Mistermix did a good job describing how unorthodox a candidate Linda McMahon is. There’s a bunch of other female GOP candidates of this general sort out there too: Lowden and Angle in Nevada with their chicken bartering and barely coherent policy statements, respectively, and Carly Fiorina in California, with her crazy demon sheep ads, for example.
It’s hard to think of much precedent for this, other than Sarah Palin. The successful female Republican politicians that spring to mind are mostly moderate and professional: Christie Todd Whitman, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Kay Bailey Hutchinson (less moderate but she’s pretty moderate for Texas).
I question the wisdom of the Bachmann-Palin strategy. Republicans do badly among women voters in general and can probably improve their standing with Whitman/Snowe/Collins type candidates. I can’t imagine demon sheep, chicken-bartering, and pro wrestling going over well with female swing voters. On the other hand, I suppose it’s possible that insane winger women frighten voters less than insane winger men do. (I realize that Fiorina is not an insane winger, but she is running as if she were one.)
Tungsten Man
Since when are these “starbursting” female candidates for women voters? They’re for men who download pictures of surgical victims toting foreign automatic rifles.
The coterie of regressive women who flock around these figures are window dressing, nothing more – they’re the sort of Hillary supporters that would rather have voted for McCain than Obama. That is, they’re not informed, they’re not engaged, and they’re secondary to the real goal.
Good rule of thumb: when anti-feminists put a woman out front, it’s got little to do with the women in the audience.
It’s also a terrible strategy that’s failed them repeatedly.
ruemara
When you have no respect for women, it’s very easy to present any old female who’s toed your line as an icon for women to flock to. After all, chicks just look for another vagina, amirite? See also, Schlafly, Phyllis.
Elvis Elvisberg
I dunno, I am a little reluctant to group crazy Tea party-supported GOP candidates together by gender; keeping them all under the rubric of “crazy Tea party-supported GOP candidates” works just fine for me.
Check out this fellow in North Carolina, who apparently “claimed to be the Messiah, tried to raise his stepfather from the dead, believed God would drop a 1,000-mile high pyramid as the New Jerusalem on Greenland, and found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona.” Naturally, he “was the leader in a primary earlier this month, but didn’t win enough of the vote to avoid a runoff in June.”
The GOP has gone whole-hog insane. It transcends gender.
I am open to the view that I am missing your point, or that your point is that this is about how candidates are viewed by the voters, but I am not sure that the gender angle adds anything particularly important to the larger story.
Keith G
Well, Moosey Spice is becoming the Paris Hilton (is she still breathing?) of American political culture. She is famous for being famous.
Like her almost son-in-law, she will have a natural shelf life then fade back. I think she knows this and knows she will not be Prez, so she is devising the “what next” strategy. I think she would like to be a multi-platform Limbaugh-like entity: the pulpit, the power, the income, and no responsibility.
Sentient Puddle
I don’t know how to fit it into the context of this post, but when you mentioned Kay Bailey Hutchinson, I immediately thought of Debra Medina.
DougJ
@Elvis Elvisberg:
You may be right, but this stuff strikes me as new. The crazed winger woman is something new on the scene, at least IMHO.
DougJ
@ruemara:
That’s sort of my take on the strategy, yes.
Linda Featheringill
I have often wondered why conservative Republicans could not put forward as candidates women that you could respect, even if you disagreed with them. I have wondered about some mysogynist strain in the conservative character.
However, come to think of it, they don’t put that sort of men forward as candidates either.
Perhaps disdain for women isn’t the problem.
schrodinger's cat
I once saw Carly Fiorina, I think it was about a year and half ago, just around Christmas shopping season, guess where?
She was shopping with a younger woman (daughter?) on M street, in Georgetown, elitist!
srv
Expect Sarah’s man to take a more pro-active part in her career, given his 18 years at BP. He might make a fine Energy Secretary.
Lisa K.
