GOP Gone Wild!

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

If you missed the House debate on the health care bill Saturday night, you missed the GOP gone wild and behaving badly towards the Democratic Women's Caucus. Is this how Republicans treat women in their own caucus? Is this how they treat their wife, daughter, mother? The GOP has already alienated every ethnic and religious minority group in America, now they want to alienate women as well?

Think Progress reports GOP Gone Wild: Unruly Republicans Silence Women Lawmakers With Screams, Shouts, And Delay Tactics:

As the Democratic Women’s Caucus took to the microphone on the House floor to offer their arguments for how the bill would benefit women, House Republicans — led by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) — repeatedly talked over, screamed, and shouted objections. “I object, I object, I object, I object, I object,” Price interjected as Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) tried to hold the floor.

In an effort to delay and derail the proceedings, the Republicans continually talked over the Democratic women for half an hour. They sought to prevent the debate by calling for unnecessary “parliamentary inquiries” and requests for “expanding the debate” by an hour.

After being repeatedly interrupted by Republican shouts, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) observed:

Do I not have the right to be able to continue my sentence without objections that are trying to censor my remarks here on the floor that I have a right to make as a member of this House?

The presiding chair of the House, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), tried to assuage the Republican ruckus, without much success. The debate must be conducted with “a measure of comity and grace and decency,” Dingell urged. “There’s no advantage to be achieved by making all this fuss,” he told the Republicans.

Watch a compilation mashup from Media Matters:

ThinkProgress interviewed Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (OH), one of the Democratic women who faced this treatment. Rep. Kilroy: GOP Shouting Down Democratic Women Was A ‘Sexist’ Attempt To Put Us ‘In Our Place’:

Kilroy said unequivocally that the GOP’s actions were “sexist” and it would be “nice” if they apologized. She pointed to recent GOP comments about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — that it’s time to “put her in her place” — and said that’s exactly what Price and the other Republicans were doing on Saturday:

KILROY: [T]hree male members of Congress got up and started shouting down — trying to shout down the Democratic women. I thought it was loud, I thought it was rude, I thought it was disrespectful, and I thought it was sexist. […]

Well, when you engage in loud, rude, and boorish behavior, my mother would have said they should apologize. I don’t expect an apology, but that would be nice to have that. But you know, you’re seeing this sexist behavior going on.

You heard recently comments — from the Republican side of the aisle, some of my Republican colleagues over there — saying Speaker Pelosi should be put in her place, and I think that’s what they thought they were doing with the Democratic women. And it’s simply outrageous to me to have women being treated like that on the floor of the House.

* * *

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said that Republicans have been essentially giving a “back-of-the-hand treatment to women,” pointing out that on Friday, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) “actually compared women to smokers and suggested women, like smokers, have to pay more for insurance just by the accident of our ability to get pregnant.”

You will hear in the video some Republican women members of Congress also participated in this uncivil lack of comity and decency by objecting for purposes of censoring remarks and delay. The Party of No and no ideas is out of control.