Left’s War on GOP Women Shifts From Palin to Fiorina

REUTERS/JIM YOUNG
REUTERS/JIM YOUNG

The New Republic is out with a new item that, were it in a centrist, or Right-leaning publication and aimed at a woman (other than a Republican woman), would be broadly denounced as both malicious and misogynist in tone, even though it was written by a female author, Naomi Shavin.

In the Left’s view, these poor dumb GOP women just can’t seem to do anything right. Heck, maybe they should just stay home and make babies! They aren’t determined and accomplished professionals, as, say, a Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren; no they’re filled with “barely” palatable “raw ambition.” It’s funny how ambition is only a negative when applied to a female who doesn’t embrace the Left’s ideology.

Though she’s committed fewer blunders than Palin, Fiorina does have some obvious similarities to the former vice-presidential candidate. Both favor words like “outsider” and “tough,” and allow themselves to be cast as a woman who does it all: They’re breadwinner moms with business savvy and enough charisma to make their raw ambition palatable. Similarly, both women’s careers have been marred by major professional failures: Fiorina’s firing from Hewlett-Packard and Palin’s “bridge to nowhere” (which, ironically, Fiorina initially defended).

What TNR is actually saying here is, these aren’t qualified, capable women – they’re tokens, merely window dressing. Forget that that’s not true. It’s serves the Left and Democrats to consistently portray Republicans as only and all white males, so any female Republican becomes fair game. Forget all the lofty rhetoric about equality. The war on women is always on for the left when it involves either a female member of the GOP, or conservative.

If this below applies to Fiorina, how on earth is Hillary not anything but a “Queen Bee,” not to mention failed – as in Benghazi, or scandal-ridden, as in her ongoing email fiasco? Clearly none of that matters to TNR, any more than does gender. All bets are off, along with the Left’s purported concern for gender any time a woman on the Right steps forward. They go right to Saul Alinsky’s Rules for radicals, fairness and respect be damned: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Five years later, it seems the GOP has finally found a new Queen: Carly Fiorina. In 1999, Fiorina became a household name—at least in a certain kind of household—when she was named CEO of Hewlett-Packard, making her the first female head of a Fortune 20 company. (She was fired in 2005 after a series of scandalous leaks.) In 2008, Fiorina was one of McCain’s chief economic advisors, and Palin and Fiorina supported one another over the years: Fiorina defended Palin against “sexist attacks” in 2008; later, in 2010, Palin endorsed Fiorina’s campaign for Barbara Boxer’s California Senate seat.

This isn’t an act of journalism by The New Republic, but just another example of the Left’s politics of personal destruction, most especially when it comes to a woman who dares to disagree with their lockstep political views, including on women’s issues. Sarah Palin and now Fiorina’s crimes aren’t a lack of ability or accomplishment, it’s their decision to not kowtow to the Left. And for that, they must be destroyed – just two more victims in the Left’s ongoing war on women, if TNR has anything to say about it:

In 2008, Sarah Palin was an appealing running mate to John McCain because she offered a potential antidote to the GOP’s insufferable white-maleness. On paper she looked promising, and on television she looked great, but problems started when she opened her mouth. In The New Yorker’s October 27 issue that year, Jane Meyer chronicled Palin’s rise to fame within the party—and then nationally, of course—concluding that it had a lot to do with her gender and little to do with her track record. (At that point, she had been governor for less than two years.) In 2010, writing in her New York Times opinion column, Maureen Dowd called Sarah Palin the GOP “Queen Bee,” a reference to her status among other women in the GOP.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.