The Gathering Storm of Republican Women

When Sen. Olympia Snowe commented this week on translating the "empathy of your experience into legislation," she made a profound statement on what is currently missing in American politics. The pinnacle of such indifference to the average citizen's plight is seen today in the partisan stalling of health care. You would think that our leaders would want the U.S. to improve its ranking of 37th in the world for health care, and to ensure that families are not destroyed by lack of affordable insurance. Yet the Republican Party's stubborn adherence to partisanship on this issue is not only harming Americans while ignoring the public majority. It is alienating a huge portion of the party -- Republican women -- and is giving rise to impending revolt.

One of the beauties of traveling across the country to train women to lead at a time when their experience as women is sorely needed, is that you pick up on the stories and trends that are lying below the media's radar, yet are on the cusp of erupting onto the national stage. Since The White House Project trains women of all political leanings to run for office and assume leadership, I am fortunate to have my finger on the pulse of our nation's women - and the tolerance of many Republican women for their party is drawing to an angered end.

This summer, for example, I met with a group of prominent women after a speaking engagement in the South. They had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Republican male candidates and had helped to put President Bush into The White House, yet the party that they worked so hard to support was increasingly turning its back on them. They were sick and tired of the conservative positions on choice that their party continued to hold their daughters' lives and our country hostage to. While they have little intention to leave the party, they know their party has already left them. And now, they are joining their Republican sisters across the U.S. and plotting a rebellion.

They are looking to elect women like Mary Louise Smith of Iowa, the former Party Chair under Bush senior and my mentor while serving on the Des Moines City Council. Together, we lobbied the Iowa legislature on issues of choice and childcare. We created the Women's School at Drake University that offered courses ranging from management training to dual-career families to dealing with underemployment of women by race and class. Mary Louise and I may have had our political differences, but we agreed on basic rights and resources; and like most of the women who led in the party at the time, she was socially progressive if fiscally conservative.

When I questioned Mary Louise as to why she was a Republican when our values and issues were so similar, she responded if I knew what was going on in her party, I would kiss her feet for being there. She saw the earlier storm of far right clouds gathering, and as a result, I watched from a distance as her influence shrunk and a value system she had spent her best years building was put to rest as she was.

Yet there are a growing number of women in Mary Louise's image out there, and they are intent on renovating their party to better reflect the needs of America's women and families. They are furious that men like Sen. John Kyl are fighting against maternity coverage, and that of the paltry seventeen women who serve in the Senate and 74 who serve in the House, only four and seventeen, respectively, are Republicans.

Like Sen. Snowe said earlier this week, her focus is on "the practical mechanics and real-life things. This is not a parlor game for me." While the comment applied to her health care vote, it also signifies women's general position in political leadership. Women of both parties are committed to advancing solutions despite the political risks, and are watching as Sen. Snowe leads in crossing the aisle on behalf of Americans' well being. If her fellow Republicans intend to punish her for taking leadership on our behalf, they will effectively pull the plug among their party's women that is barely holding their fury in tow.

 

 

Follow Marie Wilson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/twhp

Comments

[Openeyes]

Your assessment may be true, but if so, it is only for a handful of Republican women.

The Republican base is still almost rabidly anti-choice, and extremely doctrinaire. Your argument is like saying the moderates in the party are plotting rebellion - fine, but the moderates in the Republican party can all fit around one large table, as I suspect, is true for the Republican women you describe, and that's not likely to produce a rebellion.

The leaders of the party seem intent on Stalinist purges, claiming the reason the party is not succeeding is that it is not "conservative" enough, or that it's conservative message is just not being heard. That's certainly true for Sarah Palin, and I don't see a groundswell of Republican women claiming to disagree with her. The base is content to demonize any Obama initiative as socialism or communism. Where does that leave the women you describe? It seems unlikely they will gain any traction trying to move off of those messages.

I'd like to know who you had in mind when you said "like most of the women who led in the party at the time, she was socially progressive if fiscally conservative" - I'm not aware of any party leaders, female or male who were "socially progressive" in recent memory - you'd probably have to go back to the Rockefelle­r/Goldwate­r days for that.

