Mitch McConnell: 'War On Women' Is A 'Manufactured Issue'

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissed on Monday the idea that the GOP is waging a so-called war on women, calling it a "manufactured issue."

"Talk about a manufactured issue -- there is no issue," he said on Louisville, Ky., radio station WHAS-AM. "Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe from Maine I think would be the first to say -- and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska -- 'we don’t see any evidence of this.'"

Murkowski, however, recently criticized her own party for its focus on reproductive rights.

"It makes no sense to make this attack on women," she said last Wednesday on KBBI's Coffee Table program, according to the Homer News. "If you don't feel this is an attack, you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters."

Snowe called the recent controversy over the Obama administration's contraception mandate a "retro-debate that took place in the 1950s."

Also on HuffPost:

Comments

[whosbinfarteen]

10:54 PM on 10/01/2012

Thanks Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Roberts, I'm sure your mothers are proud of you.

A conservative Supreme Court decided against a class-action law suit brought by 1.5 million female employees for sex discrimination at Walmart.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2011/06/20/wal-mart-wins-supreme-court-ruling-in-historic-sex-discrimination-suit/

[Seven Teenatheart]

12:23 AM on 04/16/2012

An adhoc list of some examples of the "War on Women".
http://17atheart.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/war-on-women-a-list-of-links-to-anti-woman-legislation/

[mskittykat1326]

05:09 PM on 04/12/2012

"Talk about a manufactured issue...'we don’t see any evidence of this.'"
- You don't see any evidence or your choose to ignore evidence of this are two completely different scenarios. I'm certain he meant the latter.

[TheSarge]

04:08 PM on 04/12/2012

I know Ive heard of no such war. I have friends along very different political ideologies.we all get along and to my knowledge I have never heard this brought up. It must be a secret plot/victimization

[Ed Feldmanis]

02:51 PM on 04/11/2012

Mitch McConnell these days is more about Mitch then anything else. He is an Alabama boy embraced and at one time loved in Louisville and was a personally popular figure elected to be County Judge (ie mayor of the county). People then thought he was decent and he got Democrat votes. There was something about him that connected with good government republican reform politics that was also very decent. I would say Mitch has forgotten his roots. He is now a Washington "inside the bubble big-money guy" and metaphorically speaking he does not know where "Bear Grass Creek" is. He has forgotten all of the regular people, especially those not registered Republican.

[Anniebody]

04:28 PM on 04/12/2012

Mitch used to be a decent guy? Wow. Was that before or after Columbus discovered America?

[edgraham]

02:48 PM on 04/11/2012

Unfortunately, the "War on Women" has been much more successful than the wars on:
Drugs
Violence
Afghanistan
Vietnam
and The Dixie Chicks.

[mdipary2004]

02:35 PM on 04/11/2012

Wage Gap Myth... women execs actually earn MORE than men, not less

As much as feminists love to parrot the statistic that women earn only 76 cents on the male dollar, they rarely bother to provide an explanation or solid evidence for this claim. But fortunately a smart new book has hit the shelves just in time for Equal Pay Day to help them out.

Equal pay for equal work has been enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act since it was made law in 1972. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also ban sex-based wage discrimination. So it seems pretty remarkable that the wage gap is so wide and pervasive even today. Attorneys should be having a field day with class-action lawsuits. But they are not. Could it be that even the LEGAL ESTABLISHMENT is complicit in this glaringly obvious patriarchal conspiracy? Give me a break, the payscale is JUST feminist propaganda.

The 76-cent statistic (now actually 80 cents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau) is misleading because it is a raw comparison of all working men and women. Thus a female receptionist working 40-hour weeks is tossed in with the male orthopedic surgeon putting in 70-hour weeks.

[mollybeejay]

07:31 AM on 04/12/2012

Said the angry white male.

[matty14]

01:13 PM on 04/12/2012

Said the one who has no substance with which to rebut a claim so instead just throws out sexist and racist ad hominem attacks.

[mdipary2004]

02:28 PM on 04/12/2012

You just throw out attacks. LOL

[gochenaur8]

10:24 AM on 04/11/2012

Mitch McConnell says that the war on women are manufactured, by who? McConnell is in for a big shock come November, when the women voters prove it isn't a manufactured issue. They are trying to do damage control on the issue that is manufactured, and why? If the issued is manufactured, why would they worry so much about? The issues that the republicans manufacture about President Obama, the voters don't even buy that anymore. They better start doing damage control on the fact their candidate Romney is a morman and he hides his money in Swiss Accounts. Obama 2012, republican party becomes part of the endangered list.

[mdipary2004]

07:10 AM on 04/11/2012

Women have the same right's that any human has. I have not seen anyone trying to take women's rights away. This is a manufactured issue because feminist want more speacial favors and treatment.

[Devorah Judith]

09:15 AM on 04/11/2012

You are spot on. Rather than creating a fictitious grasping agenda women should have joined a movement that championed equal pay for equal work. The abortion for convenience campaign and tax-payer funding (however the monies find their way into PPH and other providersI) only causes further divisions. The current war on seniors has nothing to do with "women's issues". Healthscam is government mandating of no PAP smears for women over 70 regardless of personal or family history and non-medical committees who ration treatment. No doubt jump off the cliff cards are now being printed. Women have damaged themselves by strident diatribes demanding entitlements. Those of us who have worked to succeed without all that divisive rhetoric have succeeded despite the animosity you brought to the table.

