“RNC Ladies’ Night”: GOP Appeal To Women Is About Tokenism
As I previously reported, the Republican National Convention—in the hopes of softening the party’s well-deserved reputation for being hostile to women—scheduled many women speakers on Tuesday night. So when I ventured onto the floor this evening, I tried to ask influential Republican women about the challenge their party faces among women voters. Their answers varied widely, and demonstrated that, other than constantly changing the subject to the economy, they do not have an answer.
The most useless attitude for Republican women to adopt is one of pure self-delusion. Despite years of women mostly favoring abortion rights, some Republican activists simply assert that women are opposed to them. Republicans don’t have to worry that their platform’s call to ban all abortions will turn off women, Jean Turner, the president of the Ohio Federation of Republican Women, told me. Why is that? “Women know what life means,” she explained. “Women have babies.”
Some Republican women are not so certain. Charlotte Rasmussen, the former president of the Wisconsin Federation of Republican Women, embodies the conflicted discomfort that many Republican women feel on reproductive issues. On the one hand, she thinks it should be ignored because the economy is more important and the law is in the hands of the Supreme Court. On the other hand, she is against abortion, but she does not know if exceptions should be made. “I don’t want to talk about abortion,” she said. The reasons she offered are that “it’s a controversial issue,” and women are more concerned about the economy. Rasmussen thinks “abortion is not an issue,” because “it’s not going to change.” What she means is that Roe v. Wade is unlikely to be overturned, although, “I’d be fine with it being overturned.” Rasmussen also believes that “every abortion is bad.” But does that mean she agrees with the GOP’s stance that a girl who is raped by her father should not be allowed to have an abortion? “I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s not an issue I’ve had to deal with so I don’t want to comment on it.” That’s not a winning message for women who are concerned that Republicans are insensitive to issues women’s health.
The best explanation for the Republican platform plank on abortion actually came from a woman who disagrees with it, Karen Dove, a delegate from Florida. “If you look at party platforms, Democrats say partial birth abortion is good,” she said. Democrats, of course, don’t actually say any abortion is good, but it’s true that the party has not come out for banning so-called “partial birth” abortions. “Would most Democrats say partial birth abortion is OK?” asked Dove rhetorically. “I don’t think so.” Her point, which is fair insofar as it goes, is that both parties have to cater to their interest groups, even if the resulting platform statements are not supported by most party members. “We have a big contingent that thinks abortion is wrong in every case,” noted Dove. “Every party has to cater to people who come out and vote. On both sides you have extremes.” Analytically, this is accurate. But, if the next time Dove goes out canvassing in her neighborhood and a woman who answers the door says she is thinking of voting for Mitt Romney but just can’t get behind that abortion plank, Dove’s answer is unlikely to fully reassure her.
And, as I predicted, the appeal to women was about tokenism, not substance. It worked on some of the delegates. Mia Love, the black mayor of Sarasota Springs, Utah, and a Congressional candidate spoke, early Tuesday evening. Shortly thereafter I spotted Deidre Harper, a Colorado delegate, sporting a Love campaign button because she was so impressed by Love’s speech. “It’s great to see a black woman in Utah [running for Congress as a Republican],” said Harper. “I think that’s a question you hear about Republicans: there aren’t blacks or Latinos [in the party.] But from what I’m hearing, in high offices there are more blacks and Latinos than among Democrats.” A cursory glance at the Democratic and Republican Congressional delegations will show that to be wildly false. But Republicans seem to have at least convinced themselves that minorities are well represented in their ranks.
Rebecca Kleefisch, the politically adept Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin, was by far the best at shifting the abortion question to safer territory. Kleefisch deploys an ostentatiously modest demeanor to present herself as a down-to-earth soccer mom. “The president does not dictate the priority list of American women,” Kleefisch told me. “It’s insulting and irritating that [Obama] thinks he can tell women that birth control and abortion are their top priorities. Women value their personal relationships, their families and making ends meet and having enough left over to fill up their tank to take their kids to soccer practice.” After that hokey, broad brush shtick that presumed all women are middle class suburbanites with children, Kleefisch asserted, “Women are done with the president throwing a blanket of generalizations over my gender.”
Ultimately, Kleefisch argues, “The Barack Obama presidency is expensive, and we can’t afford him any more.” This might work with some female swing voters when unemployment and gas prices are high. It’s not a long-term answer as to how the anti–women’s rights party can appeal to women.
