Majority of Republicans vote against Violence Against Women Act

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The talk yesterday was mostly about the Woodward kerfuffle yesterday, but some far more important things happened, including the House passing the Senate version (unadulterated by Republican efforts to weaken it) of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), a hugely important piece of legislation with proven results.

But the Republican-controlled House passed it (286-138) in spite of majority Republican opposition to it (87 supporting it, 138 opposing it), the Republican leadership again agreeing to pass a bill even without majority Republican support, joining forces with the entire Democratic caucus in opposition to most of its own members.

That's remarkable, and it says a lot about the Republican Party, which is at its rawest and most honest in the House, where its fundamental right-wing extremism is on full display.

(Now, this doesn't mean that a majority of House Republicans are in favor of violence against women. It means that they're not fully committed to stopping it, and in fact wanted to weaken some of the bill's its essential provisions concerning violence against LGBT and Native-American women. Which pretty much amounts to not giving a shit and/or being too stupid to know any better.)