Snowe & Collins may be professional, but when push comes to shove they are wingers in sheep’s clothing.
Signed,
A Constituent
Bill Section 147
Lowden, Fiorina, McMahon, Whitman are rich first, female and crazy are down the list. Ms. Palin worked from the other side to rich so she actually does not equate to these four.
What is more insidious about these women is that they know better but are willing to Palinize themselves to mow Republican grass. Well it worked for GW so it may work for them. From a preppie at a Yale Frat House to a wrangler with a Texas Outhouse – and Republicans bought it just like they were told to.
I am beginning to think that the Republican base is made up of those folks who tell you, “Advertising doesn’t really work on me,” while sitting in their Craftmatic with QVC in the picture-in-picture while watching the Fox News channel.
T.R. Donoghue
The point isn’t winning over new female voters, the point is doubling down with the base. This is always the point of GOP politics, see the immigration debate.
Putting dumb but marginally attractive women on the ticket is there to play to the base of horny old white guys.
MikeJ
@DougJ:
Read more Jim Thompson. Famous for small town stories with insane women. And things never end well.
Maybe he just springs to mind when you mention Palin because of The Grifters.
geg6
When people who hate and fear women put up as candidates the kind of women that most thinking actual women hate, it surprises you?
They’re not after the female vote here. Take a look at those women and compare them to the ones you call “good” Republican women like Snowe and Collins. Notice anything?
Again, it’s not women’s votes that are the issue here. It’s pretty obvious to anyone with eyes.
And, yes, Linda McMahon is no great looker. But she and husband run professional wrestling. Again, not calculated to appeal to your average suburban soccer mom.
ksmiami
Seriously, most women in the GOP are either crazy religious nuts, or Stepford wives. The current insane asylum called the GOP is no place for a modern woman, period.
They got nuthin.
p.s. Fiorina SUX
DougJ
@MikeJ:
Love Jim Thompson.
Stooleo
I’m looking forward to the November elections. If these teabaggers continue winning primaries, Its going to be an epic fail for the Republicans. IMHO.
licensed to kill time
@Bill Section 147:
Heh heh…loved this. Gullibility – It’s a Lifestyle!
Gregory
@Keith G:
At least Paris Hilton made a very funny and self-deprecating video mocking the idea of celebrity candidates back when media darling McCain was floating the trial balloon of portraying Obama as a celebrity.
Gregory
@Linda Featheringill:
They’ve been purging themselves of male candidates you could respect even if you disagree with them, so why should women be an exception?
ETA: As you pointed out, yes.
JCT
For all we know it is all about “attention-seeking” on the part of the Republicans. Shiny objects and all of that — especially on a “debate” stage. Scott Brown probably fits into this meme. It was not lost on anyone how McCain’s choice of the Alaskan Grifter absolutely galvanized a nearly moribund campaign (damn him to hell forever). I’m still not sure that they would have lost if the economy hadn’t tanked….
And nothing more than that. The Republicans are currently completely bereft of ideas, so why not dangle “pretty” objects and try to get some attention — and then hope it translates into votes from a dumbed down electorate.
Pathetic.
Gregory
@Lisa K.:
Even if they aren’t, they’ve been voting in lockstep with Jeff Sessions, Jim DeMint and Lindsay Graham, so what use is their alleged “moderation”?
The Democrats would be fools not to point this fact out relentlessly for Snowe & Collins’ next re-election bid. Oh, wait…
Martin
@Stooleo: Yeah, these candidates are reliably wedging off rational moderates and independents.
Unfortunate, too many Dems seemed to think the teabaggers are more popular than they are and moved right – when they should have been moving left instead. Blanche can’t figure out if she’s supposed to be Bernie Sanders or Ben Nelson.
Origuy
To paraphrase Roman Hruska:
Found a WP bug here. I had the HTML representation of the greater than and less than characters around the “s” in she to indicate that I was inserting that. It caused the whole quote to be in strikeout.
