Poor Mike, Rand and John: They should swear off women

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee

The GOP needs to get its money back from whomever was hired for a recent training session to help candidates learn how to better speak to and talk about women.

Clearly, the training failed.

"Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without 'Uncle Sugar' coming in and for providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or reproductive system without the help of the government -- then so be it," said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee recently.

Huckabee, in the aftermath of Chris Christie's fall from the GOP 2016 pedestal, is now polling as the Republican primary front-runner. Yet, only 33 percent of women give him a favorable rating.

Huckabee was trying to signal that Republicans are not fighting a war on women but rather, a war for women by asserting that Democrats think women are "helpless" and in need of government handout, while Republicans want to empower women "to be something other than victims of their gender."

Huh? So all one has to do to get a woman's vote is offer her birth control?

Huckabee's limp comments likely didn't make his teachers proud. And they certainly can't engender any warm fuzzy feelings among potential women voters.

But then Kentucky's Sen. Rand Paul took up the banner. (After all, he's also panting after a GOP nomination, though he's fourth in the new poll and still trailing the embattled Christie.) Paul doubled the insults.

He struck out at Hillary Clinton using her husband's prior bad act with a White House intern.

"Someone who takes advantage of a young girl in their office? I mean, really. And then they have the gall to stand up and say, 'Republicans are having a war on women?' " Paul told NBC's "Meet the Press." Then he added: "Now, it's not Hillary's fault, ... (but) sometimes it's hard to separate one from the other."

That's right. Women are really all just defined by their husbands' actions.

Poor John Boehner. When he suggested "sensitivity training" to his male Republican colleagues, he probably didn't realize they would view it as a frat house "top this" competition.

Not even the party's choice of a woman to respond to President Obama's State of the Union address -- Cathy McMorris Rodgers, mother of three and top-ranking woman in the Republican congressional leadership -- could put a female-friendly face on this group.

Why? because its not just about being sensitive in speeches or about putting a Republican woman's face in front of a camera. It's about what women see -- day in and day out -- in GOP actions and policies.

It's about consistent GOP votes that thwart equal pay, thwart access to health care, stall for years the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and gut social safety net programs that benefit single moms and children.

Just to keep it simple for GOP slow learners: It's all about policy. Your platform is even weaker than your rhetoric.