Huckabee: GOP Waging ‘War For Women’

"Republicans don't have a war on women," Huckabee said. "We’re having a war for women."

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Susan Walsh / AP

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks at the Republican National Committee winter meeting in Washington.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said the Republican Party is waging a “war for women,” at a meeting of the Republican National Committee Thursday.

Addressing a luncheon of committee-members, staffers, and operatives, Huckabee took aim at Democrats who accuse the GOP of waging a “war on women” with its policies against abortion and government-subsidized birth control.

“Republicans don’t have a war on women,” Huckabee said. We’re having a war for women. To empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”

“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe 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, then so be it,” he continued. “Let us take that discussion all across America, because women are far more than the Democrats have played them to be.”

Huckabee, a 2008 presidential candidate and Fox News host, credited RNC Chairman Reince Priebus for pausing the party’s annual meeting so that members could attend the annual March for Life Wednesday.

Democrats immediately jumped on Huckabees comments, touting them as examples of the GOP’s troubled efforts to rebrand itself to appeal to a broader demographic.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he hadn’t seen the report, “but whoever said it, it sounds offensive to me, and to women.”