Comments on: Do Republican Candidates Care About Women Voters?

By: Michelle

Michelle — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:48:00 +0000

Oh, but don't forget that "abortion is bad for women". So all the family values talk really is about women. How *they* view women. Little delicate creatures that need protecting from the big, bad world.

Just had a baby? You shouldn't be out in that horrible old world trying to work, you silly goose! Daycare is a filthy, rotten pool of germs and the source of what's wrong in this country, silly woman!

Where's your husband in all of this? Don't have one? Don't you know that you're not supposed to give birth without one?

Oh, sure. They are thinking about women constantly. How they can keep them on a short chain that extends from the bed to the stove to the maternity ward. With no stops at the abortion clinic or the career they had before becoming breeding machines for the next generation of submitted wives.

It's the fifties all over again.

By: whatsername

whatsername — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:20:00 +0000

Hey Alex, why not show us some links showing how they do care about women and women’s issues?

By: Mauigirl

Mauigirl — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:07:00 +0000

They only care about unborn babies, not the mothers. And they only care about discriminating against gay couples, not about how to help working families raise their kids. And they only care about money, first and foremost.

By: Alex Elliot

Alex Elliot — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:09:00 +0000

Why am I not surprised. Hey, do you by chance have the links to the Republican sites you looked at?

By: whatsername

whatsername — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:35:00 +0000

Well of course they don’t value women. They base their stupid platforms on “traditional family values.” What that really means is openly patriarchal and in some ways misogynistic values. Women don’t come into the equation.

By: Maddy

Maddy — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:53:00 +0000

I heard a very interesting programme [radio] about how women got the vote out here in the first place.

It seems that we’re still very much at the bottom of the heap.
Cheers

By: dana

dana — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:13:00 +0000

Sadly, the GOP could give a shit less about women. It sickens me. I’m a Republican because of one particular issue, but as far as women go, the right seems to ignore us. It’s a shame really.

By: jen

jen — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 03:30:00 +0000

oh AMEN. it’s not even illusive anymore, this blatant arrogance and disrespect.

By: Gunfighter

Gunfighter — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:45:00 +0000

PM,

The Republicans are courting a different sort of woman. The woman who is terrified. The woman that is looking for protection, that is looking for some security.

No, not from domestic violence, but from terrorism. Basically, that's all that the GOP has right now. That's it.

If they can convince the soccer mom vote (which has morphed into the "security mom" vote) that they and their children are safer with the GOP it's a winner.

I know some of them. They want to hear that their kids will be safe (and are dumb enough to believe that a politician can actually make that happen). They want to be reassured that their kids can go to schools with high test scores (as if that means something... and it doesn't).

It's a hard core effort at what I call "the Donna Reed" vote. White women from the affluent suburbs.

I don't think it will work next year... but who knows, those same people voted for GWB, in '04

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:19:00 +0000

That’s certainly a revealing Republican perusal. I shouldn’t be commenting off the cuff (but since I am) I vaguely remember something in The New York Times about the ‘soccer mom’ losing her punch– in other words, the ‘soccer mom’ as an identifiable and influential voter category has disappeared. The piece I (vaguely) remember reading asked either what this disappearance meant for women or what it meant for the election, as candidates like to have a clear voter category to court. Regardless, I wonder if ‘soccer mom’ somehow — sadly — equated women in general. The soccer mom demographic seems to have dried up (what? kids are in baseball or college?) and now the women are out of the picture. This is extraordinarily depressing because the soccer mom narrative was so insipid, portraying a woman entirely without complex brain cell wiring and very narrow, usually domestic, concerns. So without that harmless, powerless woman – we get nothing? Hmmmm. . . .