Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert has a unique plan for addressing our nation’s outsized child care crisis. (Of course, by “outsized child care crisis,” I mean that our country is a laggard when it comes to providing adequate child care benefits, not that we’ve been forced to care about an outsized child, though that’s also definitely true.)
Anyway, the Horrible Bosses poster child’s plan is to have American women give birth in the front seats of trucks and then get their asses back to work, tout de suite. Because our infant mortality rate isn’t quite enough of a global embarrassment yet, and when it comes to disrespecting and undermining women and families, we’re still well behind Syria and Saudi Arabia. But hey, as Sen. Mitch McConnell well knows, slow and steady wins the race.
The following tweet might as well be lifted verbatim and pasted into the GOP’s nonexistent policy platform, because it’s exactly the kind of solution-free bleating we’ve come to expect from the infantile party of Lincoln Logs and Legos.
Here we go:
For the nontweeters:
Anyone else consider that these companies suddenly offering to pay for employee abortions are doing so just to avoid paying for maternity leave?
Cheaper to kill the baby... true evil personified.
It’s one thing to be against reproductive freedom. Lots of people are benighted enough to back her on that. But if the GOP is going to force Americans to give birth to children they can’t afford, the GOP might also consider making those children less of a crushing burden on families, or tackling our bafflingly high maternal mortality rate—perhaps we might incentivize childbearing, instead of illegal procedures.
So does Boebert support parental leave? Bwah ha ha ha ha! Of course she doesn’t!
In fact, just last November she was trying to score bonus homophobic brownie points by attacking Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s decision to take paternity leave after he and his husband became parents to twins.
For the nontweeters:
BOEBERT: “Mayor Pete was on a two-month maternity, paternity, whatever the heck you want to call it, leave. The guy was gone. The guy was not working. Because why? He was trying to figure out how to chest feed. Maybe someone should tell him, please, so he can get back to work. Listen, I’m a mother of four. I delivered one of my children in the front seat of my truck, because as a mom of four, we’ve got things to do. And nobody got time for two and a half months of maternity leave. We’ve got a world to save here.”
So what TruckNutz is apparently trying to say here is … wait, what the fuck is she trying to say? Giving birth to babies in pickup trucks is a best practice? Is she like some kind of exotic National Geographic animal that instinctively returns to its spawning grounds to give birth? Or does she just not give a shit about the welfare of babies once they’re real sentient beings?
Christina Reynolds, VP of Communications at EMILY's List, talks about spending $150 million to center abortion rights in this November’s elections on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast
It’s no wonder that the most exciting time of the year for birdwatchers and political junkies alike is when the barn swallows leave Lauren Boebert’s head and migrate to their southern nesting grounds in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s squishy Wiffle brain (or so I’ve heard).
Of course, if Boebert actually cared about parental leave she’d, well, vote for more federal money for parental leave. But she hasn’t done that. In fact, she’s gone so far as to vote against paid parental leave for our military servicemembers.
Somehow, the Twitterverse noticed the hypocrisy. And because it’s Twitter, that hypocrisy was called out in droves.
Sure, folks joke on Twitter, but the reality is that Boebert is actually the ideal standard-bearer for today’s GOP. She has lots of complaints but zero solutions for anything. But if we just elect more Republicans in November, they’ll surely unveil their secret plan for lowering inflation and turning people without access to abortion, prenatal care, child care, or meaningful family supports into perfect mothers!
I can’t wait. Finally, the rugged individualist utopia that Genghis Khan envisioned!
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.