PrintOctober 30, 2007
Republican Women Too Smart to Fall for Hillary's Ruse
Last week, my hometown paper, The Atlanta Journal & Constitution, ran an online story entitled, "Clinton Pollster Predicts Defection of GOP Women." Depending solely on his own "internal" polling, Mr. Mark Penn - Public Relations guru extraordinaire, and Hillary's campaign strategist -- says that a full 24% of Republican women will punch their ballots for Hillary based on the "emotional" appeal of electing the first woman President.
Clearly, Mr. Penn is either purposefully spinning or indulging in a rather perverted, nearly delusional form of magical thinking.
We Republican women are far, far too smart to fall for Hillary Clinton's ruse. We are not the mindless ninnies that vote with the Special-Interest Express. We think for ourselves and vote for the candidate of our choice based on merit. We cast our precious votes for the candidate we believe would be the best President, not the one with an "emotional" appeal aimed at our womanhood.
Mr. Mark Penn, I have read, is currently the worldwide CEO of one of the largest public relations firms in the world, Burson-Marsteller. He is also the president of his own polling firm, and is best known for his service to Bill Clinton as pollster and political adviser from 1996 through 1999. His chief talents seem to be polling and messaging, with special corporate expertise in image, branding and competitive marketing assignments. Wow; I'm impressed.
So, let me see if I have this straight: Hillary Clinton wants to be the first female President; it has been her lifelong ambition. When her popularity as First Lady (enhanced by Penn's amazing PR prowess) was at its lowest ebb, the Monica-Gate scandal broke wide open. What to do? Ask Mark, of course; he'll know.
Choices:
- Ditch the scumbag who had finally humiliated her not only in private, not only in Arkansas, not only in the inner circle, but on the front pages of newspapers around the entire globe?
- Or pretend to be utterly surprised by the devout husband's infidelity, act positively shocked, wounded to the core, and then magnanimously forgive him in a "Christian" act of self-sacrifice?
Mr. Penn, no doubt, was on call around the clock with his crystal ball and gut feel on the whole of the electorate, giving Hillary just what she wanted most. Direction on how to play the part for her American audience and turn it to her advantage.
I'm betting it was Mark Penn who offered her his polling expertise, and she has played her scripted part with Bette-Davis acumen. Not to mention the side benefit of the You-Owe-Me-Now-Bubba card forever in the hip pocket of her pants suit.
But I think Mr. Penn has been hanging out with Democrat women nearly all of his life and maybe doesn't know one whit about the female portion of the Republican Party. For all of his astounding political prowess, he probably thinks that women who think like Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Janice Crouse, Melanie Morgan, Sandy Rios, et cetera, et cetera, are just very successful aberrations of a sort, and that the rest of us have done absolutely nothing all of our lives but stay home, bake cookies and let other people raise our children while we watch The View. (I personally don't know any woman who has ever seen that show, but I hear they have some really great cat fights, and that occasionally one of the women even makes a coherent statement.)
Most of the women I know have spent a great portion of their lives -- in addition to raising fine American citizens -- doing volunteer work in our communities trying to put band aids on the myriad of social problems that have become epidemic in the wake of Democrat social policies. Unwed motherhood. Broken families. Absent mothers and fathers. Broken government schools. Sex education that teaches nothing but how to do a great imitation of an alley cat in heat.
These mostly Republican women are still trying to make sense out of a political Party that would so strenuously object to pornography filters on public library computer terminals, while exposing their seven year-olds to lessons in how to put on a condom. These "soccer moms" (a phrase coined by Mr. Penn) give hours each week to Crisis Pregnancy Centers that offer actual help to young girls whose boyfriends flunked the condom lessons, but got the alley-cat impersonations down perfectly. These conservative women are providing meals to homeless shelters and holiday celebrations and gifts for those in need. These women are a veritable army of soldiers on the front lines of social decay, fighting not with the empty rhetoric but with actual labor to right real wrongs.
So, when Hillary Rodham Clinton wails about those in our midst who have been "invisible" to Republicans, we women stand, with our mouths agape and our consciousnesses fully raised, in utter incredulity. For "the smartest woman in the world," she comes off as pretty darned dumb or blind. You pick.
From where we're sitting, Mr. Penn, it looks like you and Hillary don't get out of your little self-created bubble enough. We Republican women are plum full of emotion every time we see Mrs. Clinton put on yet another female face for the cameras, but it isn't the kind that you ever want to be with in a dark room alone.
