GOP ‘War on Women’ Wrong Card for Dems to Play

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

Prior to the 2014 midterm election, in a political landscape defined by an unpopular president and an angry electorate, Democrats replayed one of their 2012 micro-issue distractions in a desperate attempt to get out their vote and minimize losses.

Once again, Democrats accused the Republicans of "sexism;" of conducting a "war on women."

The Democratic Party’s "war on women" strategy has always been silly and intellectually dishonest, a form of lazy categorical thinking designed to mobilize low-information voters. It has now proven to be ineffectual as well.

Republican women had a terrific midterm election.

A farm kid and farmer, Joni Ernst became the first woman from Iowa — from either party — to be elected to the United States Senate. She defeated Rep. Bruce Braley, a trial lawyer who made campaign statements Iowa voters found to be obnoxious. Ernst will also be the first female combat veteran to serve in the Senate.

Ernst is the embodiment of a genuine "feminist," a capable woman who doesn’t need a fainting couch when certain otherwise benign but somehow "objectionable" words are uttered.

West Virginia also elected its first female senator. Shelley Moore Capito defeated Democrat Natalie Tennant to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

Both seats flipped from Democrat to Republican.

Ernst and Capito will join Republican Senators Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire), Susan Collins (Maine), Deb Fischer (Nebraska) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in the 2015 Senate majority.

Republican women candidates also did well in House races.

Barbara Comstock won the 10th Congressional District in Virginia against John Foust. Foust stumbled when it was discovered that his wife’s Ob-Gyn practice does not accept Medicaid — a real "war on (poor) women."

Elise Stefanik won New York’s 21st District to became, at 30, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

A Utah district elected Mia Love to become the first black female Republican ever elected to serve in the House.

Comstock, Stefanik and Love will join 23 other Republican women members in the majority GOP House caucus.

The Republican women come from both red and blue states, including many in the South that Democrats would have Americans believe suppress women and minorities.

Democrats won’t learn from the 2014 results because they believe that tired tropes like "war on women" motivate low-propensity voters to turn out at the polls. They will assume that the same silliness will work again in 2016.

One suspects that, before Democrats give them up, such asinine tactics must fail in a presidential year.

If Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton and use the same tired "war on women" rhetoric, they will finally abandon it, because Clinton won’t win.

Tim Cavanaugh wrote at National Review: "I predict Bill (Clinton) will find ways to undermine Hillary’s presidential hopes so Machiavellian we will need to invent new words for them. And he’ll do it for the purest of reasons: because deep down, he hates her."

Cavanaugh may have nailed it.

Bill Clinton personifies a real war on women.

http://www.ldnews.com/opinion/ci_26962847/gop-war-women-wrong-card-dems-play-2014