Vice Chair of the Arizona GOP resigns in the face of criticism over statements he made about sterilizing poor women.

Courtesy of AZ Central:

 Former state Sen. Russell Pearce, who has recently served as the Arizona Republican Party's first vice chair, resigned his post late Sunday over remarks he made about requiring women on public assistance to use contraception. 

The Republican Party announced his resignation around 11 p.m. Sunday -- hours after GOP candidates expressed their displeasure with his remarks and a day after the Arizona Democratic Party Executive Director DJ Quinlan noted Pearce's comments in a news release and pressed his party's candidates to denounce them. 

Quinlan's statement, issued Saturday, highlighted remarks Pearce made on his talk-radio program on KKNT 960 AM. According to the statement, Pearce talked about changes he would make to the state's public assistance programs and was quoted in the Democratic Party's news release as saying: "You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I'd do is get Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations…Then we'll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job." 

In his statement, Pearce wrote that during a recent radio show there "was a discussion about the abuses to our welfare system" and he "shared comments written by someone else and failed to attribute them to the author." "This was a mistake," Pearce stated. 

"This mistake has been taken by the media and the left and used to hurt our Republican candidates."

Yes how dare the media and Democrats use the actual words spoken by a Republican against them.

The audacity!

Of course this is nothing new, as conservatives have long attempted to suppress childbirth among minorities in this country.

This from Public Eye magazine: 

Even a cursory examination of the right's policy agenda demonstrates that, when the focus is changed from abortion to broader reproductive freedom, the right applies race and class criteria that distinguish between the rights of white, middle-class women and low-income women of color. The right has viciously attacked welfare mothers for their "sexuality" and immigrant women for bearing "too many" children. In its worldview, "excessive" childbearing by low-income, single women causes poverty. To eliminate poverty, it is necessary to prevent that childbearing. 

Right-wing activists reserve their most vicious attacks for these groups of women, promoting negative stereotypes of low-income women of all races as dependent, irresponsible, prone to addictions, and inadequate mothers. They use these stereotypes to inflame public opinion against all sexual behavior that lies outside the narrow parameters of right-wing ideology.

So all Russell Pearce was doing was openly expressing an idea that is discussed in the back rooms among conservatives, and he felt safe is saying it aloud because the audience for his radio show would all be nodding in agreement with him.

But you know I can't get over the idea that I have seen this guy before, but where?

 Oh that's right! That is him right there in the middle between Joe Arpaio and some crazy lady from Wasilla.