Justin's Political Corner

WASHINGTON — Senator Saxby Chambliss, the Georgia Republican who helped lead efforts to find a bipartisan deficit reduction compromise, announced on Friday that he would retire at the end of 2014, a decision likely to set off a battle on the Republican Party’s right flank for a successor.

Already, organizations backed by the Tea Party were stirring interest in a primary challenge for Mr. Chambliss over his embrace of new revenues as a part of any comprehensive deficit package. Representatives Tom Price and Paul Broun, two Republican doctors and ardent conservatives from Georgia, had expressed interest in a possible challenge.

But without Mr. Chambliss in the picture, the Senate contest in Georgia could shape up to be a battle royale on the right. Other possible candidates could include Herman Cain, a failed presidential candidate, and Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state who ran for governor in 2010 with the backing of Sarah Palin. Ms. Handel lost that contest but went on to a senior position at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer foundation, where she championed a controversial move to withhold financing for Planned Parenthood cancer screenings.

In a statement, Mr. Chambliss took pains to say he did not fear losing a primary challenge.

“Lest anyone think this decision is about a primary challenge, I have no doubt that had I decided to be a candidate, I would have won re-election,” he said. “In these difficult political times, I am fortunate to have actually broadened my support around the state and the nation due to the stances I have taken. Instead, this is about frustration, both at a lack of leadership from the White House and at the dearth of meaningful action from Congress.”

Democrats insisted they would make a run at his seat.

“Georgia will now offer Democrats one of our best pick-up opportunities of the cycle. There are already several reports of the potential for a divisive primary that will push Republicans to the extreme right. Regardless, there’s no question that the demographics of the state have changed and Democrats are gaining strength. This will be a top priority,” said Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

But in a mid-presidential term election, Georgia will present a steep climb for the Democratic Party.

h/t: The New York Times

The former Susan G. Komen for the Cure executive who orchestrated the organization’s controversial and short-lived break from Planned Parenthood earlier this year, is out with a new book claiming that the funding dispute was all Planned Parenthood’s fault. In “Planned Bullyhood,” Karen Handel claims that Planned Parenthood turned its back on a “gentlewomen’s agreement” to not discuss the fact that Komen was withdrawing $680,000 a year in grants for breast cancer screenings through the organization’s clinics and then turned on Komen in a PR blitz.

Handel, an anti-choice activist and former GOP candidate who reportedly pushed the move within Komen, resigned shortly after the news of the break caused a national firestorm.

In interviews with right-wing radio hosts Janet Mefferd and Janet Parshall last week, Handel portrays herself as the victim of bullying by the “vicious” Planned Parenthood. She tells Mefferd that Planned Parenthood launched “a mafia-style attack” and that “Komen was held hostage for a mere $680,000.” She sees a double standard in the fact that President Obama didn’t call her after she was criticized, “like he did Sandra Fluke.”

Handel: The left and Planned Parenthood, they were threatening Komen’s corporate sponsors: “See what we’re doing to Komen? If you don’t stop supporting them, we’re gonna do the same to you.” They were just filling up the Facebooks, Twitter, Komen’s website crashed, there were bomb threats, corporate sponsors were threatened. It really was almost a mafia-style attack, if you will, and Komen was held hostage for a mere $680,000. And Planned Parenthood and the left, they wanted this to be about politics. I believe they used Komen purposefully as a pawn, if you will, in this ridiculous so-called “War on Women” and these cries of “women’s health.” And Janet, my question for you, and I just find this all so insulting, how in the world did the issue of women’s health get reduced to being about abortion and contraception?

Mefferd: Right. I’m with you.

Handel: I just reject that. I reject that notion, and I think that most women do too.

Mefferd: Oh, completely. And what I found very interesting, Karen, doing the show that I do, and being pro-life and knowning a lot of pro-lifers, when Susan G. Komen made that decision and all the pro-lifers were going “Yes, finally, great!,” the next thing people were saying was, “Now watch what Planned Parenthood will do to them.” You know, we knew. We knew exactly how Planned Parenthood would react, though admittedly it was more over the top than I think a lot of us believed it would be. It was shameful what they did.

