The GOP is once again trying to open up their big tiny tent just a little. This time they are trying to get more women to vote Republican. But check out WHY they think women don't already vote Republican.
"Women sometimes need a little more handholding, or they need their friends to help them make a decision. And by our going in and talking to them and recruiting and educating and training them to either get involved in a campaign or become a candidate, we're giving them the tools so that they can do that on their own," Larimer added.
You know I find myself thinking the GOP is the most hostile to minorities, then they pull something like this and I am reminded that they might hold women of any color in contempt even more.
It takes a special kind of brainwashed woman to claim the Republican or conservatism.
Ta Nehisi Coates has a post up about Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor and one of the supposed controversial statements that she made in a speech she gave in 2001 to some students at the University of Californa Berkley School of Law. Here is an excerpt:
Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
I think we can immediately dispense with the crazies who think this statement should disqualify Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. It's worth noting that William Rehnquist once endorsed segregation, and yet rose to be Chief Justice of the court.
That said, I think Sotomayor's statement is quite wrong. I understand the basis of it, laid out pretty well by Kerry Howley over at Hit & Run. The idea is that Latinos have a dual experience that whites don't have and that, all things being equal, they'll be able to pull from that experience and see things that whites don't. The problem with this reasoning is it implicitly accepts the logic (made for years by white racists) that there is something essential and unifying running through all white people, everywhere. But White--as we know it--is a word so big that, as a descriptor of experience, it almost doesn't exist.
Indeed, it's claims are preposterous. It seeks to lump the miner in Eastern Kentucky, the Upper West Side Jew, the yuppie in Seattle, the Irish Catholic in South Boston, the hipster in Brooklyn, the Cuban-American in Florida, or even the Mexican-American in California all together, and erase the richness of their experience, by marking the bag "White." This is a lie--and another example of how a frame invented (and for decades endorsed) by whites is, at the end of the day, bad for whites. White racism, in this country, was invented to erase the humanity and individuality of blacks. But for it to work it must, necessarily, erase the humanity of whites, too.
Sotomayor, unwittingly, buys into that logic by conjuring the strawman of "a white male." But, in the context that she's discussing, no such person exists. What is true of the straight Polish-American in Chicago, may not be true for the white gay dude working in D.C. I'm not even convinced that what is true for the white dude in West Texas, is true for the white dude in Austin--or that what's true of the white dude in Austin, is true of other white dudes in Austin. There's just too much variation among people to make such a broad statement about millions of people.
After having reread the speech I have to say that this is one of the rare times that I totally disagree with Coates. My disagreement really isn't on the substance of his argument per se, but on the premiss of the argument itself. Here is my response as published in a comment on his blog:
I actually think even more context is needed and a focus on the words Judge Sotomayor actually said.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.
However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
What I believe Sotomayor to be saying here isn't about painting with a broad brush that encompasses "all white men". I believe she is making a point about white men who do not have a lot of experience dealing with women and minorities on a personal level. To me the key to understanding what she is saying is when she points out that there is no universal standard for what "wise" is or isn't. Many people consider a person who is wise to denote academic achievments alone. I believe that in the totality of her speech she is making the case that wisdom also comes from personal experience. She made the case pretty clearly earlier in the speech that there have been studies that show that women and minorities as judges rule differently than their white male counterparts on the whole. And even in what I quoted she points out that all male courts did not vote against sexual or racial discrimination until 1972 yet they were seen as "wise men".
Now for me its hard to see how anyone can say that this is an absolutist statement especially when she makes allowances that it isn't. Let me quote it again to reiterate.
I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable.
What she is saying is that on the other hand there are also many "wise white men" who do NOT have the capacity for understanding the values and needs of minorities and women for a variety of reasons that she lays out, that a woman who is also minority and has had a wealth of experience with other minorities and women wouldn't be hindered by when judging cases.
And if the problem ISN'T that she is pigeon holing every white man then are we REALLY going to argue against decades of precedent that shows that white men have on the Supreme Court have in fact affirmed that discrimination based on race or sex or sexuality was in fact perfectly fine under the constitution?
What can I say about Michael Steele that hasn't been said before. Honestly after watching Steele wingnut out on FoxNews for the better part of last year, when his name was mentioned as a candidate to chair the RNC I thought it would be a great move.....for Democrats. But I have to admit that even I couldn't have predicted the lengths to which this man would go to help out the Democratic Party. His prolific "foot in mouth" disease is the gift that keeps on giving and it seems he just can't help himself. Having said that I believe that yesterday he out did himself.
First of all I think everyone would acknowledge that if the Republican Party is ever to make a comeback it will need to make inroads into two constituencies that they have not done well with lately, women and minorities. You would think that outreach to those two voting blocks would be one of the chief goals of any new chairman of the RNC. And you know what, maybe it is a goal of Michael Steele, but as usual he has a very odd way of showing it.