The speeches from the dais were condescending to women, if they mentioned them at all. Here, for example, was New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s sole reference to gender equality in his keynote address: “My Mom, who I lost eight years ago, was the enforcer. She made sure we all knew who set the rules. In the automobile of life, Dad was just a passenger. Mom was the driver.”
The night featured several women who are notable solely for being married to a male politician. Ann Romney was introduced by Lucé Fortuño, the First Lady of Puerto Rico. Fortuño was clearly chosen just because she could deliver her first line: “I am the proud mother of 20-year-old triplets, a practicing attorney, a proud Latina and a die-hard Republican!”
Ann Romney’s address was filled with such treacly pabulum, that it is worth quoting at length:
Sometimes I think that late at night, if we were all silent for just a few moments and listened carefully, we could hear a great collective sigh from the moms and dads across America who made it through another day, and know that they’ll make it through another one tomorrow. But in that end of the day moment, they just aren’t sure how.
And if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the women sighing a little bit more than the men. It’s how it is, isn’t it?
It’s the moms who always have to work a little harder, to make everything right.
It’s the moms of this nation — single, married, widowed — who really hold this country together. We’re the mothers, we’re the wives, we’re the grandmothers, we’re the big sisters, we’re the little sisters, we’re the daughters.
You know it’s true, don’t you?
You’re the ones who always have to do a little more.
You know what it’s like to work a little harder during the day to earn the respect you deserve at work and then come home to help with that book report which just has to be done.
You know what those late night phone calls with an elderly parent are like and the long weekend drives just to see how they’re doing.
You know the fastest route to the local emergency room and which doctors actually answer the phone when you call at night.
You know what it’s like to sit in that graduation ceremony and wonder how it was that so many long days turned into years that went by so quickly.
You are the best of America.
You are the hope of America.
There would not be an America without you.
Tonight, we salute you and sing your praises.
The notion that such meaningless gibberish would convince women to toss their interests aside in the voting booth is offensive. Many of the other women speakers, such as South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Representative Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA), simply did not mention women at all. Rather they stuck to the evening’s message of “We built it,” a rejoinder to the apocryphal quote by President Obama that business owners didn’t build their companies. If undecided women were watching the RNC on Tuesday to see if they would be given any meaningful support on issues of gender equality, they were surely disappointed.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, August 28, 2012
It May Not Be “The Economy Stupid”: Americans Just Might Favor Social Issues Over Their Pocketbooks
It’s one of the oldest adages in American politics—when all is said and done, Americans vote their pocketbooks rather than their principles.
But is it true?
Both Democrats and Republicans seem to think so.
Indeed, accepting this bit of established political wisdom has long led progressives to argue that millions of middle-class, working Americans, who support Republican candidates and policies, do so in contravention of what is in their own interests. The argument, for the most part, rests in the belief that the “trickle down” approach favored by conservatives—a theory suggesting that when those at the top of the chain are doing well, jobs and money trickle down to the middle and lower class workers—has never really proven to be beneficial to anyone but the wealthy and comes at the expense of the many who, nevertheless, continue to vote for those who would continue the policy.
A true conservative, of course, would argue that such cynicism is vastly misplaced and that a vibrant economy can only happen when those at the top are flourishing—allowing the job creators the confidence and financial wherewithal to grow their businesses and, in the process, create the jobs necessary to allow good fortune to trickle down to the working classes.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that our presidential election, once again, is putting these conflicting belief systems to the test as, in the red corner— standing up for the notion that tax cuts for the wealthiest are the best way to drive the economy forward—is the GOP challenger, Governor Mitt Romney while, in the other corner, representing those who believe that more tax cuts for the wealthy will only result in the rich getting richer at the expense of everyone else, is the blue squad, led by our returning champion, President Barack Obama.
But is this really what this election is all about? Are Americansactually preparing to vote for the candidate who represents the side that appears most likely to put more money in their respective pockets or are there other, more important, factors at work as we get ready to make our choices in November?
It turns out, conventional wisdom might just have this all wrong.
A new website called Politify—claiming to be non-partisan and which garnered some national attention during the primary season— has employed tax information provided by the Internal Revenue Service along with data from the U.S. Census Bureau to create an interesting way to determine whether you and your neighbors may be favoring economic policies that might actually turn out not to be the best thing for you.
The results are pretty interesting.
According to Politify, if we are to take the economic, tax and budget proposals of our two presidential candidates at their face value—policies that each candidate contends hold the answers to making our economic lives better—the results indicate that it is the Obama proposals that dramatically benefit a wide swath of Americans who are expected to cast their vote for Governor Romney.
