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I thought Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers was about as bad as you can get with Republican women getting out there and trying to defend their presidential candidate Mitt Romney and why women don't like him, or Republicans in general for that matter. I was wrong.

After discussing the fact that S.C. Gov Nikki Haley was awarded a speaking spot at the Republican National Convention this year, and what her message would be, Fox host Greta Van Susteren asked Haley about Romney's problem with not doing so well in polling with women. What we got as a response was a whole lot of blather that didn't have a thing to do with women's issues.

Unlike her cohort in the House, Gov. Haley didn't even have a good lie ready for why Republicans really aren't against women having control over their own reproductive rights. In Haley's deluded little brain, it's supposedly all those evil Democrats' fault anyone thinks -- heaven forbid -- there's a "war on women" by the GOP. Just as McMorris Rodgers had previously tried to do, Haley decided to change the subject completely away from why women might not want to vote for Mitt Romney instead of answering Van Susteren's question.

HALEY: I think we have to educate more, you know and the more I get out, the more other people get out, we're starting to see the momentum. It will get down to those last thirty days. It will get down to have gas prices gone up or down? It's going to get down to what people are feeling in their wallets and their pocketbooks.

And I'll give you an example. I was stumping for Romney in Michigan and I was at a rally and an independent came up to me and said, you know, I don't know that much about Gov. Romney, but what I do know is that we deserve better. That's what this is going to come down to is, don't settle for what's not working.

They know that they deserve better. The American people know that they deserve better. They deserve jobs. They don't deserve increased taxes. They want to decrease taxes. They don't deserve seeing their military not taken care of and weakened. They deserve a strong military. They don't deserve watching their credit rating fall as a country. They deserve to see it's credit rating go up.

All of these things will change when we get a President Romney in office.

Yes, that's what's most important to women. Sorry, but I don't think military spending in the direction Mitt Romney wants to take it and gas prices, which the President doesn't necessarily have a lot of control over are on the top of the list as to how most women are going to vote.

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I'm not sure what's gotten into Chris Matthews' drinking water lately, but we're seeing him be a bit harsher with Republicans who come on his show and just try to spew their talking points unchallenged. Matthews and Rep. Barney Frank grilled right wing bigot Tony Perkins last week over his stance on homosexuality and gay marriage, and this Monday, Matthews got a bit tougher with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers with her playing the role as GOP apologist for her party's continued attacks on women than we saw during his last interview with her.

He challenged her support of the Republican version of the Violence Against Women Act and it was nice to see him end an interview by telling her that her views are going to be pretty hard to swallow with the voters in her district, instead of praising her as one of the new, "great leaders" in her party as he did when she was blaming Democrats for creating "all this war on women stuff" during his interview with her a couple of months ago.

Matthews' other guest was Rep. Gwen Moore, who we posted about here, who is a sponsor of the Democrats' version of the bill, and who laid out very plainly why there should be protections extended to same sex couples, Native Americans and immigrants no matter what their legal status as long as they're cooperating with authorities. I think Moore made a pretty compelling case for why the law should be extended to all of these groups during this segment.

McMorris Rodgers on the other hand, kept attempting to take the debate back to the fact that there are no federal laws legalizing same-sex couples. I was happy to hear Matthews' response to that which was a similar one I might have made myself if asked and basically summed up with this statement when McMorris Rodgers tried to call those protections "a side issue."

MATTHEWS: Well, they`re not side issues if you`re getting beat up by your partner. That`s not a side issue, it`s your life.

Thank you Chris Matthews. I was happy to see him take her on and call her out for the fact that they don't want to protect women against violence because heaven forbid those protections might include groups they want to discriminate against. The GOP has entrenched itself to the point where they are so anti-gay rights and anti-immigrant that they'd rather tank an entire bill that protects women than heaven forbid vote for something which includes those groups and protections for any of them as well. And that in spite of, as Rep. Moore noted, the fact that those recommendations for those protections were made by those in law enforcement, the DOJ and the FBI.

