The shock is palpable across the Beltway media upon hearing Harry Reid confirm that, yes, it's the funding of Planned Parenthood that is the main sticking point in the budget negotiations that threaten a shutdown of the federal government. Shocking because what's at stake – federal subsidies for contraception, cancer screening and STD testing – are largely uncontroversial. Shocking because while the rabid sex-hating, abortion-demented, abstinence-only crowd has a lot of power over Republicans, it was assumed they didn't own them wholesale – especially since the majority of Republicans support contraception use. Shocking because the common wisdom in DC was that the new Tea Party-controlled Republicans were about "fiscal conservatism", and the Republican demands for the defunding of Planned Parenthood are pure, old-school culture warring.

Not to gloat, but I did predict back in February that this would be the issue that brought everything to a head. The reason the conventional wisdom is wrong on this comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of the term "fiscal conservatism". The belief is that fiscal conservatives are merely debt-averse and want to cut spending, while the fact that these so-called fiscal conservatives routinely elect Republicans who drive up the deficit is ignored. But I would argue that fiscal conservatism has nothing to do with the deficit, and is, instead, about who conservatives believe is and isn't deserving of government largesse.

It is and always has been about excluding from the social contract poorer people, unmarried women, gays, liberals, pointy-headed intellectuals and, especially, people of colour, and keeping all government spending aimed at white, conservative Christians – the richer, the better.

Planned Parenthood has become a symbol of the kind of government spending that fiscal conservatives reject. The clientele of Planned Parenthood is the intersection of many groups that are considered unworthy by fiscal conservatives: lower-income, female, assumed to be unmarried and/or queer. Conservatives have argued, roughly forever, that such women should be cut off from any federal spending, with the hope that deprivation will force them to marry for sustenance. If women can avoid childbirth, they're less needy, and in the conservative imagination, that much more likely to avoid getting married for support. The fact that Planned Parenthood touches on the anti-sex faction of the Republican party is an added bonus, ensuring that they'll have rabid support from anti-choicers.

In the 1980s, Reagan was able to catalyse the resentments of fiscal conservatives into the image of the "welfare queen". The stereotype was of a black woman who takes taxpayers' money and uses it to buy herself Cadillacs and other such luxuries. Reagan claimed to have evidence that such a woman existed, but it was never presented or found.

Essentially, what has happened on the right is that this image has been updated to what I'd call the "welfare slut": a low-income woman who is screwing on your dime, while you're out there working and your own sex life leaves much to be desired. (They can probably count on this resentment because most people would get laid more if they could.) The welfare slut has been invoked, if subsequently retracted, by Kirsten Powers, who painted women who use subsidised contraception as addled-brained sluts who end up getting abortions anyway because they're too stupid to use the contraception the government gives them. The welfare slut was also imagined by Dana Loesch, who described the patients and supporters of Planned Parenthood this way:

"But you're not empowered when you're expecting Uncle Sam to act like your sugar daddy, and take care of your abortions and take care of your birth control, and pay your bills and everything else?"

The image of the welfare slut has been carefully constructed by the right in recent months to be as racist as possible, as well. A nationwide billboard campaign linking black women and abortion invokes the Reagan-era stereotype of black women as neglectful mothers and over-sexed harridans, and reinforces the message to the base that the only way to put these women in their place is take away their reproductive healthcare.

The campaign has worked beautifully with the Republican base, even among those who might otherwise support the right to abortion and contraception. A liberal writer at Salon talking about her strange friendship with a pro-choice Republican captured a perfect example of how this works:

"She told me she didn't believe government had any business funding [Planned Parenthood] in the first place. That this isn't about abortion or hating women but ways the government doesn't need to be involved."

It's not that fiscal conservatives are against sex or contraception. They're all for it … for themselves. It's those slutty women taking government money who need to be cut off.

So, for those wondering how it can be that something as minor as the funding of Planned Parenthood could be the dealbreaker that threatens a government shutdown, I would say that it's not minor on the right. It's a symbol of everything they believe about who and who isn't deserving of government spending. This is about sending a strong message to the base that Republicans take seriously the mandate to cut off everyone not considered, to borrow Sarah Palin's phrase, a "Real American".

For any genuine fiscal conservatives out there, the evidence is that cutting off Planned Parenthood would actually raise government expenditures. But the Republican base won't mind that as long as the money isn't going to the "wrong people".