Indeed—again accordingly to Politify—if Americans truly voted their pocketbooks, President Obama would be re-elected in an historic landslide as the website calculates that the Obama economic agenda benefits 69.8 percent of Americans when compared to Romney’s proposals which only improve the financial lot of 30.2 percent. What’s more, using the official budget information provided by each campaign’s website, the site determines that the Obama proposals will lessen the national deficit by $273 billion by 2015 as the Romney budget would increase the deficit by $566 billion during the same period.
Now, before the more conservative readers here go into cardiac arrest, you might want to visit the website to review the methodology Politify has employed to reach their conclusions. Only then can you determine how much you do—or do not—value their conclusions.
If you do visit the site, you might also enjoy ‘plugging in’ your personal and community data to see how the respective tax and economic policies of the candidates impact directly on you and your neighbors.
There is an additional ‘twist’ worth pointing out—according to the data, it is not just the millions of rural white people expected to cast their votes for the GOP presidential candidate who are behaving contrary to what would appear to be in their self-interest. It turns out that some of the nation’s most liberal neighborhoods are also likely to vote for a candidate whose policies are more harmful to their economic well being that what is being offered by the alternative choice.
Take, for example, my own upper west side of Manhattan neighborhood—a liberal enclave if there ever was one.
Despite the fact that there is a stronger likelihood that hell will freeze over than there is that my zip code will get behind Governor Romney’s candidacy, Politify projects that 62 percent of my neighbors would benefit more from Romney’s economic proposals than those put forth by the President.
Go figure.
What we may be learning here is that people may not be voting their pocketbooks to the extent the experts and pundits would have us believe. Indeed, it may be this very fact that has led the conversation away from the anticipated referendum on the Obama economy and in the direction of social issues such as Medicare and abortion.
While many would be quick to blame the “liberal media” for steering the national conversation towards social issues because it is imagined—possibly incorrectly—that the President holds the winning hand on these subjects, the truth is that neither of the campaigns has been particularly responsive to the media. Accordingly, it may not be reasonable to imagine that it is the media driving the direction the campaign is taking.
Indeed, the GOP campaign’s willingness to engage on these topics may be more by design than by circumstances as, maybe, the Romney campaign knows something that the pundits do not. In an election sure to be about strength of voter turn-out, it may not, as conventional wisdom instructs, be all about the economy after all.
With voters unsure as to either candidate’s ability to do much of anything to reverse the current economic difficulties in four years time—and instinctively understanding that the depth of our problem is such that there is no quick and easy answer or way out—it may be the social issues that allow the voters to find a more definitive position and send them racing to the polls on election day to vote for the candidate who stands for those positions.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, August 26, 2012
Republicans And “Humane Self-Deportation”: A Nightmare Of Perpetual Harassment
It didn’t get the attention it merited because of the focus on the GOP’s usual platform plank endorsing a constitutional amendment to ban abortions without rape-and-incest exceptions, but the Romney-approved 2012 platform confirmed the party’s lack of interest in out-performing John McCain among Latinos. Julia Preston of the New York Times has a succinct summary:
In their debates this week in Tampa, Fla., over the party platform, Republican delegates hammered out an immigration plank calling for tough border enforcement and opposing “any forms of amnesty” for illegal immigrants, instead endorsing “humane procedures to encourage illegal aliens to return home voluntarily,” a policy of self-deportation.
I like that modifier “humane.” I suppose the idea is that it is more “humane” to make the lives of undocumented workers–and perhaps some documented immigrants as well–an un-American nightmare of perpetual harassment than to pursue some unstated alternative: presumably loading whole families into cattle cars and shipping them south (which would also be monstrously expensive). The trouble, of course, is that the “humane” strategy depends implicitly on making like miserable for anyone who might conceivably be undocumented in the eyes of the various authorities charged with various elements of the campaign to “encourage” self-deportation. We are somehow expected to believe this will not lead to “ethnic profiling” of Latinos, but nobody much buys it. To put it bluntly, jurisdictions like Alabama and Georgia, not to mention Joe Arpaio’s Arizona, do not have a great deal of credibility when it comes to disinterested enforcement of laws clearly aimed at particular demographic categories of the population.
