If anyone still wonders why progressives are so inspired and motivated by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, all they have to do to understand why is watch her speech on the Senate floor yesterday, taking the Republicans to task for their inane crusade against Planned Parenthood. She is a natural-born orator, which is a surprisingly rare gift among politicians. But even more unsual is the fact that she is also a leader who sounds remarkably like a normal person expressing the confusion and outrage the right engenders with its repeated destructive tactics:

“Do you have any idea what year it is? Did you fall down, hit your head, and think you woke up in the 1950s or the 1890s? Should we call for a doctor? Because I simply cannot believe that in the year 2015, the United States Senate would be spending its time trying to defund women’s health care centers. You know, on second thought, maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised. The Republicans have had a plan for years to strip away women’s rights to make choices over our own bodies. Just look at the recent facts.”

Warren was responding to the latest tiresome Republican attempt to defund Planned Parenthood in the wake of the so-called “sting” videos that have conservatives salivating at the prospect of finally “ACORN-ing” the organization. It wasn’t enough that they’ve launched two congressional investigations and eight (and counting) state level probes into the matter; they are now working themselves into a full blown frenzy, demanding that all funding for the group be cut, or else. This is, of course, a stale gambit that never achieves their stated policy goals, but they seem to find it a satisfying exercise nonetheless.

Warren called them out in no uncertain terms:

“The Republican scheme to defund Planned Parenthood is not some sort of surprised response to a highly edited video. Nope! The Republican vote to defund Planned Parenthood is just one more piece of a deliberate, methodical, orchestrated, right-wing attack on women’s rights.I’m sick and tired of it. Women everywhere are sick and tired of it. The American people are sick and tired of it.”

Amen.

The Center for Medical Progress, which was responsible for the videos, was not just some group of scrappy outsiders putting together a little show. By all accounts, they were at least keeping certain members of Congress in the loop long before they released the videos. And they have certainly rolled out their response in coordinated fashion.

Senate Republicans were unable to get a vote on the measure yesterday only managing to get 53 Senators to break a filibuster, when they needed 60. Two regular Joes who call themselves Democrats actually voted for it, Sen. Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Donnelly of Indiana. One Republican in a tight re-election race in a blue state, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois voted against. Other than that, this was a party line vote to deny health services for millions of women. (Being the comedians they are, the same Republicans who keep voting to repeal Obamacare, cut Medicaid and privatize Medicare kept insisting all day that they would be happy to fund some unnamed “other” health centers, something which they’ve gone out of their way to avoid doing since the beginning of time.)

That isn’t the end of it unfortunately. The right-wingers are pledging to shut down the government in September by attaching this bill to a government funding bill which cannot be filibustered. And they are being egged on by their activists who seem to think this is something they can win.

Employing his usual measured tone and reasonable language, Red State blogger Erick Erickson is threatening “violence at the polling booth” if they fail:

Friends, if Republicans in Congress will not stop giving tax payer dollars to the American Joseph Mengele, we should show the party violence in the polling booth.