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When it comes to dealing with women in particular, when it comes to dealing with issues of women, power and sexuality there is a surprising parallel between bumbling Republicans and bumbling media. Republicans have a hard time talking about women and sexuality. The media have difficulty talking about women and power. Both end up in trouble, in part because they are oblivious to the underlying discomfort that contributes to their offensive conduct or remarks.

Some of our members just arent as sensitive as they ought to be in talking about women and running against female candidates, House Speaker John Boehner said in December. This is the epitome of understatement from the party that has to deal with candidates who spout idiocies about legitimate rape.

Ruth Marcus

An editorial writer specializing in politics, the budget and other domestic issues, she also writes a weekly column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.

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Now to prove Boehners point comes former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, venturing last week into the treacherous terrain of gender and politics.

In remarks intended to woo women and rebut the Democrats accusations of a Republican war on women, Huckabee instead managed to insult a whole heap of them when he criticized the Affordable Care Act requirement that contraceptives be included among no-cost preventive services.

The Democrats message to women, he said, is that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government.

Huckabees language he wasnt trying to be offensive but he succeeded nonetheless helps explain the outsized GOP reaction to the contraceptive mandate, even outside of its application to religious organizations.

Why, of all the provisions of Obamacare, does this requirement drive conservatives so crazy? Underlying their discomfort, I think, is the sense that good girls dont need birth control because good girls dont have sex, or libidos that need controlling. Good girls dont get raped, or pregnant.

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Marcus: Republicans and the media flub their lines to women