Republicans could lose partisan battle over domestic violence bill's renewal
Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act would be, in terms of pure politics, the easiest vote for a senator to cast. Even if a politician were actually indifferent to the issue of domestic violence, voting yes should be a no-brainer; voting no just gives ammunition to your opponents. The act funds local law enforcement efforts to combat domestic violence, supports battered women’s shelters and helps to make legal assistance freely available to victims. No one should want to go on record as opposing such things.
So it’s not surprising that the original 1994 bill passed easily with broad bipartisan support, as well as its subsequent renewals. What’s surprising is that now, while already fighting charges that they’re waging a “war on women,” Republicans are actually taking a stand against the VAWA. It’s almost as if they want to lose their jobs.
Even though it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, the reauthorization bill didn’t receive a single vote from committee Republicans. To explain their opposition, Republican senators point to two new provisions they apparently object to so much as to outweigh everything else the bill does. One of those provisions extends domestic violence protection to victims of same-sex abuse. Why would any lawmaker ever vote against an anti-violence bill on the grounds that it protected too many people? The logic here is so forced it would be laughable, if the issue were not so serious.
The other supposedly objectionable provision would make it easier for domestic violence victims who are undocumented immigrants to obtain temporary visas to stay in the country. This seems perfectly reasonable; without such a provision, abused women who are in the United States without documentation might fear to report their abusers. Filing a report may lead to their own deportation, giving their abusers that much more power over them.
Republicans admit that opposing a bill called the “Violence Against Women Act” is politically troublesome, and they accuse Democrats of trying to use that fact to force their hand. Yet Republican objections are so unconvincing that one wonders if they are simply using certain provisions as an excuse to vote against the act as a whole. Perhaps conservatives always recognized the bad politics of voting against it.
Phyllis Schlafly, long one of the conservative movement’s loudest anti-feminist voices, wrote on the bill’s renewal for Townhall.com, a conservative website.
“[The renewal debate] proves again that the feminists control the Democratic Party,” she wrote, “and it’s also a refreshing indication that Republicans are no longer intimidated by feminist demands.”
If Republicans in the Senate really do have only minor objections to new provisions, and do not, like Schlafly, oppose the very idea of the VAWA, they need to prove it by putting aside their petty squabbling and supporting the reauthorization bill.
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