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The Spectacle Blog
Democrats think they’re on to something, and they’re not giving up on their latest “divide and conquer” tactic, straight out of their century-long “Progressive” playbook (along with Saul Alinsky’s manual for the left) that aims to gain and keep political power by causing certain Americans to dislike or distrust other Americans.
Whether it’s pitting whites against non-whites, the rich against the not-rich, the old against the not-old (through Medi-scare arguments), or — as has been the subject of the latest full-court press — women against Republicans (because, presumably, all Republicans are men), the left’s electoral strategy is one of inculcating hate among the citizens. So much for their vaunted tolerance and diversity.
As if the reprehensible fundamental nature of the Democrats’ strategy isn’t enough, the tactics may even be worse, because Democrats can only claim a GOP “war on women” with distortions and lies. A big question remains whether women will believe it; unfortunately, many independent women voters pay only superficial attention to politics. This means that they’re likely to hear the omnipresent Democrat claims but less likely to hear explanations of how outrageous those claims are.
This past Sunday on CNN, Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz laid down a barrage of rhetoric pitting women against Republicans, talking about “turning back the clock for women” and suggesting that Republicans are not concerned about rape.
And on a recent episode of “Justice with Judge Jeanine” on Fox News, Democrat strategist Chris Hahn said that Mitt Romney and other Republican presidential candidates want to “ban contraception.”
Chris Hahn is confused about many things, but even he must know that this is an outright lie. Even Rick Santorum has not suggested such a thing — which is not to say that he’s a big fan of birth control.
Democrats are doing this because they believe it’s working. And indeed it may be. A recent Gallup poll suggests Republicans doing badly among independent women. My hunch is that the current situation is not nearly as dire as that one poll suggests, but that this is a real potential problem for Republicans. (It also shows why it is so wildly unlikely that Rick Santorum could win a general election. He personifies what the left perceives and would portray as a conservative attack on social gains by women.)
Mitt Romney, in an effort to lock up the nomination, has drifted to the right, saying things about himself like “severely conservative” which will be replayed incessantly during the general election season.
Unaffiliated women voters — to the consternation of many politically active conservative women — think little about principle, and more about how much government will take care of them and their families (for those who are not single, urban women, at least.) Thus, words like “severe” are not winners with that group.
To win them back, and to overcome the Democrat strategy of division fueled by tactics of lies, Mitt Romney (assuming he will be the nominee) will have to explain that the real “war on women” is really a Democratic “war on families”, with the policies of this president and the Democrats in Congress raising the prices of health care and gasoline so much that moms can no longer afford a wide range of things that they’d want for their children: Whether it’s better food, a family vacation, a better education, a different doctor, a bigger car, or anything else that moms (and dads) typically care about, Barack Obama has made it less affordable. What’s worse, they have done so intentionally, particularly with fuel prices.
It will not be the easiest political sale to make, but the patrician Mitt Romney will need to make voters, and especially women, think that he understands and cares about them more than Democrats do — despite not supporting policies that claim to give everything to everyone for free — another key pillar in the Democrats’ duplicitous strategy for the last 100 years.
One thing that makes the argument even more difficult is that Democrats, boosted by the “mainstream” media, demand to be judged on their claimed intentions, regardless of the devastating actual outcomes caused by their policies. Conservatives look to be judged on results, but as long as the Democrats and the media portray the GOP as “mean,” it will be an uphill battle to beat Barack Obama — a sad commentary on the American electorate (and especially on unaffiliated women voters) given the destruction the man is wreaking on the foundation of our republic.
View all comments (21) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Ross Kaminsky
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/04/09/war-on-women-rhetoric-shows-th
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Ken (Old Texican)| 4.9.12 @ 10:37AM
Ross, let's begin discussing what precisely we shall do if Obama is re-elected.
I personally will become the proverbial stubborn mule. I shall sit down in the traces, and the takers in the wagon will either get out and go to work...or get very hungry.
Am I correct that some 50% of the country is on the government dole?
I can forsee a huge percentage of business owners sitting down in their traces.
I know LOT of medical doctors will.
Our "conservative message" will not have much effect against a govt. check each month to millions of voters.
So what do we do?
Ken (Old Texican)| 4.9.12 @ 10:43AM
PERHAPS... our message should be much clearer...ie: "If you re-elect Obama...your govt. checks and foodstamps dry up!"