 Parshall: Planned Parenthood’s assault, to use your word, and by the way you started using that word back in February of this year, way before it became the title of your book, if they’re bullying people because they might have a pro-life position, it really calls into account whether they are pro-women or whether they are politically aligned rather than rising to a higher cause.

Handel: I think that’s right, I think you’ve really hit on it, Janet. And for Komen, that’s exactly what Komen was trying to do. Komen wanted to be in a place where everyone, regardless of whether they were pro-life or on the other side of the issue, would be able to embrace the organization and embrace the mission. We wanted to be neutral and we wanted to be good stewards of dollars. Don’t get me wrong, it was both. Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, they were willing to sacrifice Komen for the sake of their agenda, which is not about women’s health. If it was about women’s health, they would not have wanted to try to destroy an organization that was doing such good work in the area of breast cancer.

h/t: Miranda Blue at Right Wing Watch

Karen Handel, the former Susan G. Komen executive who spearheaded the effort to stop sending breast cancer screening grants to Planned Parenthood, alleges in her new memoir that Komen’s decision was “so nonpolitical” that the charity was unprepared for Planned Parenthood’s “vicious mugging” in response.

Handel’s book, entitled Planned Bullyhoodand scheduled for release on September 11, paints Planned Parenthood and its president, Cecile Richards, as “a bunch of schoolyard thugs,” The Daily Beast reports. In the book, Handel insists that the decision to defund the family planning provider was about money, not abortion. Komen was trying to restructure its grant program to cut out what Komen President Liz Thompson has referred to as “crappy grants” — grants to organizations like Planned Parenthood that do not directly provide mammograms, Handel says. (Planned Parenthood provides physical breast exams and mammogram referrals.)

Komen was also under pressure from the Catholic Bishops to cut off grants to Planned Parenthood because it offers abortions, Handel writes, and she was hired to come up with the least politically conspicuous way to pull the organization’s grant. Because Handel was an outspoken anti-abortion candidate for governor of Georgia in 2010, she says, the media assumed the decision was based on her personal abortion stance.

The backlash against Komen was significant: numerous progressive advocacy organizations, members of Congress, members of the public and some of Komen’s own affiliates denounced the decision and pressured Komen to fire its board and top executives.

Handel blames the negative portrayal of her entirely on Planned Parenthood.

“It’s clear that Planned Parenthood went out of its way to paint me as some sort of a zealot—a Trojan-horse zealot who came into Komen and within 10 to 11 months had completely turned the place upside down,” she writes in the memoir. “That’s clearly not who I am and it’s not what happened.”

Eric Ferrero, vice president of communications for Planned Parenthood, said he would not comment on the specifics of the book, but lamented that Handel continues to “inject politics into breast cancer detection.”

h/t: Laura Bassett at Huffington Post

The Associated Press reports that Komen Foundation vice-President Karen Handel has quit the cancer charity. 

As soon as news broke a week ago that the organization would cease to fund Planned Parenthood, media reports centered on the former politician as a potential source for the decision. Handel, who was hired in April of 2011 after an unsuccessful run for Governor of Georgia, had campaigned saying she would cut state money to Planned Parenthood. A report from the Huffington Post Monday cited sources within Susan G. Komen for the Cure naming Handel as the force behind the decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood.

Handel’s resignation came in a letter delivered to Komen officials Tuesday morning. 

Komen’s decision to change its granting strategy and exit the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood and its grants was fully vetted by every appropriate level within the organization. At the November Board meeting, the Board received a detailed review of the new model and related criteria. As you will recall, the Board specifically discussed various issues, including the need to protect our mission by ensuring we were not distracted or negatively affected by any other organization’s real or perceived challenges. No objections were made to moving forward.

I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it. I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve. However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization

h/t: Pema Levy at TPM

And I really didn’t need to know this to consider Komen Senior VP Karen Handel a thoroughly loathsome human being (the retweet said volumes in just a few characters) but John Aravosis has dug up Handel’s bigoted, Christian fundamentalist views on LGBT people from less than two years ago, though they read as though they are from the 1960s.

First, I want to say though I anticipate never having to confront the dilemma of an unwanted pregnancy myself, I unequivocally stand by a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices, and against this insane environment that is demonizing Planned Parenthood.

