Wasserman Schultz: Dems are the 'Big Tent,' Just Don't Act on Anti-Abortion Views

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz argued on MSNBC last night that hers is the real “big tent” party — as long as those with views contradicting the party’s platform don’t take too much action on them.

“We are the big tent party, and we welcome the diversity of points of view, and you oftentimes see Democrats that are anti-choice, that aren’t making that the top of their legislative agenda,” Wasserman Schultz told Rachel Maddow. “So there’s a difference between someone who simply has a personal view that is different than the majority of our party, and someone who says, I’m going to Washington or I’m going to the state capitol to make limiting abortion rights my number one priority.”

“We’re tolerant and respectful of a diverse point of view,” she continued. “The Republicans are not, and on top of that, they nominate candidates for president like Mitt Romney who want to take it even further — support personhood amendments and who when it comes to the issues important to women like paycheck fairness and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, won’t take a position and say whether or not that they would allow those things to become law.”

Wasserman Schultz said “the dramatically out of step, out of touch extremism” in the GOP would compel more women who weren’t engaged in politics to get involved.

“I mean, there has been this relentless attack on women, and a relentless hyper-focus on women’s reproductive rights in spite of the fact that the number one, two, and three issue is creating jobs and getting the economy turned around,” she said. “So, their obsession with women’s bodies and controlling women’s bodies has really seeped all the way down, so deeply, and the extremism has seeped so deeply in the Republican Party, that you’ve got state after state that is initiating this legislation, and so much so that yours and my generation, which has really benefited from having reproductive freedom for our entire lives and essentially has become complacent, now even women who are my girlfriends, and probably your girlfriends, who never pay attention, are saying, OK, you know, this is enough to get me off my couch and out of my house, and onto the lawn of a state capitol to fight back.”