Today is the much-hyped political circus. I can’t help but think this going to be like a big Hollywood movie. Some special effects, dramatic pauses and feel-good platitudes but at the end of the day the same old scene that gets played over and over again.
Susan B. Anthony List announced that Congressman Marsha Blackburn will be one of the Republicans at the summit. Blackburn is a tough, fiscal and social conservative. It also helps to have a woman articulating pro-life views. Plus she’s from Tennessee. Not that important of a factor, but she’s part of the delegation from my state.
Independent Women’s Forum raises some good points. Let’s scrap this bureaucratic monstrosity and find real answers that actually lower costs, such as tort reform and portability. The only problem is that those two issues directly hurt special interests that are long-time Democratic supporters. Thus, President Obama is at a crossroads. He can pass actual health care reform that will save money and make the market more affordable for all Americans. Or he can grow an increasingly bloated government with money that we don’t have and lower the quality of healthcare for all Americans. Option A actually helps people, while Option B protects his special interests. Sadly, I’m fairly certain that Obama will go with Option B, particularly since unions have been given special consideration.
But can he actually pass something? Can the anointed one, who entered his presidency with approval ratings in the high 70s and majorities in both houses, actually pass some type of major legislation before the mid-term elections? It’s not looking so good for the Dems. I hope that my Democratic friends on the Hill are job hunting.
Hot Air and Daily Caller question if Pelosi has the votes. House numbers have changed since the December vote while outrage over healthcare has only increased. February to November is a much shorter time period to remember a vote than December to November. House Democrats need this vote over and forgotten, and the American people are clearly tired of this debate. A CBS survey reports that 53% of Americans don’t believe we can afford to pass this legislation, which is more expensive than the Senate bill and provides funding for abortions.
Then there’s the problem of the vice president. Perhaps, we should make a new euphemism: out of the mouth of Biden.
Remember the concept of equality? That belief stemming from our Founding Fathers that all men and women deserve the same rights and opportunities endowed from our Creator? Apparently, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter missed that lesson in her high school civics class:
Rep. Shea-Porter is playing into an argument that gender Feminists love to make: women are better at getting things done because we’re natural nurturers. Note what Shea-Porter says at the end: that women are better suited for leadership because they’ve taken care of mothers, mothers-in-law and other family members. None of the men in Congress have ever driven their mothers to a doctor’s appointment or changed a dirty diaper? None of them are concerned fathers or devoted husbands? That’s a rather broad stroke and a huge insult to the men serving in Congress.
This is playing into the “if women ruled the world” fantasy that Feminists articulate in their psychobabble academic papers and books. Their goal has devolved from empowering girls to give them the same opportunity as boys to now tearing down men so that women can assert their superiority.
It’s interesting how feminists talk out of both sides of their mouths. Women and men are equal, and gender is socially constructed unless the situation demands that women are more nurturing and willing to collaborate. When it is convenient to point out the softer side of women, feminists are quick to play the nurture or victim card. When feminists are attacking traditional roles or femininity, suddenly we’re back to “gender is artificially created by an oppressive patriarchal society.”
You can’t have it both ways.
It’s shameful that Shea-Porter is insulting her colleagues based on their sex. As Weasel Zippers points out, had a man said this, most women’s groups would go ballistic. Sexism works both ways. Women can’t be victims nor can they be superior.
Equality is giving men and women the same opportunities. Equality is not achieving random quotas in society, such as the Shriver Report, which gleefully announces men and women have reached parity in the workplace. Equality has been achieved because women and men now have equal access to the same programs, jobs, opportunities, education, and so forth. Equality doesn’t mean that women must become equal in every single job or segment of society. That will never happen. The fact that women have the opportunity to decide for themselves is equality. Of course by carefully selecting the fields where there is a gender gap (such as STEM fields) gives women’s groups an excuse to stick around.
What bothers me about this isn’t just the double standard, but her implication that all these women-Republicans and Democrats-think alike because they are women and have therefore, of course, been family caretakers. She implies that the GOP women get it, and roll their eyes at all these silly men, who are derailing reform; GOP women are cajoled into voting no on health care reform, but really they know better.
This is going back to the meme from the nineteenth century that women will bond together because we share the same chromosomes. This has been proven wrong time and time again. After the 19th Amendment was passed the National Women’s Party believed that women would solidify as one voting block and take over government. There would be no wars, and all children would be fed and educated. Actually, even the movement for suffrage was marked by countless splits and debates. In the 1970s, feminists believed that women would bond together and demand that the ERA pass. In 2008, Hillary Clinton ran for president under the assumption that all women would vote for her in order to finally get a female in the White House. Even liberal women can’t decide what Feminism is and frequently call it “femininisms” because of the splinters in the movement. Every time this tactic is played, it fails miserably.
Stating that women will agree on something simply because we all have ovaries is demeaning. Men would never utter a something like this about fellow men. This view says women are simple creatures and should come together because we share the same anatomical parts. The promotion of fellow women is more important than our minds, ideas, beliefs and philosophies. This is sexism directed towards other women, and it is wrong.
IWF also agrees:
Republican women lawmakers should be offended. There are many, many principled reasons to stand against what the Democrats are proposing (for example, see here). And it’s not just Republican lawmakers who reject Democrat proposals: women around the country don’t want a government take-over the health care system as this poll shows.
Somehow it remains okay politically to categorically insult male lawmakers, but in doing so Rep. Shea-Porter dismisses female lawmakers and all the men and women that these Members represent.
So despite that Republican women disagree with the health care bill because of massive government spending, an attack on individual liberty and the funding of abortion, women should vote on it for the sole purpose of showing solidarity? The call of being a woman is more important than religious beliefs or political views?
I’m also insulted that Shea-Porter pulls the stereotype of women going to the bathroom together. When male comedians use this as a punchline, women complain, yet a female Congressional member used it when addressing the House?
162 years since Seneca Falls, and we’ve come this far.
Perhaps the Feminists should just get out of the way and let the conservative women lead. After all, we actually get stuff done rather than spending time whining about it and then spending millions of dollars analyzing the whining.
Last week, I joined a conference call with the Independent Women’s Forum about a poll that The Polling Company conducted on women’s attitudes and the health care debate. I meant to write about this earlier, but sadly all of my free time was taken up with creating a Meghan McCain Halloween costume. (Yes, it was awesome.)
Carrie Lukas, Vice President for Policy and Economics, started off the call by stating, “we think women are missing important information about the health care system and trade offs that are involved. The press sometimes misses women’s real concerns.”
Since women make the majority of decisions regarding health care for their families, IWF commissioned KellyAnne Conway to survey only women about health care.
This random digit dial surveyed 800 women over seven nights with a proportionally represented sample of female registered voters.
The point I found most interesting was the timing. Congress and the media keep insisting that there’s a crisis! and Americans demand that health care be reformed now!
When asked when Congress and the President should enact healthcare reform,
9% hoped for action in the next few weeks; 20% wanted change by the end of the year; 22%
preferred to see reform in the next one or two years; and 43% of women say that Congress and
the President should enact healthcare reform “only when quality legislation is developed, even
if it means there is no deadline.”