So even as Republicans continue to claim they only want to enforce existing immigration laws, they are pursuing not only policies but a general philosophy guaranteed to repel Latino voters. Ron Brownstein estimates that Romney will need a percentage of the white vote equivalent to that won by George H.W. Bush in his easy 1988 victory over Mike Dukakis. No wonder Republicans are going to lengths in appealing to white voters that are so highly reminiscent of Lee Atwater’s strategy that year.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 27, 2012
“A Debris Strewn Mess”: A Storm The GOP Didn’t Expect
The uninvited participation of a hurricane at next week’s Republican convention would be superfluous. Buffeted by powerful internal winds, the party may be flooded with cash, but it’s already kind of a debris-strewn mess.
Who would have imagined that Topic A, in the days before GOP delegates gather in Tampa, would be abortion? Certainly the thought never crossed the minds of the convention planners who intended this four-day infomercial to be a nonstop indictment of President Obama’s performance on the economy. But the old line about the relationship between the political parties and their candidates — “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line” — is so last century.
Party leaders will blame Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) for airing his appalling views about “legitimate rape.” But if you discount Akin’s bizarre notions about female reproduction, he was only stating official Republican policy on abortion as laid out in the platform that delegates will be asked to approve Monday: “The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.”
Presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who once was pro-choice, now says he is against abortion except in cases of rape or incest or when the mother’s life is endangered. But his party claims to believe, as Akin does, that there should be no exceptions. Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), agrees with Akin but has switched into “whatever Mitt says” mode.
There is no way to tidy up these contradictions. For decades, since the Ronald Reagan era, the Republican playbook has been to patronize social conservatives in the primaries and the party platform on issues such as abortion — and then, upon taking office, do little or nothing for the cause. But social conservatives turned their frustration into activism and eventually gained a measure of power within the party that the GOP establishment finds highly inconvenient.
Anti-abortion crusaders expect the party to practice what it preaches, even though abortion rights are guaranteed under Roe v. Wade and public opinion is strongly opposed to an absolute ban.
Similarly, evangelicals expect GOP action on their belief that the wall between church and state should be demolished. All right, that’s my phrasing, not theirs. But I don’t know how else to interpret the aim of officeholders such as Akin, who has spent his 12 years in Congress fighting to increase the role of religion in government. “At the heart of liberalism,” he once said, “really is a hatred for God.”
The Republican Party also welcomed the energy, enthusiasm and votes of the tea party movement. Was the GOP establishment ever really serious about staging a “second American revolution” or slashing the federal government back to what it was in 1789? Not on your life. The recent pattern is that government grows much faster under Republican presidents than under Democrats. You can look it up.
Patronizing the tea party and enlisting many of its adherents as candidates helped the GOP win an impressive string of victories in 2010 and take control of the House of Representatives. But Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has been struggling ever since to control unruly freshmen to whom the unthinkable — triggering a catastrophic default on U.S. government debt, for example — sounds like a plan.
Tension between idealists and pragmatists is inevitable in politics, but the struggle taking place within today’s Republican Party is extreme. The GOP believes in limited government that stays out of our business and lets us live our lives — but also wants to police every pregnancy in the land. The party says it wants to cut wasteful federal spending — but also insists on showering the Pentagon with billions for weapons systems the generals don’t even want. The party says it wants to balance the budget — but endorses a plan, authored by Ryan, that cuts taxes for the wealthy without specifying the offsetting budget cuts that would be required to keep deficits from ballooning out of control.
Being a “big tent” party is never easy. The GOP, for all of its divisions, is full of energy and passion. What unites the various factions is the task of defeating Obama, and on this point there will be no dissent in Tampa.
But why does the Republican Party seek power? What does it really stand for? What does it hope to accomplish? What kind of America does it envision?
Keep an eye on that storm track as Isaac plows toward Florida. Maybe the elusive answers to those questions are blowin’ in the wind.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 23, 2012
“Letting Romney Off Easy”: Proud Enablers, Media Trades Ethics For Access
In the wake of last month’s New York Times dispatch about reporters letting powerful politicians edit quotes before publication, various establishment media outlets angrily denounced the practice. Seeking to distance themselves from the ugly image of journalists serving as de facto spokespeople for the politicians they are supposed to be scrutinizing, these outlets made such a public spectacle in order to reassure their audiences that they would never trade ethics for access.
But, of course, anyone working in journalism in recent years knows such trades have long been standard practice. Today’s reporters are expected to acquiesce to demands by politicians, and most often, they do just that. And while their feigned public umbrage at the Times’ quote approval story shows that news outlets are at least smart enough to be embarrassed by their unscrupulous behavior, it doesn’t mean the behavior has stopped. On the contrary, as last week’s headline-grabbing interchange between a local Colorado reporter and the Romney campaign shows, that behavior persists, with the establishment media serving as a proud enabler.