Every Friday Steele guest hosts Bill Bennett's radio show. For that reason quite a few liberal and progressive watchdog groups tune in on Friday to catch the gaffes that they at this point can assume the very reliable Steele will give them. So yesterday he presented his fans and foes with this ditty:
STEELE: The problem that we have with this president is that we don’t know [Obama]. He was not vetted, folks. … He was not vetted, because the press fell in love with the black man running for the office. “Oh gee, wouldn’t it be neat to do that? Gee, wouldn’t it make all of our liberal guilt just go away? We can continue to ride around in our limousines and feel so lucky to live in an America with a black president.” Okay that’s wonderful, great scenario, nice backdrop. But what does he stand for? What does he believe? … So we don’t know. We just don’t know.
Now just because I am a black man doesn't mean I can speak for all other minorities, obviously. However I can say for me that one of the things that pisses me off is when someone implies that the only reason I or any other minorities achieved a level of excellence is because of the color of our skin. It gives the impression that OBVIOUSLY no minority could make it on their own merits, they simply MUST have been helped by some mythical "white liberal guilt". And yet here is Michael Steele trying to further that notion in order to try to delegitimize President Obama, our first black President. But the problem of course is that this notion exists not only in politics but also in the business world. And many minorities have experienced a touch of this in their personal life. The wondering about whether we were "affirmative action" hires. The whispers about our abilities match up with our white counterparts. When Steele says these things on the radio you have to wonder if he thinks that this is the way forward to bring more minorities into the fold of the Republican Party. But then you remember that this is a guy who doesn't "think" much apparently before he speaks.
But Mike Steele wasn't content to just potentially offend minorities yesterday. You see the RNC also put up an attack ad against Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi which was supposed to hit her for saying the CIA lies to Congress "all the time" last week. Now I would like to be able to show you the ad so you could have a frame of reference to how offensive it was but it has since been taken down. But have no fear, Politco has a scathing criticism of the ad up, a criticism that may well have been the very reason why the RNC under Steele's leadership decided to take the ad down.
But when you see Nancy Pelosi, the Republican National Committee wants you to think “Pussy Galore.”
At least that’s the takeaway from a video released by the committee this week – a video that puts Pelosi side-by-side with the aforementioned villainess from the 1964 James Bond film “Goldfinger.”
The RNC video, which begins with the speaker’s head in the iconic spy-series gun sight, implies that Pelosi has used her feminine wiles to dodge the truth about whether or not she was briefed by the CIA on the use of waterboarding in 2002. While the P-word is never mentioned directly, in one section the speaker appears in a split screen alongside the Bond nemesis – and the video’s tagline is “Democrats Galore.”
The wisdom of equating the first woman speaker of the House with a character whose first name also happens to be among the most vulgar terms for a part of the female anatomy might be debated – if the RNC were willing to do so, which it was not. An RNC spokesperson refused repeated requests by POLITICO to explain the point of the video, or the intended connection between Pelosi and Galore.
But what isn’t open to debate is that the waterboarding conflict has been accompanied by a cascade of attacks on the speaker, not as a leader or a legislator, but as a woman.
Earlier this week, Pittsburgh radio host Jim Quinn referred to the speaker on his program as “this bitch”; last week, syndicated radio host Neal Boortz opined “how fun it is to watch that hag out there twisting in the wind.”
There has also been a steady stream of taunts about the speaker’s appearance, and whether it’s been surgically enhanced. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said, “I think if Speaker Pelosi were still capable of human facial expression, we’d see she’d be embarrassed.”
Even erstwhile presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee took the time to pen a poem that begins:
“Here's a story about a lady named Nancy / A ruthless politician, but dressed very fancy.”
One might argue that face-lift and fashion gibes are just sauce for the goose these days – especially given the president’s crack about John Boehner’s perma-tan during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
But “hag”? The P-word? Really?
Not only is it bad form, say Democrats and women’s advocates, it’s bad politics. “
They can’t seem to distinguish between a backroom smirk among the boys and something you put out in public,” says former Hillary Clinton senior adviser Ann Lewis of the RNC video.
“It’s an attempt to demean your opponent, rather than debate them. If they’re serious that this is an issue of national security, then you’d think that one would want to debate it on the merits,” she says. “It’s almost as if they can’t help themselves.”
Now make no mistake, I generally don't have a problem with a political ad being a parody or an attempt at humor. But its hard to see this ad as anything other than a hamfisted attack on Speaker Pelosi's femininity. While I support Speaker Pelosi on most issues and I truly believe that she has been honest while discussing the CIA briefings I will be the first one to admit that her handling of the subject was bungled last week in her press conference. There was plenty of fertile ground for the RNC to attack her on the substance of her response, yet they decided to forgo all of that and just go to her looks and "feminine wiles". Seriously. Now I don't imagine that this ad would have offended ALL women in the middle, but I do believe it would have offended many of them. And Michael Steele still decided to put the ad out at a time when the Republican Party is bleeding members from almost every demographic. Way to build that big tent buddy.
Nothing is ever set in stone when it comes to politics and anything can happen between now and the midterms and between now and the next Presidential election in four years, but at some point Michael Steele and the RNC might want to realize that they need PEOPLE to win elections. As long as he keeps pulling this kind of stuff the issues might not even matter. If you can't get enough voters to like your party enough to vote for it's candidates then you won't win many elections. Its just that simple.
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