Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
When Barack Obama is doing comedy and the men of GLoP are doing some heavy weight social commentary (at least on this podcast), we’re through the looking glass, people. But that’s where we find ourselves as this week, Jonah, John, and Rob take on the President’s comedy chops, hipsters and the political conundrum they find themselves in, why a conversation on contraception is an exercise in futility, why liberals provide the best argument against liberalism, and a GLoP tribute to the late, great Harold Ramis. Also, as depicted above, Zoë the Wonder Dog makes her podcast debut.
Ironically, EJHill.
Help Ricochet by Supporting Our Advertisers!
GLoP is sponsored by Encounter Books. This week’s pick is Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes by Michael Rubin. Use the coupon code RICOCHET at checkout and get 15% off list price.
Subscribe to GLoP Culture in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
Huckabee, who I admire a lot, Santorum, mentioned above, and the clowns that lost us Senate seats in Indiana and Missouri. Foster Freeze[?sp] who gave an asinine interview to Andrea Mitchell. I could go on, but these are the main offenders.
Where is the evidence of their contraception zealotry? I’ve never heard any of those say anything about contraception, except Rick Santorum, who said he would vote to keep it legal—conservatives don’t think government is the solution to every problem, that’s what liberals think. Not exactly zealotry, is it?
Talking about it gets my women friends absolutely riled up and and saying the Republicans are men telling women what to do with their bodies.
I am not Catholic so, to me, going on about contraceptives, rape, abortion, pre-marital bodily functions is alien stuff . Any man who speaks about it just loses me. Ricochet has educated me about it from a Catholic view – but I am not Catholic. That topic for a national political election campaign just seems completely irrelevant and weird to a non-Catholic. ·5 hours ago
Indaba, please note it is not Catholics who are making a policy issue out of contraception. It is Obamacare, Sandra Fluke and her ilk demanding that all employers pay for all forms of birth control (including those that work by inducing abortion) for any girl or woman who requests it. This is a gross violation of religious liberty. Have you no concern about that? Can’t you help your friends see reason instead of agreeing with them to mock and shun and shaft a major portion of the conservative coalition?
Although, maybe I totally missed this controversy, but I thought the big contraception argument come election time wasn’t Rick Santorum but Sandra Fluke-Rush Limbaugh-Little Sisters of the Poor.
It started with Santorum.
On October 11, 2011 Caffinated Thoughts published an interview with Santorum in which he said:
A few months later, on Jan. 7, later that Stephanopolous asked the candidates — including Santorum — about whether states have the power to ban contraceptives, calling attention to other comments Santorum had made on Griswold (though admittedly, not quite getting them right).
Now, my personal opinion is that Stephanopolous asked that question in order to create some friction between the candidates at Santorum’s expense and that he intended to confront Santorum with his comments to Caffeinated Thoughts, but got side tracked.
It’s my further (unproven) opinion that the president’s campaign: 1) saw how uncomfortable Romney was with the matter, 2) correctly guessed that the issue would provoke some SoCons into defending their (unpopular) moral opposition to contraceptives, and 3) would dovetail nicely with the War on Women meme they were building.
Again the first person to mention contraceptives — at least to my knowledge — during the campaign was Santorum who said he intended to use the bully pulpit to talk even more about contraceptives. Even if one assumes that President Santorum would take no legal action to restrict contraceptives he wanted to inject the matter into the public debate.
Can we get a link or at least a source reference to John’s statistic about first time voters going for Romney? Was it part of the Pew study he mentioned? I don’t remember.
It strains credulity that Stephanopoulos would ask Romney a question in a GOP debate about contraception in early January 2012, which was completely out of left field … until the HHS mandate requiring plans to pay for contraception came out later that month; followed by Sandra Fluke’s testimony before Democrats in Congress (remember, this “hearing” wasn’t an official Congressional hearing – the Democrats staged it because Fluke wasn’t allowed to testify before the full committee). The whole episode was an orchestrated and calculated political stunt – knowing full well that gullible people will fall for it.
The MSM is always going to be against us, and will try to structure the narrative to make us look bad. That’s why it’s incumbent on conservatives not to walk into any more sucker punch issues the way Santorum did. Nothing the left has ever done has hurt the pro-life movement more than these anti-contraception zealots blurring the issues and making us look like nuts.
I think Podhoretz stating Obama was interesting and convincing might have been the dumbest thing I have ever heard him say. The next time Obama has an interesting take on anything will be the first. Everything he says to me is boilerplate or facile. He is a shallow person trying to sound deep, and his stuttering in answering questions to me means he has thought about the issues in any depth, almost like he has been caught off guard by the question. To me he is a divisive, cynical politician who would fit right in on House of Cards. Convincing? Oh yes, he did a great job in selling Obamacare.