National Review Online’s Rich Lowry contends that the recent War on Women campaign against Mike Huckabee for his egregiously distorted “cannot control their libido” remark has established a new standard in WoW gaffes. The old standard: Don’t say anything outlandish. The new standard: Don’t say, well, anything. The truth: The War on Women is a "contentless political gotcha game."

Huckabee’s actual, utterly benign, pro-women's empowerment statement was clear enough:

If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe 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.

What the media and Democrats have done with that statement has set a new low in distortion and decontextualization, as they have shamelessly transformed it into a declaration that women “cannot control their libido,” precisely the opposite of what Huckabee was clearly stating. As Lowry argues, the left’s response reveals the reality of the “contentless political gotcha game” that is the War on Women.

The Huckabee flap establishes a new standard in War on Women gaffes. The old standard was: Don’t say something outlandish, most notoriously violated by Republican representative Todd Akin during his misbegotten Senate campaign in Missouri last cycle. The new standard is: Avoid saying something that can be distorted to sound outlandish if your intent and meaning are ignored by people who make a living out of ignoring intent and meaning.

If you condemn Democrats for insulting women, you are insulting women. If you profess your admiration for all that women have accomplished in recent decades, as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky did on Meet the Press over the weekend, you are guilty of minimizing and therefore aiding and abetting the War on Women. There is no way out because the War on Women is a contentless political gotcha game.

But as empty, increasingly shrill, and transparently political as it is, the WoW only seems to be gaining momentum—no doubt in preparation for 2016.