Kryptik
OT, but worth filing under the ‘No Consequences for Lying (Unless You’re A Liberal)’ folder:
Briton’s Fears Turn to Doubts About Climate Change.
The article not only highlights how support has tanked in the UK over “Climategate”, but just about everywhere, despite commissions affirming that there was no ‘there’ there.
No point in telling the truth when people remember the lies twice as much.
trollhattan
@Gregory:
Yup, I decided I was “in the tank” for li’l Paris after seeing that video. But then, ah’m just another sheeple.
Lisa K.
The Democrats would be fools not to point this fact out relentlessly for Snowe & Collins’ next re-election bid. Oh, wait… @Gregory:
They get as many Democratic as Republican votes in these parts because the army of low information voters up here buy that “moderate” shit hook, line and sinker.
But at least Olympia may be more worried now, not from the left but from the right. The crazies and yahoos have hijacked the GOP party platform and I would not be surprised to see her primaried by a Pat Toomey clone in 2012.
Which *is* good news for Democrats because if that challenger takes the Snowe Queen out, then that guarantees a Democratic takeover of her seat.
So, I will be going door-to-door for whomever primaries her. Bank on it.
beltane
Someone should inform the GOP powers that be that women tend to hate beauty queens such as Sarah Palin and Sue Lowden. To most of us, a beauty queen is a woman with lots of ambition but a non-existent work ethic.
In 2008 I was afraid John McCain would pick Olympia Snowe or KBH as his running mate. Snowe, in particular, would actually have made a dent with Hillary voters whereas Sarah Palin was the proverbial slap in the face to self-respecting women everywhere.
Linda McMahon is just a freak. I don’t even know how to categorize her.
cat48
Palin strategy in GA at work: Teacher tells 4 students ok to come to high school in KKK outfits since they’re making a “historical” film for “history” of that period. Black student on the tv didn’t appreciate being asked by one of them if he would mind participating in a “mock lynching”. He said yes he would mind. Much nicer answer than I could have given. Sigh……
The Moar You Know
DougJ, I’ve never had cause to say this before, but on this you are 100% dead wrong. We here in Cali have been watching the antics of Ms. Fiorina for years. She has the potential to be the next Michele Bachmann.
SpotWeld
One interesting thing to keep in mind, that any prolonged discussion of McMahon’s private business “credentials” will invarably bring up the insanity, drama, and theatrics that surround professional wrestling.
At that point it’s just a blurry line between the staged theatrics (pre-bout interviews) and real theatrics (pressure to take steriods, pressure to risk life and limb w/out medical coverage).
McMahon can, against that backdrop appear relatively normal. (i.e. The sanest person in the asylum).
Now that we’re past nominations I can only hope the media does an honest side-by-side of her against her political opponent so we can gage the canidates within the narrative of politics and not media-theatrics. (But guess which would get better viewer numbers for the news programs.)
Brandon
DougJ,
How can you presume that Fiorina is anything but a crazed winger? Let’s look at the facts.
1. As you note, she is campaigning as one. That is the only reasonable way for voters to evaluate a candidate with no prior experience in government than based on what they say on the campaign trail. To presume that isn’t who she says she is, reminds me of Village-type behavior towards politicians. Remember what Chuck Coll told Ezra? “Lieberman’s actions are not amoral and dickish because he’s a friend of mine and I know he is not those things.” In this case you don’t even intimate that you have any special knowledge about Fiorina other than your assumption that she couldn’t be a sociopath because she was a corporate CEO. See the fault in that logic now?
2. She is a Republican in California. There are no moderate Republicans in California and there have not been any in my lifetime. Dick Cheney just wrote a letter of endorsement for Meg Whitman, which only burnishes her credentials among the Republican establishment. Name me a moderate Republican House member from CA. Roherbacher? Cunningham? Issa? Dornan?
3. She is a Republican in the United States in 2010, there are no moderates in the Republican party at this time in history, there are only ultra-conservatives, paleo-conservatives and crazy town.