[LilaGrace]

01:27 PM on 04/11/2012

Excuse me, demanding equal pay for equal work is an "entitlement"? Demanding affordable access (or any access at all) to birth control is an "entitlement"? There is NO tax-payer funding for abortion and has never been. The Hyde Amendment ensured that. And what the hell do you mean, we should have championed a movement demanding equal pay? What the hell do you think the ERA and the movement that led to it was? There is no "abortion for convenience" campaign. There is simply a movement to prevent abortion from being banned and outlawed. To ensure that Roe v. Wade is not overturned. To prevent politicians from banning birth control (or did you miss the fact that several bills have come up in recent months in several states attempting to accomplish exactly that?) That you are a woman, and yet still too stupid to realize that you are working against your own self-interest is pathetic. I'd tell you to hang your head in shame at your own stupidity, but you would need a modicum of intelligence to even understand the concept.

[anne1stoftwo]

12:50 PM on 04/11/2012

You are so much of a goof its funny. What the heck to you call birth control, Abortion, Planned Parenthood, WIC, Food Stamps, Absent fathers and no child support? Attacks on women pure and simple. Poor women can't tell their husbands we are not having sex, and sex makes babies. No Birth control, no abortion and more impovrished children are born, abused, starved, cold, sick. neglected. It all comes down to womens rights.
Of course if men took care of their children this might not be an issue but that isn't going to happen. You are all way to selfish

[mdipary2004]

02:27 PM on 04/11/2012

Just give fathers custody, then women can enjoy.

[mdipary2004]

06:56 AM on 04/11/2012

Did you know their is a war on women in Arizona. They refuse to sell women ocean front property in Arizona. We must fight to keep womens rights alive in Arizona.

[Denise Kearney]

08:19 AM on 04/11/2012

Is their really?

[Irregardless]

01:48 AM on 04/11/2012

There is without a doubt a war on women. And it is more overt than covert. Right now Obama has a solid double digit lead over Romney when it comes to female voters. Don't think for one second that the GOP wouldn't take away women's right to vote for this election if they thought they could get away with it.

[Devorah Judith]

09:17 AM on 04/11/2012

Hard to believe first of all that this sort of ignorance exists, and second that gullible women will fall for this garbage.

[Tykete]

01:48 PM on 04/11/2012

Thank you Devorah....fanned

[anne1stoftwo]

12:52 PM on 04/11/2012

Well said, fanned and faved Irregardless.:)

[mudshark12]

01:10 AM on 04/11/2012

Senate Minority Leader Bitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissed on Monday the idea that the GOP is waging a so-called war on women, calling it a "manufactured issue." "Talk about a manufactured issue -- there is no issue," he said on Louisville, Ky., radio station WHAS-AM.

Blah, blah, blah, of course we wouldn't do this... deny, deny, deny, there is no issue, blah, blah, blah.....

Then Bitch dropped these Republican names to make a smokescreen: "Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe from Maine I THINK would be the first to say -- and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska -- 'we don’t see any evidence of this.'

Murkowski, however, recently criticized her own party for its focus on reproductive rights. "It makes no sense to make this attack on women," she said last Wednesday on KBBI's Coffee Table program. "If you don't feel this is an attack, you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters."

Really Lisa if you feel that strongly about the obvious attack on women the men in the Grumpy Old Pigs party are running you can always join the other side like Liebermann did last year. I think that Bitch McConnell forgot that Olympia Snowe got so fed up with the Republicancer that she's retiring, but then again he was fabricating up his excuse so quick he was having a hard time keeping his lies straight.

[ApprxAm]

01:00 AM on 04/11/2012

McConnell: 'War On Women' Is A 'Manufactured Issue'

Just like:

Family values and DOMA

Compassionate Conservatives

Fiscal Conservatives

Ice Cream trucks in Iraq and yellowcake

Pro life & anti-healthcare reform.

Dig, baby, dig.

[field-man]

12:28 AM on 04/11/2012

Dictators make every effort to control personal thoughts to control people. This is why our Founding Fathers mentioned this is first amendment to Constitution, to prevent the government from telling the people what or how to think. But Obama is trying to “fundamentally change America” (his words). He wants a political system where the government limits the freedoms of the people, instead of where the people limit the authority of the government. It is not the government’s business to make any church or any religion change its doctrine and beliefs to fit government policies. The Constitution clearly stops the government from imposing its ideas over any religion.

Second, we believe the real target of the Obama administration’s contraceptives mandate is the U.S. Constitution by using Obama-care as a weapon. We have seen other examples where the Constitution does not matter to the Obama Administration such as ignoring states’ rights. Liberal women’s groups want universal access to birth control, but ignore the fact that there many private non-profit clinics that can provide such services. Why pick on religious groups? Where is the freedom of choice the Liberals always clamor for?

This mandate must be rescinded completely, and Obama must stop his attack on religion, personal freedoms and the U. S. Constitution. This is not just a religious issue; it is an American freedom issue

[ApprxAm]

01:04 AM on 04/11/2012

Really?

[Marilyn Olsen Scheffler]

01:35 AM on 04/11/2012

You have certainly been sucked in by someone who doesn't know the facts! Have you researched these items yourself or have you just believed someone else who told them to you?

[demforpeace55]

12:23 AM on 04/11/2012

Of course it's a "manufactured issue" Mitch...You and your cronies manufactured it.