[iconoclast6]

Interesting commentary, but in this case I think false consciousness trumps any dissatisfaction that women in the G0P might feel. Many intellectuals in the party, be they women or men, no doubt feel the same frustration at being hijacked by Cheneybush and then by Be.ck, Lim.βlubber, and the rest. But what of the base? The G0P has been very effectively using religion to control its faithful. I fear that the majority of women in the rank and file, "know their place" as second.cla­ss.citizen­s and think they are doing Dog's will by accepting a platform that benefits white male billionaires.

[stuckinredstate]

Republican women need to reassess why they are still Republicans....does the good ole boys network work for you? Or maybe the female side is something you are proud of..:Palin, Cheney, Bachmann....who speaks for you??

[The Meek]

I know a respectable Republican woman very well. She asked me if I thought that McCain was smart enough to be president. I said, "No." She said, "I don't think so either. I said, Are You going to vote for him." She said, "Yes." I said, "Why." She said "Because I'm a Republican."

Political party before country.

If woman really were smarter than men, America could turn itself around very quickly.

[Mabo]

Yes...instead, she should have voted for the smart democrat that would work against most of the issues that she agreed with. If you believe that, then you are not that smart. It amazes me to hear democrats knock republicans for not being "smart" and voting for President Obama when that would be the stupidest thing they could do.
How many liberals, if they thought that their candidate wasn't good enough, would vote for the candidate of the opposite party that holds beliefs that are the opposite of what they believe? The answer is none...and you know it.
It is not always political party before country...most of the time it is political beliefs before jumping on the bandwagon (while voting against what you believe).

By the way...I know a lot of democrats that are democrats for one reason only...because their family have been democrats for years. That is just as ignorant.

[GreatNews27]

Oh, please! Republican women do what they are told to do by Republcican men. They have no minds of their own or they wouldn't be Republicans. Look at Liz Cheney. She does what daddy tells her to do. And Snowe? She's just another spokesmodel for big business. God would have it no other way.

[williamwilliam]

As the first televised shots of Shock and Awe flickered on an overhead Televisoin in a corporate lobby, I stood next to a rapt Valkyrie who had paused to attend the glory flashing before us both on the screen.

I said out loud, not to her, but also to any passing divinity who might care to dirty his or her hands in the affairs of man, 'Those are children who are being killed'.

In the space between her ears, a moment of dissonance, then all was well.

'Still, it has to be done', she had said.

Cry me a river, Republican Women.

[krechsd]

A great sentiment. If only it were true. Unfortunately, I see no evidence that Repug women are any less greedy, hateful or crazy than Repug men.

[keepemhonest]

Also, the bulk of the Republican woman I have seen - in Congress & advocates for their party - are equally as unintelligent as their male pals.

[S1m0n]

"When I questioned Mary Louise as to why she was a Republican when our values and issues were so similar, she responded if I knew what was going on in her party, I would kiss her feet for being there."

If she and women like her weren't there, it wouldn't matter what was going on in party.

[cordyc]

If one is a fiscal conservative, why would you be a rethug? They spend money like drunken sailors.

[Freesia2]

Hey, if they can find a way to utterly surprise the GOP men and become a catalyst to pull the GOP away from the borderline depravity that now defines that party - more power to them. As an Independent, I like a ying and yang and a give and take in politics. We need a viable opposition party. Maybe women will take the reigns over there.

But I would caution that if they, as women, don't take to task the GOP women like the histrionic Bachmann's and con artists like Palin, then they're sunk before they start. Women like that are trying to brand themselves as the face of Republican women leadership. Olympia and friends need to be the first to call women like that the jokes that they are while they're also outpacing a Boehner and a Wilson. Otherwise, they're always going to viewed as "just" Republicans. And that's becoming a dead end road as each day passes no matter the gender.

[WorkingClass]

Republican women are like black or gay Republicans. It's difficult understand what motivates them. With all due respect, I doubt Republican women will assert themselves but will rather continue to do as they are told. They are what they are.

[Freesia2]

You have a point.

I wonder if it's the kind of thing that will take a generation or two more. You see people like John McCain's daughter out speaking in contradition, and being pretty blunt about it. It might take a younger generation to actually be what Olympia's generation couldn't quite manage. Anger and frustration as Marie Wilson describes it might be a catalyst, especially from a more liberated group of young women who aren't used to taking marching orders and bristle at the expectation. Sort of the "h#ll hath no fury like a woman scorned" syndrome. :-)