Ross Kaminsky | 4.9.12 @ 10:49AM
Ken,
You're absolutely right about the question. How do you get people to vote against their getting stuff for "free"?
With women, you have to make them understand that the "free" stuff is destroying their children's futures by saddling them with debt, by wrecking health care, even by making college unaffordable.
Of course the left will say "we'll take care of it by giving you money", so again it's a very difficult case to make, especially in a country which has drifted so far from thinking about the constitution.
Philip Johnson| 4.9.12 @ 10:59AM
Ken,
Although living in Colorado now I, too, am an old Texican and understand your sentiments exactly. But I'm also one of those medical doctors that you mention, and I can assure you that the vast majority of us currently in practice spent the first thirty-five or so years of our lives to get to the point that we can be doctors. Do you think that we can just "sit down in the traces?" I'd love to pull an Ayn Rand stunt and simply not show up to work, but guess what; I can't! So as Obamacare comes screaming down the pike I personally have no choice but to take whatever pittance the government bureaucrats want to throw my way, swallow the bitter pill of committee diktats on how to practice medicine, and live with it.
I as so many other conservative Americans am disheartened at the effectiveness of the Progressive propaganda machine which has sweetly sung the sirens' song of welfare-state big government to the American electorate since the days of Woodrow Wilson. But after 125 years of the barrage from the left one looks at the big government Republicans running for President this year and realizes that we have pretty much lost the battle for this country. (And, no, I'm not a Ron Paul Libertarian, but I must admit he sounds better and better to me all the time.)
Al Adab| 4.9.12 @ 12:09PM
Our Dr. who had us sign waivers refusing medicare billing for his service just decided to retire and has left the practice. I cannot believe he is the only one who will take such a course.
I agree (as usual) with Ken, the temptation to "sit in the traces" is a strong one. We will each have to decide if there is anything of the nation worth fighting for or if we can just maintain our own liberties as best we can panding the deluge.
As to the War against Women, wait until the DEM attack machine goes into full battle mode over Mormon theology and the role of women. It will not be pretty.
Ken (Old Texican)| 4.9.12 @ 12:36PM
Doctor Johnson,
thank you for your commitment to your patients.
God bless.
I work with a broad cross section of medical doctors nation wide. Most of them cannot keep their practice afloat should Obamacare come into full force.
OK...
bottom line: if Obamacare goes into full effect, we ALL work for the government...or starve if we don't.
Texas will refuse the Obamacare mandates...Without Texas the United States cannot survive.
www.americaalonesaidno.com
Ross,
thank you for your response.
Bob| 4.9.12 @ 11:14AM
Ask any good conservative father what he would do if his daughter was raped. HINT: The mainstream media would portray the rapist as a normal teen who didn't deserve to be killed.
The war on women rhetoric may be working, but the Trayvon Martin rhetoric is definitely working. I suspected as soon as Obama put his smug mug on the story that this was all about giving Democrats the black vote by telling blacks that Republicans are evil white men. Sharpton is taking care of the fear-mongering, and a story I read about Easter messages for Trayvon also mentioned that churches across the country were holding voter registration drives.
You don't say...
Indy| 4.9.12 @ 11:31AM
"Unaffiliated women voters -- to the consternation of many politically active conservative women -- think little about principle, and more about how much government will take care of them and their families"
please stop with the stereotypes, aren't all Americans concerned about gas / food prices?
"The war on women rhetoric may be working, but the Trayvon Martin rhetoric is definitely working."
Wait and see how this may backfire, at some point, let's learn the facts. Do you think Americans who happen to be of Hispanic origin will sit back and continue to say nothing if the Black Panthers become violent as they are publically stating? Zimmerman may or may not be guilty, let's go through the judicial process and not convict this man in the press as the Left (yes, including the Left media) has done.
The Black Panthers will become a problem for this Administration if they continue to let them make threats and it leads to violence. FBI, where are you? Perhaps you are spending too much time reading emails of innocent Americans, listen to those making real threats, they are on tape, will you let them get away with it?
fiscal| 4.9.12 @ 12:13PM
We are such a divided country that ALL sides lie -- liberals, conservatives, libertarians, etc. This is done to appeal to the bases of each segment in order to get votes. What's worse, each of the bases believe the lies whether it is that Republicans have a war on women or that Obama is a Muslim and the healthcare bill will kill Grandma. The left says that we need more stimulus and the right believes that tax cuts will stimulate growth -- neither is true. The Ryan budget is a lie because it can't work and there are no details and the Dems have no budget.
