The GOP war on women.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Comment - Republican Party

The Republicans are on a rampage. Like a bunch of drunken frat boys, egged on by their leader--that big, fat, bullying lout Rush Limbaugh--they're taunting women, calling us "sluts," and suggesting policies like forced vaginal probes for abortion patients and letting a woman's boss decide what kind of birth control coverage she should get.

It's one thing to drive a wedge between Americans over issues like regulating late-term abortion. But it's quite another to pivot to an all-out campaign to control, intimidate, and humiliate women as a group.

That's where the Republicans are today. In a Presidential election year, they have decided to alienate half the electorate. It makes you wonder who is driving the bus.

That famous feminist George Will was moved to comment on his party's spinelessness after Limbaugh's now-infamous attack on Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke. "It was depressing," Will said, "because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they're afraid of Rush Limbaugh."

Will's fellow Republican David Frum has been talking about Rush's toxic effect on his party for years.

Back in 2009, in an essay that got him excommunicated by conservatives, Frum observed that Rush is "kryptonite," but that the Republicans are terrified to offend him.

The shock-jock approach to politics might be good for ratings, might reward the most outrageous and offensive with the biggest bucks, but it will cost the Republicans elections, Frum predicted. Given the backlash that is brewing, that prediction may be about to come true in November.

"Limbaugh is especially off-putting to women: His audience is 72 percent male," Frum pointed out, describing how Limbaugh boasts about grossing out girls, chuckling in one broadcast that "thirty-one-point gender gaps don't come along all that often."

Like the elderly billionaire backing Rick Santorum, Foster Friess, who suggested that women who don't want to get pregnant should hold an aspirin between their legs (heh, heh, heh), Rush makes the Republicans look like the worst parody of themselves--a bunch of ugly, overbearing, sexist men--who are hopelessly out of touch.

Two generations of women have grown up in the post-Title IX era,,feeling grateful to live in a time when womens equality--both culturally and under the law--is a foregone conclusion.

That women could be strong and happy in our bodies, that we do not have to choose between our sexuality and...