Women made up 53% of the electorate this year and Republicans failed spectacularly, again, at basic math. My guess is that they’ll keep on failing, choosing to focus on Hispanics while ignoring that Hispanic women are part of that whopping 53%. So are African American women and Asian women – which means that women are the biggest voter demographic Republicans need to win an election.
Republicans are frighteningly out of touch with women who handed the election to President Obama. They refused to accept, and even mocked – I’m looking at you, Joe Scarborough – that women’s reproductive rights were a serious economic concern. They dismissed rape in the way one dismisses a hangnail. And they lost. Big time.
Jessica Valenti has an excellent piece about women being the silent majority:
Part of Republican’s cultural dissonance around feminist issues is that they drink their own Kool-Aid. When they say it’s rare for women to get pregnant from rape, it’s because they really believe it. When they frame abortion as the sinful refuge of promiscuous women, it’s because they actually think “good” women don’t terminate pregnancies. They don’t even fully trust rape statistics, instead choosing to believe that rape doesn’t happen to women who follow the rules. To them, sexual assault is mostly the unfortunate inevitability when women dress a certain way, drink, have consensual sex, or do anything that transgresses traditional ideals of proper femininity.
Too many in the GOP simply cannot imagine that the women in their communities, in their families—or even in their political party—have been touched by these issues. And when women are silent about their personal experiences, it furthers that cultural ignorance. That’s why it was easy for Mitt Romney’s campaign to say—and perhaps believe—that female voters didn’t care about the “war on women.” Republicans certainly underestimated how important these issues are to women’s lives because of sexism and misogyny—but mainstream women’s silence made it a lot easier for them to believe their own hype.
Election results told a clear story, however. A Gallup poll released on Monday showed that women in crucial swing states favored Obama over Romney by 16 points and that nearly 40 percent named abortion as the most important issue for women in the election. Women’s issues that are seen as “fringe” were actually central. And it may be that women who don’t like talking about how personally these issues affect their lives were not afraid to be loud in the voting booth.
I couldn’t have said it better, and every time women tried to point out that buying birth control and unplanned pregnancy were huge economic issues for women, Republicans dismissed us by declaring that those issues weren’t part of the “real” economy. Funny how paying 40.00 -60.00 a month for internet access, or 20.00 – 30.00 a month on a newspaper subscription, is considered part of the real economy, but paying that money every month for birth control doesn’t count.
And I don’t see them changing their ways. Take a look at this comment over at Delaware Politics. (Yeah, I know, but if you really want to see the Conservative/Republican mindset you have to wade into swamp.) The context of this comment was mynym responding to commenter Nitpicker who was calling out – who else – Jon Moseley. The italicized part is a small part of Nitpicker’s comment. Go read the entire comment. It’s well worth it. But… back to mynym…
29mynym
And when it comes to their options as rape victims, they do not need or want to justify themselves to creepy old men like you.
Nice try at framing old men who want to try to save babies from being torn limb from limb and so on as sexual perverts or whatever else, but the simple fact is that they won’t really find the tender love and care they seek under Obama Inc. and all his perverted supporters. Jay-Z? He’s more likely to pimp women for profit while reducing young black men to animals beneath his pyramid schemes. ACORN? They’re more likely to be incorporated into trafficking women for profit. Madonna? She’ll sell them out like virgins until their midnight hour. Creepy old Leftist college professors? They’ll leave them used and abused for the next undergrad. LGBT? They’re probably too busy with their “My identity is the be all, end all!!!” type of domestic violence against each other or manufacturing their identities in theatrical productions about having different rights to be of much help in reality. Planned Parenthood? More false profits and the bloody end of vagina monologues.
Or the young college frat boys who vote for Obama Inc. along with the rest? Yeah, right… they value women and are sure to calm their fears about being raped. Or how about the Muslim vote? They seem to be full of love and care too.
And so on. Exactly where is it that women are supposedly going to get the tender love and care and the priceless treatment and protection that they desire under Obama Inc. or his associates like ACORN in reality? I suspect that those you’re framing as creepy old men or sexual perverts actually care more about women than you do. I enjoy the framework of propaganda where it turns out that people trying to protect babies are like sexual perverts so that single women should run into the arms of…. pimps, rapists and sexual perverts?
Try again?
Wow. Where to begin? I did respond over at Delaware Politics because I simply had to! Ignore all his examples of male Democrats who he claims hurt women – that’s silly, and merely an attempt to hide his true point… Which is this:
Exactly where is it that women are supposedly going to get the tender love and care and the priceless treatment and protection that they desire under Obama Inc…
Notice how he places women’s desire for love, how they are treated (pricelessly) and protection into everyone’s hands but the woman’s. It’s this mindset – that it’s someone’s job to make decisions and offer protection to women – that will lead to the extinction of the Republican Party. In Republican “Father Knows Best” Land women are confused, weak creatures who simply cannot comprehend who will take better care of them. And I don’t see this mindset changing.