The GOP’s Problem with Women
This piece originally appeared October 19, 2020 in the Orlando Sentinel.
As polls continue to show that President Trump is failing to increase support with women voters, Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., did the President and his party no favors last week at the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
It was a missed opportunity for some gender and cross party maneuvering, but the Senator choose instead to stick with messaging about the nominee’s hard right record, positioning her as the long awaited standard bearer for a new generation of conservative women. It sounded like the Senator thought a large and eager group of conservative women were just waiting in the wings to come out and lock arms with someone like Judge Barrett, but hadn’t felt comfortable before her arrival. It was a not so subtle inference for all women that Judge Barrett, with seven kids and a well-documented record on faith and morality, was somehow a better fit for Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump’s GOP. One could only imagine Liz Cheney, R-WY, and Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, biting their lips on such a misfire.
While Judge Barrett’s accomplishments are certainly impressive, the South Carolina Senator’s praise for her seemed more grounded in his hope that she might somehow be a beacon of righteousness for women everywhere. He neglected to mention her potential impact on men in the trailblazing examples he hoped she’d set for conservatives and in that lies the problem. To make matters worse, other senators gave her accolades for mostly the wrong reasons – Barrett’s mothering skills, her well-mannered children, her minivan, and the fact that she could answer questions without notes. The fact that she was the executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review and an accomplished scholar came out, eventually, but women were left wondering if the car that a male nominee drives would ever be mentioned at a future hearing. And then, Senator Kennedy, R-LA, asked the question no male nominee has ever been asked — who does the laundry at your house? While Judge Barrett laughed, it wasn’t funny. It was, however, indicative of what the Republicans are doing wrong.
And, it was a reminder of a different communication strategy, a more hostile, but equally incorrect one, the Senator had at the Kavanaugh hearings when a different woman, Christine Blasey Ford, was in the same chair. That time, there were no comments on her car, her kids, her laundry, her PhD, or her impressive scholarship at Stanford. They were not deemed relevant to her credibility to testify that she had been sexually assaulted by the nominee three decades earlier. The media talking points hammered home a single message - the witness wasn’t credible. After all, she could not remember the color of the house or the month in which the attack occurred. Experts corroborated the normalcy of such small memory gaps for victims and the fact that women rarely lie about such attacks. Meanwhile, the President of the United States bullied the witness on twitter. Women watched. Hundreds of women gathered outside the capital to say they believed her. In the closest vote of a Supreme Court nominee in U.S. history, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed. Two years later, the President is still talking about how badly his nominee was treated. Wrong message for a candidate in trouble with women.
And, now he’s asking suburban women in Johnston, PA, “Will you please like me? I saved your damn neighborhoods, OK.”
Senator Graham, meanwhile, described Barrett’s hearings, as “an opportunity to not punch through a glass ceiling, but a reinforced concrete barrier around conservative women.” The obvious question is – who put them there?
Either way, President Trump, Senator Graham and those who have been fawning over minivans and well-mannered children this week would be well advised to add some substantive messaging tailored for women on healthcare, the economy, education, national security and oh yeah, the virus.