For John, BLUF: Both Houses, that is. The GOP is upping its game with women. Nothing to see here; just move along.
"New GOP women will have to walk a fine line"
That is the headline from a Washington Examiner article by Reporter Ashe Schow yesterday.
It’s tough to be a woman in the GOP. Republican women who want to be outspoken members of their party, defying the narrative that the GOP is the party of old, white men, risk heightened scrutiny from a mainstream media dead-set on proving that the GOP is the party of old, white men.It is like Reporter Schow thinks that the media♠ sees a Sarah Palin inside each Republican woman, like if they were real women they would be Democrats. And, the media are looking for a new Tina Fey to bring it to life.
Hat tip to the Instapundit.
Regards — Cliff
♠ Maybe not all the media.
Finally, a Sarah Palin reference that's relevant.
ReplyDeletePoorly-spoken, sensationalist and/or pedagogical gadflies do real PR damage to their own side far more than the other. Joe Biden was successfully marginalized by the Democratic power structure to cut off the "creepy uncle" meme that was in danger of proliferating after Hart, Edwards, Clinton, et al., but Republicans have been far slower to reign in the inanities spewed on the regular by Bachmann and Palin. When you add in "punditry" from caricatures like Coulter, Hasselbeck and Malkin, there's a real and tangible image that's hard to shake.
I think the piece is correct that, once the image gets into the public imagination, it's hard to shake. Just the same as Fox News will flog every stupid thing that comes out of Al Sharpton's mouth and further attempt to put those things into the mouths of others, (to the point of willfully altering video footage to misrepresent what a crowd might be saying), MSNBC will rip on and Palinesque opportunity to sell more of their media to their pet (moronic) viewership. Accuracy is no longer the point.
Speaking from the sideline, it's remarkable how little is reported of what Condoleeza Rice might have said, whereas I feel guaranteed to get every last little inanity from SP, including immature twitter arguments about PETA and the family dog. I consider that a failure of liberal (you say "mainstream") media to give me better information from better sources. However, as has been noted previously, I'm neither stupid enough to tune into Fox try to make sense of what SP is saying now, because, seriously, that's impossible.
Until Condoleeza Rice, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman become the female face of the Republican party, expect very much more of the same. Because, and I say this in all seriousness, there's a universe of difference between SP and the qualifications and gravitas of those other women. It has to start with the Party bosses insisting that every Republican distance themselves from the stupidity and ignorance that coincidentally comes in the package with convenient ideological affinity.