i'm joined tonight by terry o'neil, president of the national organization for women.lso with us tonight is nancy northup, who is the president for the center for reproductive rights. and actress martha plimpton joins us this evening. martha joins us from the set of her tv series "raising hope," which airs tuesdays on fox. great to have all of you with us tonight. terry, isn't this just more evidence, i mean, the republican party's been talking about rebranding and here we are back at square one, they're back after the same old wars? what about it? >> you know, ed, i think what they don't understand is that they need to change their policies. changing their rhetoric is not enough. and suddenly you have the legislator from michigan backing off. i don't believe they're really backing off that far. what they think they can do is use kinder, gentler language and still pursue a very extreme, really misogynist set of policies. the thing is that the voters are not fooled. and you know, it's not just women that are not fooled. male voters are with us. especially on keeping abo

. >> john: funnying us now is the president of the national organization for women terry o'neil.ou for being with us tonight. >> it's great to be here, john. >> john: thank you so much. is it fathomable that our republican friends in the house could remany being the party that opposes the violence against women act? >> i would have thought after the 2012 elections that the republican party would understand two things. number one, they have a problem with women. number two, they have specifically have a problem around rape. the violence against women act is specifically aimed at responding to sexual assault as well as domestic violence and dating violence and stalking. we're on the verge of passing a very good bill in the senate as we did in the last congress. what remains to be seen is whether the house, which is under the control of the republican party, a party which in turn remains under the control of a radical fringe, remains to be seen whether they will really understand what the voters were saying to them, and whether they will continue to try to block this very popular re