Whenever we actually get solutions that might work, like Simpson-Bowles, neither side wants it because it is more important to demonize the other side than to have a solution that might actually work.
But perhaps the biggest problem, is that once these yokels on both sides get into office the laws they actually pass (you have to get past the rhetoric) are basically the same because their major goal is to get re-elected -- not to govern.
As I've said before, rational government which approaches issues using more analytical approaches, favors fiscal conservatism. Perhaps if the Republican party would stop pandering to the religious right we'd see a huge majority party and Obama would be put out of office.
Republicans used to be the party of realistic thinking, now they are a party of non-truthful ideology. The Dems have always been the party of paying for votes through government give-a-ways.
And let's stop this nonsense about the "MSM". Fox News is the mainstream media as they have as many viewers as CNN and MSNBC combined. If you add talk radio, the hard right is extremely well represented. I guess this is just another lie.
albert constantine jr.| 4.9.12 @ 12:51PM
Once again, you represent a fact as a truthful conclusion, and call the opposite a lie.
While many of Fox's programs have a viewership equal to the combined viewership of CNN and MSNBC, these are far from the Mainstream Media's only outlets. How many people get their only news from the broadcast news networks, i.e. NBC, ABC and CBS (the same outlets caught doctoring objective 911 tapes to create a different message in weeks past)? Take that number, add it to those who only read their local newspaper (Gannett, AP, UPI, Reuters, etc), and tell me what that equals.
Even if 20 million listeners tune in to Rush Limbaugh each week, it means that more than 280 million Americans aren't exposed to his message. While their is no one on the left who comes close to what individual conservative or right wing radio broadcasters draw, their ubiquity and dominance of the failing print media and the broadcast news is what is described as the Main Stream Media, and their audience is still very significant, and I would venture much larger than is reached by conservative cable news or talk radio.
albert constantine jr.| 4.9.12 @ 12:52PM
"While their is no one "
would be better said as "there is no one"
fiscal| 4.9.12 @ 1:12PM
I don't know where you get your numbers (i.e., you don't), but network news in total is about 16 million viewers per day and about 22 million separate viewers per week as most viewers watch the news every night. Fox News is about 2.5 million per day and about 6 or so million per week -- as much as all other cable news outlets combined. Conservative talk radio hits about 30 million listeners per week. So, Albert, you need to do some analysis rather than telling lies.
The fact is that the vast majority of people in the U.S. don't listen to news programs and that's where your analysis has problems.
David W| 4.9.12 @ 2:38PM
There are those who get no news at all. I have a friend totally unaware of what is happening, doesn't read the paper, or watch the news (not sure what she watches). Yet over dinner a few months ago thought it was a shame that we weren't building more wind turbines.
These are the people who vote for Obama for they pay no attention to the person who pulls back the curtain. Their attention is focused on the image of the Great Oz and nothing you can do will cause them to turn away.
albert constantine jr.| 4.9.12 @ 12:35PM
I had drinks last week with a former partner, his wife and two adult daughters. When the discussion turned to politics, the wife (who has a Ph.D. in Nursing and currently teaches the subject at a university level) talked about how much she loved Reagan, and how politicians like Sarah Palin and Romney are too extreme, unlike the moderate Gipper. She and her daughter then went on to claim a GOP state legislator in Arizona is trying to pass a law to allow employers to fire female employees who use birth control, and how corrupt Joe Arpaio was when they lived there.
When I challenged their assertions, they could cite no examples or details, and could not rebut any of the information that I put forth, but they kept referring to “e-mails” that they received, that told them that what they believed was true. In the face of opposition, they changed the subjects, and likely vowed not to discuss politics with me because it was too “emotional”.
The left has succeeded in communicating its message and corrupting the ability of many in our society to think critically and evaluate truths. Those of us on the right bicker amongst ourselves about what is a true conservative, what the left continues to manufacture the “mind-numbed” and convince them that we are what they need to be afraid of. Until we learn to communicate more effectively with those who don’t already agree with us, we are not likely to expand beyond our 40%, and may lose some along our margins, as well.
fiscal| 4.9.12 @ 1:20PM
So you are saying that you actually get the truth from Fox News and Rush????? Like I said before, there are lies on both sides of the isle. How many times on Fox News do we hear that Reagan raised taxes 11 times? Does that make him more moderate? You betcha!!!! Given Romney's past very moderate positions, it's hard to say he's really conservative, but his rhetoric NOW is far more hard right than Reagan. Palin is just intellectually challenged.