In fact, the first night I heard about it I was so enraged I, like so many others, burned up my Twitter feed yelling at @komenforthecure and retweeting anyone who, like me, was equally outraged at this outrageously stupid decision.

I was so enraged—and I am not making this up—a New York Times reporter contacted me to talk about grassroots pushback. Who knows? I might get quoted. I think I pointed him to more newsworthy subjects though.

Great answer, Karen. Don’t let the interviewer confuse you with what science or theAmerican Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics or American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association have to say about the topic of gay parenting. That’s just crazy elitist scientist talk.

I am struck by the fact that campaigning for governor she “absolutely” would consider championing a ban on gay adoption, and had she been elected she “absolutely” would have been in a position to do so.

This is a policy position that can only be justified if one totally rejects all accepted scientific studies that have found no adverse, in fact, even more favorable than average outcomes for children raised in LGBT households. Nevermind all that, Handel has her Jesusy opinions and nothing will change her mind.

With such complete disregard, even contempt, for science and the expertise of child-care experts, it begs the question what guides her decision-making process relative to her position of authority on a medical charity?

Maybe in phase two of this public relations effort Handel will explain to us how all those disadvantaged women who depend on Planned Parenthood’s services can just pray the cancer away?

Aravosis says, “No self-respecting gay person should give a dime to the Race for the Cure. There are other breast cancer charities that aren’t religious right sycophants.”

I agree. Screw Komen. They have jumped into the deep end of the hard right extremist Palin pool of the GOP. To Hell with them all.

Click to donate to Planned Parenthood.

h/t: Scott Wooledge at Daily Kos

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation caved to right-wing pressure and 

cut ties with Planned Parenthood. Their rationale was simple: Komen had new rules preventing it from funding any organization under investigation, so a spurious congressional investigationinto Planned Parenthood led by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) prohibited Komen from continuing to fund breast exams through Planned Parenthood for women who otherwise wouldn’t receive them.

But now, new reporting from the Atlantic reveals that Komen adopted the new guidelines to cut off Planned Parenthood. That effort was led by Komen President Elizabeth Thompson, who knew that Planned Parenthood was the only group that would be affected by the rule, and Karen Handel, Komen’s new senior vice president for public policy.

Handel, who came on board in April, is a former secretary of state in Georgia and a Republican activist who describes herself as a “pro-life Christian.” Handel ran for governor of Georgia on an anti-abortion platform, and was endorsed by Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. She wrote during her failed gubernatorial campaign that “since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.”

In December, Komen made the decision to stop supporting Planned Parenthood even though Komen’s professional staff recommended that the foundation continue to fund the organization. The decision caused an “uproar” at Komen, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reports:

[T]he organization’s top public health official, Mollie Williams, resigned in protest immediately following the Komen board’s decision to cut off Planned Parenthood. Williams, who served as the managing director of community health programs, was responsible for directing the distribution of $93 million in annual grants. […]

But John Hammarley, who until recently served as Komen’s senior communications adviser and who was charged with managing the public relations aspects of Komen’s Planned Parenthood grant, said that Williams believed she could not honorably serve in her position once Komen had caved to pressure from the anti-abortion right. “Mollie is one of the most highly-respected and ethical people inside the organization, and she felt she couldn’t continue under these conditions,” Hammarley said. “The Komen board of directors are very politically savvy folks, and I think over time they thought if they gave in to the very aggressive propaganda machine of the anti-abortion groups, that the issue would go away. It seemed very short-sighted to me.”

Hammarley, who was laid off from Komen last year, said that for about a year, a small group within Komen began discussing the ramifications of cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood. “As we looked at the ramifications of ceasing all funding, we felt it would be worse from a practical standpoint, from a public relations standpoint and from a mission standpoint. The mission standpoint is, ‘How could we abandon our commitment to the screening work done by Planned Parenthood?’” he said.

In December, the Southern Baptist Convention recalled pink Bibles that it sold to raise money for breast cancer research, citing an “unacceptable link” between Komen and Planned Parenthood.

Conservatives cheered Komen’s decision, while others have found it awfully convenient that the grants to Planned Parenthood were stopped after the hiring of an anti-abortion activist.

h/t: Amanda Peterson Beadle at ThinkProgress Health