I find it sad and disheartening to listen to the likes of McMorris Rodgers make excuses for her party being on the wrong side of bigotry, sexism, hatred and allowing for violence to escape prosecution if you believe the person the act was committed against is a second class citizen.

I know I should not be surprised by the fact that we've got women willing to make embarrassments of our sex by being willing to vote for issues that harm women as McMorris has done, but it doesn't make me any less disgusted with her ilk. She is doing as much damage to women making strides towards equal rights and protections under the law as hate monger Rush Limbaugh. She's actually worse, because she does it under the guise of pretending most women don't care if other women are abused and giving those claims credence in our corporate media.

Transcript below the fold.

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Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers took her first bite at the apple with trying to pretend that Democrats are actually the ones waging a "war against women" during her interview on Hardball last month. She came back for round two with Andrea Mitchell and was apparently undeterred by the fact that her party is the one that is passing all of these bills which go after women's reproductive rights, contraception, redefining rape, or funding basic health services, like cancer screenings.

McMorris apparently also hates poll numbers... especially when they're not going her way. Andrea Mitchell cited four of them all showing large numbers of women favoring President Obama over Mitt Romney. Rodgers claimed there was another one out there that was more favorable towards Romney, but was never asked to name which poll she was talking about.

And as Think Progress noted, Mitt Romney might want to consider getting himself some better surrogates than Rodgers and her ilk if he really wants women to believe he cares about their issues -- Romney Relies On Right-Wing Fringe Group To Bolster Support Among Women:

This morning, Mitt Romney’s campaign hosted a press call with women supporters to beef up the presumed GOP nominee’s flagging support among female voters. And while it was supposed to be about the economy — it was called “The Obama Economy Isn’t Working For Women” — most of the call was spent attacking a democratic strategist’s (and CAPAF board member) poorly chosen comments about Romney’s wife, Ann.

The call featured Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Virginia Delegte Barbra Comstock (R), Concerned Women For America’s Penny Nance, and a “mommy blogger.” But these surrogates are an odd choice to defend Romney on women’s issues.

Both McMorris Rodgers and Lummis voted against the Lilly Ledbetter pay-equity act (Ayotte was not in the Senate at the time of the vote, though most of colleagues opposed it as well).

Meanwhile, Comstock supported Virginia’s infamous bill to force women to be vaginally probed before getting an abortion, in addition its radical Personhood bill, and another bill that would prevent a woman from using her own money to purchase health private insurance that covers abortion.

Transcript of Mitchell's interview with Rodgers below the fold.

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Any time you hear a Republican use the word "Greece" to defend not raising taxes on the rich and to push the austerity measures, it's a safe bet--before you even hear anything else they had to say--that they're lying. They may claim that they are willing do anything to make the situation better in the United States in regard to jobs and the economy, but the truth is those measures will kill us.

I've been following the Republicans' response to President Obama's Weekly Address almost since he's been elected and if there's one thing you can say for them, it's that they've got their messaging down pat. No matter who gives the response, they are going to repeat that messaging week after week, usually jam-packed full of lies.

Case in point is this week's latest, with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R - WA) doing the duties and a repeat we saw from her fellow House member Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) last month. I'll just quote a bit of what I already wrote about Hayworth here:

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) delivered this week's Republican address and lo and behold, they're still pretending like they care about job creation and pushing their House Republican Plan for America's Job Creators that Jon Perr wrote about here last October:

So there's one of the lies in Rodger's statement: that they actually have some "plan" for jobs that isn't just more of their standard fare of dismantling all government regulations and lowering taxes for the rich.

As to her statement that we're going to become "Greece", I'd just refer readers back to Paul Krugman who debunked that back in May of 2010 -- We’re Not Greece. Sadly, they've refused to quit using that lie at every single opportunity no matter how many times it's been debunked or for how long.

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