Rebecca Traister, writing in The New Republic, says that the Senate Republican leader made a “typically boorish and inane statement” about women in the workforce. Harry Reid says McConnell’s comments were “shocking.”
So what did McConnell say? Mother Jones has the audiotape of the scandalous remarks. Asked what he would do to help Kentucky women, McConnell said that most of the issues he had previously discussed apply to both men and women; that we have “come a long way in pay equity”; that there are “a ton of women” running major companies; that more women are being graduated from college than men; that “I could be wrong but I think most of the barriers have been lowered”; that the notion that he or his party are hostile to women is “nonsense”; that he is skeptical of the idea that women need “preferential treatment”; and that women will by and large vote on the same issues as men.
Yes: He really did say those things. What a monster.