Letters to the Editor
Ricardo Malocchio
Published Letters: 197 Editor's Choice: 3
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Yellow-dog, I think that's true for a substantial number of purported HRC-McCain supporters...
[Read the article: McCain advisor woos Clinton supporters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...such as the subject of the piece we're responding to, dear Lady Rothschild (and such a populist sounding name!).
But I don't believe this is true for folks like jebldmm. I may have my doubts that we'd ever be able to convince them to support the Democratic nominee, but I heartily believe it's worth trying. More than that, I believe we have a responsibility to this constituency. They are not all GOPs-in-sheep's-clothing, and many are not resigned to simply retire to the sidelines like Rosenkevalier. This election may turn out just like Bush-Gore, the result turning on a handful of votes, and it would be an abject shame if we didn't make an attempt to win every winnable one.
Judith Warner's op-ed/blog in today's NYT is the sort of argument that might be persuasive to a small minority of these voters: http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/trust-buster/index.html
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Trust Buster
“Viewed purely in the abstract, I think there can be no question that women should have equal rights with men,” Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his college senior essay, in the spring of 1880.
John McCain, who last week named Roosevelt as the model for his particular maverick brand of reformist, environmentalist, Big Stick conservatism, has a very similar take on the question of women’s equality.
He, too, is all for it – in the abstract.
“I am committed to making sure that there is equal pay for equal work, that there is equal opportunity in every aspect of our society and in our economy,” he said last Friday, capping off the presidential campaign’s Week of the Woman with a “women only” town hall meeting in Hudson, Wisc. “Women in America not only take care of their children, manage the household budgets and balance the pressures of work and family, they also run many of the enterprises that keep our economy running.”
He is committed, he added on his campaign bus, “to encourage the participation of women in all walks of life and make sure that any barriers to their advancement are eliminated.”
That’s all good, in the abstract.
In real life, it’s another story.
McCain has opposed legislation aimed at helping women sue in cases of pay discrimination on the grounds that it could make businesses vulnerable to frivolous lawsuits. He criticized Barack Obama’s latest woman-friendly proposals — guaranteed sick days and more family leave — as “big-government” extravagances. He has voted to restrict women’s access not just to abortion but to birth control and affordable prenatal health care, and — though his own memory failed him in recalling this last week — he voted against legislation that would have required insurance companies to include contraceptives as part of their prescription drug coverage.
In other words, he has time after time put up roadblocks to any legislative measures that could help make women’s abstract equality a reality. While that’s standard Republican politics, it’s not really the stuff of a maverick — particularly not one who’s now trying his darndest, via the surrogacy work of former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina, to woo Hillary Clinton’s most die-hard female supporters.
What excuse is there, in 2008, for a politician who pretends to be a great friend to women while continuing to block any possible legislative changes that might actually improve women’s lives?
The wink-wink excuse for McCain’s hypocrisy, for the contradictions between his good-guy persona and not-so-good-guy politics, is that he has to hold his nose and keep his bread buttered with the religious right. Another explanation is that, like our current good-guy president, McCain is a man blinded by ideology – in this case, by that rough-rider rugged individualism thing that he so admires and that is so inimical to real, functional gender equality.
Or it could be something else, something much more basic at work, something that, I think, showed very clearly in McCain’s expression last week, as he fought, more or less successfully, to suppress a joke and the naughtiest bit of a giggle after reporters demanded a response to remarks by Fiorina in which the clearly unscripted surrogate had complained about the unfairness of health insurers reimbursing Viagra but not birth control.
You could see it in his mouth, in his eyes as, for a full five seconds, McCain worked to remake a face that said, Give me a break, will you? Don’t you know that I just don’t care?.
McCain, as he casts for votes among Hillary’s last angry hold-outs, seems to be banking upon finding women who are similarly lukewarm to their interests.
Let’s hope that he’s wrong.
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In jebdddlmms' defense...
[Read the article: National Review writer compares Obama to Hitler]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]She never mentioned Nazis. Rather "totalitarian regimes":
Jebbledybmm: "The "O-Ba-Ma" chant is too over the top for the liking of many. The first time I heard that I couldn't believe that a U.S. candidate was allowing this to happen at rallies. Haven't they studied history? Looked at videos of rallies under totalitarian regimes?"
HILL-AH-REE! HILL-AH-REE! HILL-AH-REE! HILL-AH-REE! HILL-AH-REE!