| The Republican War Against Women By Tanya Melich, On The Issues Magazine Republican women have become a not-so-subtle weapon for breaking apart the Democratic coalition, grounded in the women's vote, that gave Democrats control of the House and Senate in 2006 and 2008 and made Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House. This year for the first time since 1982, Democrats did not have a voting advantage with women. Men supported Republicans by a margin of 12 percent and women by one percent. This month's mid-term elections were a watershed for women's electoral politics. The national GOP is no longer trying to win votes from the backlash to the women's movement. Instead it has embraced the movement's call for more women elected officials. In fact, national Republican strategists have finally decided that electing women, especially women of color, brings power to the party. This time around the strategy brought them some victories, but don't be fooled: The Republican party is not championing the feminist policy agenda. Instead, GOP strategists are escalating the Republican War Against Women that has been going on since the 1980s and they've organized a second front led by women to oppose the feminist agenda. Numbers do not tell the whole story. While Democrats continued to win women of color and unmarried women this year, they lost big among white women. In 2006, they voted for Republicans by 50 percent to 49 percent for Democrats. This year the Republicans won white women by 57 percent compared to 40 percent for Democratic candidates. Yet overall, despite this huge switch to Republican candidates, women voters are the reason why the U.S. Senate remains Democratic. In many races, Democratic candidates who supported women's issues couldn't overcome independent white women's anger over the poor economy.They voted for a change hoping Republicans would make a difference even as polling data indicated that a majority agreed with Democrats on social issues. The Real Story So forget for a moment the angst that has swept the feminist community since Sarah Palin's entrance on the national stage. Forget those many agonizing articles about right-wing women stealing feminism; focus on what's really going on: Palin and her mama grizzlies are a twenty-first century upgrading of the backlash against women and minorities strategy that put Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bush II in the White House. These angry women are the bait, stirring a pot of discontent against the Obama Presidency. Their candidacies are the first act in a plan by the Republican right—now joined by its Tea Party allies and supply-side libertarians—to run the Republican party . Their goal is the White House and a radical redirection of American government that will rollback much of the New Deal and Great Society policies. They seek repeal of many of the laws of the last thirty years that opened opportunities for those left out of America's mainstream— women, minorities, gays and immigrants. It is engineered by a new generation of Republican tacticians who have built their strategy on the foundation laid in the original Republican War Against Women. That earlier crew—composed of Reagan's campaign team, new right and religious right leaders—orchestrated the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, opposed affirmative action, federal money for child care and numerous policies aimed at making life better for women and their families. The centerpiece of this war has always been women's reproductive health. Through the 1970s and 1980s, abortion was its principal issue. Now they have expanded their opposition to stem cell research and contraception. For these 2010 angry women candidates, opposition to abortion remains the keystone of their political philosophy. But they downplayed abortion in their campaigns, instead attacking big government spending and high taxes. Their campaigns were lavishly financed by organizations favoring specific economic interests, either through traditional GOP support groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, or fronts funded by wealthy individuals, such as the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch, who are protecting the sectors that feed their wealth. The strategic aim of this newest version of the backlash strategy is to weaken the Democrat's attraction to its strongest constituency, women voters. This year it had three parts: 1- To energize large numbers of Republican women voters through the campaigns of the radical Republican women candidates. 2- To use this Republican female energy to attract independent women who occasionally voted Republican and want lower taxes and less government. 3- To make Democratic women feel a sense of hopelessness, to encourage a lack of enthusiasm for voting, to alienate them from Obama. What is surprising is how long it took this male-dominated, backlash political machine to recognize that the path to control of state houses, Congress and the White House was with feisty right-wing women candidates. The machine had funded a few female candidates in the past but never in a serious, systematic way. It never welcomed Phyllis Schlafly, the leader of the Republican anti-feminist movement of the 1970s and '80s, into its inner circle. It was the success of the women's political movement that brought about this change in strategy. We had succeeded in convincing Americans that women could be governors, senators and president. Sarah Palin's "Morning in America" Reprise This new approach became apparent when presidential candidate John McCain selected Palin to be his running mate in 2008. McCain's campaign naively hoped that some of Hillary Clinton's supporters would cross party lines. Palin's ascendancy was significant politically because it marked the beginning of the new angry women strategy. It also marked the beginning of the effort by the religious right, the radical right and the supply siders to wrest control of the GOP from its more traditional leadership. Palin writes in Going Rogue, her book published last year, that she, like Ronald Reagan, believes "each person has a destiny, a reason for being." She fashions herself guided by God to follow the example shown to her by Reagan's presidency. Two days after this year's election, Palin's PAC released a video showing a grizzly bear roaring in silhouette. Over pictures of people cheering, Palin speaks of how well her candidates did in the election. She reprises the Reagan slogan praising "our movement…our morning in America." A November 5 tally by Politics Daily, reported that 62 Palin-backed candidates won their races, 23 were beaten and, as of that date, seven races were still too close to call. Two of the highest profile, and most controversial, candidates backed by Palin were among the losers: Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell, who ran unsuccessfully for Senate seats, Angle in Nevada and O'Donnell in Delaware. According to Politics Daily, however, Palin and her allies racked up a 70 percent win rate, and they will move quickly to consolidate their gains, push for some of the Tea Party agenda and, above all, paralyze the Obama White House. Will Palin run for President? I believe she will. On election night, Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell did not sound as though they had lost their bid to go to Washington. They sounded like an echo of Palin's video. They are ready to "bring morning to America" and that means reversing the gains women have made over the last three decades. Let them try. The battle is joined. We are ready. Tanya Melich is one of the founders of the women's political movement. Her roots are in the Republican party, where for over 20 years she fought for the GOP to adopt a women's agenda. In 1996, she published a critically successful book, The Republican War Against Women: An Insider's Report From Behind the Lines and then left the party. She continues her work for feminist candidates and writes and speaks on women and politics. © 2010 On The Issues Magazine All rights reserved. |
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
The Republican War Against Women
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