Despite the pandering of Eric Cantor’s “Young Guns Woman Up” campaign, and the dutiful diatribes of conservative female pundits, many conservative women are trading GOP extremism for a Democratic President who understands that social issues are equally important to many voters.
A testament to Conservatives’ ignorance and trivialization of the female vote at the GOP convention was the Woman Up! Pavilion, sponsored by the Young Guns Network; a predictable exercise in reducing women’s interests to hair-dos and shopping, where according to the New York Times:
“Its décor is welcoming, with curved banquettes accented by hot-pink carnations and red roses. There is a hair salon offering blowouts, and a gift shop. Cocktails like the Lady Lemonade and Woman-Tini are sold for $6.”
Lady Lemonade? Woman-tini? Seriously? Seriously?
Absent from the “Women’s Pavillion” was any reference to issues like contraception or gay marriage. Mary Ann Carter, policy director for the Young Guns Network told the Times:
“We don’t talk social issues.”
No surprise there; in fact, according to the Times:
With the intention of appealing to voters beyond the party’s base, many Republican women are simply avoiding the mention of abortion or gay rights because they are seen as too divisive in such a close, contentious race. Some acknowledge deliberately playing down their own views as a strategic move.
Kristen Soltis 28, a pollster and an adviser to Crossroads Generation, a pro-Romney super PAC, told the Times she:
“…is personally in favor of same-sex marriage but is opposed to abortion. She says she tends not to focus the party platform, and hopes that one day it might shift to the center again, at least on social issues.”
And one day Kristen, you’ll all ride unicorns to the end of the rainbow and find a pot of gold, too.
There are however, Republican women who place great importance on the social issues in their lives, along with jobs and the economy; who couldn’t care less about the pink salons and silly baubles that epitomize the conservative view of women. As Veracity Stew reports:
“Lifelong Republican women, who are self-described moderate conservatives, have become disenchanted with the new face and new direction of their party. What specifically is driving these women away from the Romney/Ryan ticket? We’ll give you a hint: extremism.
These are not just college-age women who are representative of the “youth vote”; some have voted for every Republican candidate since Reagan; others since the first George Bush. Even the more youthful among them have been raised in staunchly Republican families and still cleave to their conservative values. While these women have made the decision to vote for Barack Obama in 2012, they find that they can do so without checking those values at the door.”
Some day the Republican Party will be forced to admit that the female vote didn’t slip away, they traded it for extremist religious kooks and “angry white guys”.
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