Monday, February 08, 2016

Rubio, Bush, Christie cheer Obama's move to draft women into combat roles

Marco Rubio: "I support that."
When three Republicans presidential candidates expressed support for drafting women into a military with combat positions now open to women in last Saturday night's New Hampshire debate, it confirmed the fact that the national Republican Party is in the final throes of its abandonment of the social issues banner under which it has faithfully marched since Ronald Reagan.

ABC moderator Martha Raddatz, married to a Harvard Law professor and who had Obama as a guest at her wedding, was clearly surprised at the answers she was getting from Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush, who were, to a man (not a terribly chivalrous man) supportive of forcing women to register for the draft. Each of these candidates had his own manifestly nonsensical reason for his position.

She first asked the question about registering women for the draft of Rubiomatic:

Raddatz: "Many of you have young daughters. Senator Rubio, should young women be required to sign up for selective service in case of a national emergency?"

Rubio: "Well first, let me say there are already women serving today in roles that are like combat, that in fact whose lives are in very serious danger. So I have no problem whatsoever with people of either gender serving in combat, so long as the minimum requirements necessary to do the job are not compromised. But I support that. And, obviously, now that that is the case I do believe that selective service should be opened up for both men and for women in case a draft is ever instituted.”

In other words, we're already doing it, therefore it can't be wrong (moral philosophy is clearly not in Rubio's wheelhouse). Also, Memo to Rubio: They always change the minimum requirements when it comes to including women in roles in the military. Always. What makes you think they aren't going to do it again?

Rubio also made the argument that we should be able to conscript women into military service because we need to strengthen our military. What's next? Drafting children and old people?

Then came Bush:

Raddatz: “Gov. Bush … Do you believe that young women should sign up for selective service—be required to do so?"

Bush: “I do. I do. And I think that we should not impose any kind of political agenda on the military. There should be—if women can meet the requirements, the minimum requirements, for combat service, they ought to have the right to do it, for sure.”

If there had been a gong indicating "failed answer," it should have sounded right then. Raddatz was plainly perplexed:

Raddatz: “Tell me what you would say to American people out there, who are sitting at home, who have daughters, who might worry about those answers?"

Bush: “Why would they worry about it?” [Editorial comment: Duh.]

Raddatz: “--and might worry that the draft is reinstituted?"

Bush: “Well, the draft is not going to be reinstituted. But why—if women are accessing—”

Raddatz: “But you can just do away with it?”

Bush: “No, I didn’t say that. You asked the question not about the draft, you asked about registering. And if women are going to be supporting-- ”

Raddatz: “You register for the draft—if it’s reinstituted.”

Bush: “But we don’t have a draft. I’m not suggesting we have a draft. What I’m suggesting is that we ought to have readiness being the first priority of our military, and secondly that we make sure that the moral is high. And right now neither one of those is acceptable because we have been gutting the military budget. We also need to reform our procurement process. We need to make sure that there are more men and women in uniform than civilians in our Defense Department. There’s a lot of things that we need to do to reform, to bring our defense capabilities into the 21st century and I am the guy that can do that. That’s why I have the support of generals of admirals of 12 Medal of Honor recipients and many other people that know I would be a steady commander in chief and rebuild our military.

That's right: The clueless Bush attempted to make a distinction between women registering for the draft, which he said he supported, and actually drafting them, of which he sort of, kind of seemed to imply he was not necessarily in favor. The question of how someone could be in favor of making women register for the draft and not be in favor of actually drafting them would require an answer of Byzantine complexity—one which the Jeb Bushes of this world are constitutionally ill-fit to negotiate.
Then Chris Christie dug the hole deeper:

Christie: “Martha, can I be really clear on this, because I am the father of two daughters—one of them is here tonight. What my wife and I have taught our daughters right from the beginning: that their sense of self-worth, their sense of value, their sense of what they want to do with their life comes not from the outside but comes from within. And if a young woman in this country wants to go and fight to defend her country she should be permitted to do so. And part of that also needs to be a part of a greater effort in this country. So, there is no reason why one young woman should be discriminated against from registering for the selecting service. The fact is we need to be a party and a people that makes sure that our women in this country understand anything they can dream, anything they want to aspire to, they can do. That’s the way we raised our daughters and that’s what we should aspire to as president for all the women in our country.”

So, in Christie's world—as in Barack Obama's—military personnel policy is a matter of womens' rights. Glad we cleared that up. If we're going to agree with Obama on political first principles, then what do we have Republicans for?

Left unremarked at the debate was that it was the social revolutionaries in the Obama administration, not women themselves, who pushed for women in combat positions. Women have not been agitating to be pressed into combat roles in the military. These changes are being made by radical egalitarians who want to tear down every traditional gender role in favor of the liberal utopia they all want in which gender plays no role at all.

I'm trying to think why anyone would want to live in such a banal and uninteresting world.

Of course, that would destroy their entire case against sexual harassment against women in the military, a position completely dependent upon the assumption that women are weaker vessels than men and who stand in need of protection.

As these answers on the selective service were coming from the mouths of three ostensible conservatives—answers that could easily have come from the mouths of Obama and Hillary Clinton—the rest of the field of candidates stood by silent, in tacit acquiescence to this position, it underscored just how one-dimensional the Party has become. The national Republican Party leadership is now made up almost exclusively of economic Johnny one-notes.

[NOTE: Ted Cruz contested these remarks today and spoke out against drafting women. I'll post about that tomorrow.]

The national Republican Party was largely missing-in-action on the marriage debate that has utterly redefined society's most crucial institution. The inaction and seeming disinterest in the face of the wholesale distortion of the Constitutional process and their relative silence on the importance of children being raised in homes with a mother and a father was an act of complicity (albeit by omission) which directly led to the demise of  traditional marriage, which died, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

There are candidates who say (but only when asked) that they are opposed to the redefinition of marriage, but it is largely absent from their campaign rhetoric and no one of them that I know of has said what they would do about it.

Some national Republican leaders—alleged conservatives who would be appalled if the procedure used to redefine marriage were attempted on any other issue—were even actively supportive of the effort to divest states of their longstanding and Constitutional right to define marriage. Political treason of the highest order.

The issue of drafting women who could serve in combat positions (and eventually will have to serve in them--that is the obvious next logical step) is just the next phase in the national Republican Party's retreat on social issues.

National Republican leaders have totally bought in to the whole postmodernist redefinition of gender. They have left unquestioned the myth that there is some kind of widespread (or even not-so-widespread) discrimination against gays. They have been silent in the face of claims about the nature of sexuality from proponents of transgenderism, who can literally claim  anything—anything, no matter how outrageous and incoherent.


With friends like this, conservatives don't need any enemies.

2 comments:

Old Rebel said...

What's next? Drafting children and old people?

Actually, it makes sense to put children in combat. With a powerful weapon, an eight-year-old girl would be just as dangerous -- and a lot cheaper to feed and supply -- than a man. And she'd make a smaller target.

Any rational idea MUST be implemented, because to do otherwise would be irrational. And anything we can do to make the benevolent DC Empire stronger is automatically good.

Anonymous said...

Take my wife......please.