Here’s what happened: According to CBS 4′s Shaun Boyd, she was asked by Mitt Romney’s campaign to do a satellite interview with the Republican presidential nominee, who wanted to get a carefully scripted message out to this swing state’s voters. Boyd agreed to do the interview — not surprising, because it could be (and was) billed as a major scoop for her local news station. This was no ordinary Q&A, though. Fearing a repeat of Boyd’s laudably hard-hitting interview of Romney back in May, Romney’s campaign demanded that Boyd not ask the candidate about abortion or the Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin controversy. Incredibly, Boyd agreed.
When the interview occurred, Boyd (unfortunately) held up her end of the sordid deal, not asking Romney about what has become one of the defining issues of the entire election. However, she did tell viewers about the no-abortion-question condition, which consequently became a story unto itself.
Democrats and news organizations pounced on Romney’s interview conditions, correctly citing them as proof that he doesn’t want to answer tough questions. Meanwhile, Boyd basked in the reflected glow, garnering national and local media attention that portrayed her as a supposed star fighting the good fight on behalf of journalistic integrity. For instance, the Washington Post featured her in a “wide-ranging interview” and touted her for giving “serious consideration to the handling of the staffer’s extreme conditions” (and yet then submitting to them). Likewise, in the local media market, Denver Post editorial page editor Curtis Hubbard gushed on Twitter about Boyd, while the Post’s Alicia Caldwell took to the paper’s website to congratulate Boyd for “push(ing) back against the Romney camp’s conditions.”
Amid the celebration, though, these same voices of supposed journalistic integrity forgot to mention that Boyd didn’t simply reject Romney’s interview request and then do a story about the demands — a move that would have been genuinely praiseworthy. Instead, she publicly complained about the conditions, but nonetheless acquiesced to them. Sure, she was absolutely correct to acknowledge the conditions on the air before airing the Romney-censored interview — and, certainly, she should be given some modicum of credit for disclosure. But that disclosure shouldn’t be portrayed as some hugely courageous act. On the contrary, being honest with viewers and disclosing such conditions is the absolute least any reporter should do when acceding to such preposterous demands. Indeed, the fact that Boyd’s disclosure was so venerated implies that it is now all but unheard of in newsrooms to even respect that minimum standard of transparency.
What’s so especially damning about this episode is that Boyd likely had leverage in this situation. After all, as she said, Romney’s campaign came to her asking for an interview, not the other way around. Put another way, Romney’s campaign wanted something from CBS 4, giving CBS 4 more power to dictate the terms. Boyd or her bosses could have made the “beggars can’t be choosers” argument, telling Romney he could have the valuable airtime he desired, but not with such preposterous conditions — and if he didn’t like it, they could have told him no deal. Instead, for the sake of access, Boyd folded, conducting the interview on Romney’s terms and promoting it on CBS 4′s website. Just as troubling, she was subsequently portrayed as a great hero by the same establishment media that publicly pretends to be offended by trading ethics for access.
This is the kind of thing that is no doubt happening every day on the campaign trail — and it has profound long-term effects. As KDVR Fox 31′s chief political correspondent Eli Stokols told me on Friday, whether it is a reporter like Boyd accepting such conditions or other media outlets condoning such compromises, campaign reporting is now actively — and knowingly — contributing to the degradation of both journalism and America’s democratic process. He said:
“We in the media all see how campaigns try hard to limit information, restrict access and force their limited engagements with the press to take place on their own terms. It’s depressing that elections, at least from the campaign side, are no longer about getting information to voters so they can make informed decisions, only about getting voters to make the decision the campaigns want them to make. But when we accept a campaign’s terms of certain questions being off limits or allowing staffers approval on quotes, we are both accepting and enabling the smallness of our politics; and we’re diminishing ourselves and our profession in the process.
“It’s a sad state of affairs when journalists are so desperate for anything resembling a scoop that they willingly acquiesce to ridiculous stipulations and conditions because scrubbed quotes and contrived interviews still make us feel good as long as we can call it ‘an exclusive’.”
While voters may not know exactly how the reporter-politician relationship works, their vague sense of what Stokols describes is almost certainly one of the reasons they have lost faith in the press corps. Until more rank-and-file reporters, editors and news producers renegotiate the terms of those relationships on more ethical grounds, that faith will continue to diminish — as it should.
By: David Sirota, Salon, August 24, 2012
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