If Republicans continue to ignore working women, and Hillary Clinton
becomes the 2016 Democratic nominee, the Republican Cabal will be in world of hurt.…
A June 19th piece in The Washington Post, written
by Danielle Paquette, discusses a major problem for the Republican Cabal in the 2016 pretender race. The party does not appeal to
working women. Paquette interviewed a number of Republican agitators
who expressed concern that the Republican pretender candidates were
doing next to nothing to encourage women who work outside the home to
vote for them.
Working women have been abandoning the Republican Party in droves. For example, in 2004, the shrub managed to get nearly half the vote
from working moms in the U.S. electorate. Four years later, John McCain
was only able to secure 40 percent of the working mom vote. In 2012, Republican Cabal nominee Mitt Romney, who embodied an old-fashioned view of sex roles
and family structure, struggled to get just a third of the vote from
working mothers.
Despite the Republican’s failure to appeal to
working women, the conservative executive director of the Independent
Women’s Forum, Sabrina Schaeffer, argues that Republicans are still
providing no answers. She laments:
For years now, Democrats have been saying: We are focused on women in the workplace. For whatever reason, Republicans keep ignoring these issues. It’s the absolute worst thing they can do. They need to understand, engage and offer better solutions.
John McCain’s 2008 political adviser Douglas
Holtz-Eakin also argues that his party has become out of touch with the
concerns of working women. He notes:
Every parent who works has been through the day-care nightmare. This has been under-appreciated by Republican candidates in part and conservatives in general.
Yet despite the burgeoning costs of child care and
the fact that the United States offers precious little in the way of
paid family leave for working mothers, the Republican pretender
candidates remain silent on some of the issues that matter most to
working women. In addition, the Republican Cabal’s assault on reproductive rights,
their attacks on health care subsidies, their byzantine views on female
contraception, and their opposition to equal pay for equal work, are all
turn offs to many professional women.
The Republicans have been hemorrhaging support from
working women for a decade. That problem is only going to be compounded
if the Republican Cabal has to present their outdated views on the same stage with
Hillary Clinton, who has made the concerns of working women one of the
cornerstones of her campaign. Working women helped propel Barack Obama
to two victories over Republican Cabal candidates in 2008 and 2012.
If
Republicans continue to ignore working women in 2016, and Hillary
Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, the Republican Cabal will be in world of hurt
politically.
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