read

the whole of AOCs quote? Or if you did, you did not understand the whole of it.

Second, "patriarchy" and "theocracy" are fifty-cent words? Really? Too "sophisticated?" Really?

Maybe reading more would help. Maybe one of those little calendars that teaches you a new word every day.

But at least now we know that some random guy wants us only to use the words "reproductive freedom" to describe the destruction of women's rights to reproductive freedom, IVF, contraception and non-reproductive sex. Destruction, by the way, being perpetrated by the patriarchal theocracy.

Imagine the relief of all us social justice noisemakers, now that we are aware of which words you find acceptable.

[AllaN01Bear]

16. my late mom told me years ago that the rs have been planning to do this for a long time .

[GiqueCee]

17. You tell 'em, Alexandria!

She's old enough to run for president now. I'd vote for her. She's strong, smart, and doesn't take any shit from Republicans, or anyone else.

[Uncle Joe]

19. Kicked and recommended

Thanks for the thread kpete

[tornado34jh]

20. She's right about this, but knowing how the bastard right-wing will react

They will see her comments as anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-conservative, even anti-male/misandric. They will use any reason to bash her even though we know she is right.