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September 09, 2022 08:20 AM UTC

"Balance To Women's Rights": Joe O'Dea's 9News Unraveling

  • 14 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: But wait, there’s more! Because of course there’s more!

These are the actual words from actual Senate candidate Joe O’Dea when pressed about his own admission that he voted YES on Prop. 115 in 2020 (which would have banned abortion at 22 weeks):

“I didn’t write that bill.”

What? How is this at all relevant? It was a ballot measure that YOU said you voted for.

 

—–

We’re still waiting for the feature story, but last night 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark posted a clip from his long-awaited interview of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea that brutally exposed O’Dea’s contradictions on key issues his campaign has tried to hard to outmaneuver: abortion rights, and running as a Republican in the era of Donald Trump.

Here’s the deal. I’m going to the Senate to negotiate a good bill that brings balance to women’s rights. [Pols emphasis]

Take a seat, young lady, while Joe O’Dea “balances” your rights for you.

Joe O’Dea didn’t just come up with impromptu the slogan “bring balance to women’s rights.” This was almost certainly the product of careful deliberation between Joe O’Dea’s campaign team, where after thorough consideration of the potential pros and cons beinging “balance to women’s rights” was agreed to be the safest path forward for a candidate who just burned himself badly on the issue abortion rights by admitting support for a 2020 abortion restriction ballot measure that Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected.

Unfortunately, Joe O’Dea’s senior staff is to the best of our knowledge comprised entirely of dudes.

The idea of Joe O’Dea mansplaining to the women voters of Colorado what exactly “balance” should consist of where it concerns their reproductive rights has left Democrats who have seen this interview quite giddy, since they’ve been trying to punch holes in the false narrative that O’Dea is a “pro-choice Republican” ever since O’Dea laid the claim. They couldn’t ask for a more damaging sound bite to accompany O’Dea’s pre-primary claim to be “personally very pro-life” with bringing “balance to women’s rights” in Mitch McConnell’s GOP-controlled Senate.

And if that wasn’t enough:

If you’re aware of how much legislation in the last two years had passed the Democratic-controlled U.S. House but then stalled out in the evenly divided Senate, especially considering O’Dea’s lip service to issues like marriage equality, this is almost as disqualifying for O’Dea as crowning himself the great “balancer” of women’s rights. Marriage equality, codifying abortion rights, voting rights, immigration reform–the list goes on and on. For O’Dea to say there’s nothing in the logjam of stalled legislation in the U.S. Senate he would support effectively negates his position on all of those issues.

And finally, O’Dea’s latest contortion on the question of supporting Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee in 2024:

In the video clip above O’Dea gets positively red-faced trying to wriggle out from this one– but after repeatedly stating that he would vote for Donald Trump if Trump wins the Republican nomination in 2024, O’Dea won’t say the words now to Kyle Clark.

After you’ve already said it, that’s the worst choice of all.

Conservatives frequently complain about Kyle Clark’s reporting, but in this case all Clark did was ask straightforward questions with logical follow-ups that took into account O’Dea’s prior statements on these issues. It’s remarkable how damaging that simple expository process can be for Republican candidates trying to overcome their intrinsically unpopular agenda.

Not only does the truth hurt, in the case of Republicans in 2022, nothing hurts more.

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14 thoughts on ““Balance To Women’s Rights”: Joe O’Dea’s 9News Unraveling”

  1. A Senate candidate vowing to be bipartisan but not able to come up with any specific blocked legislation by Republicans he would have supported … that's pretty damning.  Pew Research's filibuster article names 4 areas:

    Several key Democratic initiatives have tried and failed to clear the 60-vote hurdle. Among them: protecting the right to vote, which was the subject of no fewer than four separate bills; guaranteeing access to abortion services; addressing sex-based wage discrimination; and creating an independent commission (rather than the House select committee) to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

    Hope someone will ask him what votes in the past session of Congress would get a vote different than Bennet's.  And not let him weasel on about "I'd negotiate."

  2. "Both Ways Joe" should know that Colorado already has a "balanced approach" to women's reproductive rights. A minor needing an abortion must involve a parent. Otherwise, Colorado wisely leaves the decision making to women, their families, and their doctors.

  3. “ Protections for religious hospitals” – ( ODear says he wants this)

    In Colorado, and most states, religious ( Catholic-run) hospitals prohibit contraception, abortion care, vasectomies, sterilization, end of life patient choices, gender change care, and more.

    If your Colorado health care provider has Centura, Mercy,  “Saint” anything in the title, it will not provide reproductive health services. It will still provide erectile dysfunction, fertility, and pregnancy care. 39% of Colorado acute care beds are now in Catholic controlled hospital chains. 

     Exceptions: Kaiser, Blue Cross, Denver Health, and most non-profit chains still provide reproductive, gender health  care, or assisted suicide care. . Always check. Particularly post-Dobbs , you never know when an insured family member may need these services.

    O Dear will not champion choice in health care.

     

    1. Where did I read recently the suggestion that we replace "choice" with the word "freedom." Perhaps more folks on the right would understand it's about the freedom to make basic decisions about your own body. 

      1. Good suggestion, realist. I am a patriot who believes in freedom. ( liberty and justice for all… I do know my Pledge).

        When MAGAs find out that I mean “freedom” to control my own body, and learn fact-based history, their heads might explode.

        oh well.

  4. Back when I did interviews my favorites were Ritter, Polis, & Buck. Why? Because they were focused on explaining why they took a specific stand on each issue. They were clearly comfortable with their view on the issues and that view came from them.

    Joe O'Dea clearly is searching for the "best" answer to each question. How he himself views it is irrelevant. Bennet should hammer him on this. Not "both ways" but "willing to say whatever works" O'Dea (granted it needs to be cleverer than that.

    If you can tie that to O'Dea, his response to questions will increase that view. And then it's easy to say that O'Dea will do whatever McConnell tells him to do once elected.

    And Bennet is consistent and can talk through the why behind his stances. So he can do very well taking the discussion in this direction.

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