The right has also succeeded in corrupting many in our society to think critically by utilizing ideology over analysis and to berate math and science. I'd give an "F" to BOTH sides in this matter.
albert constantine jr.| 4.9.12 @ 10:06PM
Again, fiscal, your extremism rears its ugly head. You equate disagreement with your premise as a lie, and try to create a straw man by quoting a premise not put forth, and attempting to debunk it.
In my response to your 1113 am post, I suggested that more people watched network news than Fox. You cited figures in your response that, if accurate, prove my point i.e. six times more people watch network news than FNC on a daily basis. You then ignore the print media I referred to, and present no figures on talk radio that is not conservative, and somehow conclude I am lying.
Likewise, no where in my 1135 am post (or previously) do I indicate that I watch Fox or listen to Rush.
I lived through the Reagan administration; I don't need Fox or anyone to tell me what was taking place. I was reading it, watching or, and in some cases, participating in it.
You criticize others by suggesting that they fail to analyze, but your analysis fails once again. While I've never seen anyone hear berate math or real science (not the politicized version) in these blogs, I suggest you might add a course in logic sometime before drop/ add day.
albert constantine jr.| 4.9.12 @ 11:46PM
"anyone hear berate "
here, not hear (there, not their)
Oldefarte| 4.9.12 @ 2:18PM
Ross, I hate to sound SEXIST, but I guess I'll have to SOUND SEXIST! It was bad enough that Republicans [with Santorum leading their charge] bought right into the Democrats' box-canyoned C&P political propaganda over this recent HEALTHCARE DESTROYING CONTRACEPTION message, but on top of that these charletons like Oprah and Joy are out their blowing Obama's trumpet of BS and women are sadly influenced by same [they go off the cliff of sanity worse than Thelma & Louise]. Women in general do not listen as they should to voices such as Malkin, Palin, etc. It's truly sad but true. On top of that are the 'I FEEL YO PAIN' hucksters like Clinton and Obama out there speading their lying manure which women soak up by the bucketloads. I'll go to my grave wondering WHY????????
Trinacria| 4.9.12 @ 3:28PM
OF,
Against my better judgment, I'm going to take the precarious step of tip toeing up to the border of sexism and offer a hypothesis for the phenomenon you describe (I've grappled with the same issue on a number of occasions in an attempt to understand my own wife's tendency to take the liberal bait on social issues).
While this undoubtedly represents an over simplification of a complex issue, it seems to me that it boils down to a question of head vs. heart. If the dynamic in my own home is in any way representative of the population at large, many differences in opinion on political matters occur along the analytical vs. nurturing fault line. Despite the fact that she's an extremely bright and accomplished woman, I find that my wife will often instinctively gravitate towards the position that appears to be the represents the most compassionate and nurturing approach. Fortunately, she has the discipline and intellect to resist giving in to her initial instinct and almost always subjects her position to critical evaluation. Unfortunately, liberals have long since figured out that most of those who instinctively gravitate to the "compassionate" position will hold fast to it (because even entertaining the contrary view would be uncompassionate); armed with this knowledge, they frame their arguments accordingly.
The part I can't seem to figure out is why conservatives have failed to appeal to this same instinct in order to defend rational arguments. By way of example, when liberals brand conservative as uncompassionate sexists for opposing abortion, I have yet to hear a conservative point out that - by definition - at least half of the lives that they are fighting to defend are females. How can one be branded as "anti-female" for fighting to save female lives? Yet conservatives seem willing to allow the opposition to frame the debate and, in so doing, preclude any discussion of the issue on a rational basis.
Ross Kaminsky | 4.9.12 @ 5:22PM
I agree that (unaffiliated) women don't pay close attention to politics and policy. But I would also suggest that just as it's pointless to complain about media bias, when it comes to this the only response is to try to figure out better messaging strategies for the GOP to appeal to this group.
Ken (Old Texican)| 4.10.12 @ 8:24AM
Ross,
maybe another message we could massage: "$20 to drive to the grocery store? Ridiculous""