This from Steve Benen on the Rachel Maddow blog…

The problem of ‘working from different facts’

If you didn’t catch “Meet the Press” yesterday, you missed a lively conversation about, among other things, women’s votes in 2012 and the policy controversies that have put women’s issues at the forefront of the political landscape.

As you’ll see in this clip, around the 5:20 mark, Rachel noted the pay disparity between men and women in this country, which prompted some unexpected pushback (and incessant interruptions) from Republican strategist Alex Castellanos.

Unexpected?   Like the incessant interruptions?   Golly it’s almost as if they wanted to just shut you up woman…

The angle to this to keep in mind is that the Republicans on the panel, Castellanos and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), simply reject the available facts on the wage gap. Despite ample evidence that shows women make less than men for the same work, Castellanos chooses to believe his own version of reality in which that’s not the case.

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There’s simply no shared foundation of reality, which in turn shapes the policy debate in unproductive ways. The left sees gender-based pay disparity and looks for mechanisms to address the problem; the right rejects the existence of the disparity and sees no use for the solutions because, to them, there is no problem.

If I may…no. Just…no. You’re giving the right way too much credit for making a good faith argument here.

The problem isn’t that they don’t think gender pay disparity exists. They know damn well it exists.   They don’t think that’s a problem.   It is instead but a simple The Way God And Nature Intended Things To Be truth.   Women just don’t belong in the workplace, let alone the family planning clinic.   Giving them equal pay diminishes the rightful status of men and encourages women to abandon their role as child bearers and housekeepers.   That said, the right also knows that in this day and age, at least here in the decadent west if not in many areas of the righteous middle east, people are generally sickened by caveman attitudes toward women.   This is part of what they see as the decline of civilization.   It’s getting so men can’t drag their women around by the hair anymore! So rather then give people their honest reasons why discrimination against women is a good thing they’re spreading a line of propaganda to the effect that there is no discrimination.

Wage discrimination?   No such thing!   So nothing to see here people….move along…move along…

Now can we get back to preventing insurance from paying for contraception…?