President George Bush has taken his lumps this year, but some good news has appeared on the horizon. The economy is picking up, the incumbent conservatives won in Britain, the Democrats seem to be hopelessly saddled with the Bill and Hillary sideshow, and the Washington Post has explained why Republicans don’t need to be afraid of the abortion issue.
Just a few short months ago, Bill Clinton thought his biggest problem was Gennifer Flowers, but now it turns out that it is his wife, Hillary, with whom he is trying to ride side by side into a “co-presidency.” As she boasted, “if you vote for him, you get me.”
Hillary’s statement on CBS 60 Minutes that “I’m not some little woman standing by her man like Tammy Wynette” must have been a calculated thrust. She was willing to alienate the millions of country music lovers in order to telegraph her assurance to the feminists that she is one of them.
Feminists sneer at the woman who stands by her vow “for better or worse, till death do us part.” A feminist makes her career advancement her top priority.
Hillary even refused to take her husband’s name until it became obvious that this flaunting of feminism contributed to his defeat for Governor in 1980. Now, as her aggressive feminism reveals itself on television, the more we see of Hillary, the better we like Barbara Bush.
The cookie gaffe illustrates Hillary’s personality even more clear1y. Instead of responding factually to a question about conflict of interest between her law firm and the Governor’s office, She answered with a typical feminist putdown of fulltime homemakers: “suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas.”
This wasn’t just a slip of the tongue. Ms. Hillary’s principal avocation has been to serve as chair of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), the chief organization lobbying for federally regulated daycare for preschool children, a.k.a. taxpayer-funded babysitting.
Hillary and the CDF have the elitist mind-set that little children should be raised and regulated by social service professionals instead of by their own mothers (who are presumably not educated enough to do anything more important than baking cookies).
For three years CDF carried on a tremendous media and lobbying campaign to get Congress to pass the so-called ABC bill to set up a Commissioner of Child Care in the Department of Health and Human Services in charge of daycare for all children, middle-class as well as prior. The sponsor was Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), who has no children of his own but aspired to be the Big Daddy of federal daycare.
Fulltime homemakers reacted vigorously to the patronizing attitude that fulltime mothers are an anachronism in the ’90s and that what they do is of little significance. Smart politicians realized that there was no public demand for a federal nanny, and so even the current liberal Congress rejected the extravagant Swedish-style ABC bill.
Hillary is also an advocate of the “children’s rights” movement. That’s an off-the-wall ideology that promotes giving the government the authority to interfere in family decisions by asserting a child’s right to sue his parents on such issues as schooling, abortion, medical care, and employment.
The feminists had a big rally in favor of legal abortion last week in Washington. The Washington Post’s survey on who was doing the demonstrating shows clearly why George Bush and the Republicans can stop worrying about the abortion issue in the upcoming elections.
Only 5 percent identified themselves as Republican, while 59 percent identified themselves as Democrat. Only 4 percent identified themselves as conservative, whereas 79 percent identified themselves as liberal or very liberal.
One third of the demonstrators said that they had attended a ral1y in support of gay or lesbian rights, and one-third said they had participated in an organized demonstration against the Persian Gulf War. The people marching for abortion rights would never vote for George Bush anyway
President Bush should take a lesson from the mess the Catholic Bishops have gotten themselves into by spending a decade trying to write a pastoral letter on “women.” Its third draft has just been released, and it has successfully enraged women across the spectrum, liberal to conservative, feminists and homemakers.
It is a mistake to negotiate with, dialogue with, or try to appease the feminists. George Bush would be well advised to ignore the feminists, their histrionics, radical tactics and unreasonable demands.