Gregory
@Lisa K.:
Which is why the Democrats need to stay on message — yeah, yeah, I know — that a “moderate” doesn’t mean jack when Snowe and Collins vote in lockstep with the wingnuts.
That strategy might, in fact, help pressure them to provide the anti-filibuster votes the Dems need now in order to prove their “moderate” bona fides. Which, in turn, might well also lead them to being primaried by the tea party lunatics, which I agree would likely lead to a Dem pickup, so it’s win-win-win.
Again, it’s such an obvious strategy that only the Democrats could fail to execute it.
Brien Jackson
Is McMahon actually that far right? I haven’t really followed her campaign much. Seems to me she’d most likely just be your average rich Republican.
Keith G
@cat48: Actually there is more to the story. It seems the point of the video was to expose the racism of the Klan as a part or history, or so said the veteran teacher.
She is silly for not being a good bureaucrat as was the teacher of the original blue eyes vs brown eyes lesson.
Ash Can
I think that there are two main factors at work here. One, as others have already pointed out, is the pretty-face factor. The old farts and sexist assholes that populate the Republican leadership love them some pretty girls, especially the ones that agree with their way of thinking. Second, the GOP really looks to be getting caught in its own echo chamber these days. Years of de-legitimizing opposing viewpoints and striving for ideological purity have paved the way for the teapartiers to make significant inroads into GOP leadership, not necessarily at the top but certainly on the local and regional levels. At this point, these yahoos are convinced that the only people worth listening to at all are their fellow true believers. Republicans who question their strategy of dragging the party down into the depths of insanity are RINOs. Put the two factors together, and you end up with a larger number/percentage of batshit-insane women among your ranks of candidates.
aimai
I was just reading through some old email letters and discovered a long discussion of Jane Swift, here in MA–she’s the lieutenant governor who became accidental governor and was elbowed aside by Mitt Romney. There was really almost identical coverage of her as a “conservative woman” who all feminists should “rally round.” Like Palin she was a middle class woman who used lots of strategies to enable herself to both hold down a man’s job, have several babies, and manage the dual role of mother and political figure. The thing is the corners she cut–using a helicopter, troopers, special perks were all things that she gained access to by virtue of her class and political position. As a conservative she never fought to extend any benefits, like family leave, to other women. At any rate, she got thrown over and disappeared from political view. But there was the same effort to use “feminism” as a rallying cry against liberals who were, supposedly, not supporting Jane because she was a woman and liberals are just pretending to support women blah blah blah…
aimai
Elizabelle
Sarah Palin has helped one woman enormously.
Tina Fey to receive Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/25/AR2010052502264.html?hpid=topnews
Bubblegum Tate
@geg6:
It ties in nicely with that whole “conservative women are sooooooo hot and LIEbrul women are soooooooo ugly” thing that wingers like to do from time to time.
DougJ
@The Moar You Know:
Really? I followed her statements during the 2008 campaign and she didn’t seem like a real winger to me.
I haven’t followed this one closely, mostly just the crazy ads.
The Moar You Know
@DougJ: You need to do some digging back into her record as CEO of HP for the real craziness to come to light. She has actually been quite moderate on the campaign trail, but then again she’s got a LOT to hide.
eemom
disgusting as it is, I don’t really care WHY they are implementing this strategery, because I really think/hope it’s gonna come back to fuck them over. Remember, Palin LOST.
And Christie Todd Whitman “moderate” and “successful”? The shill who stood there and told everyone the air was safe to breathe at Ground Zero after 9/11?? Please.
Chuck Butcher
Thanks Elvis Elvisberg
Triassic Sands
You must have some evidence supporting this statement. Please, feel free to post it or provide relevant links.
Karmakin
Yeah, Fiorina’s reign at HP was epic for the crazy. It might not have been out and out wingnuttery, but it was definitely crazy.
shaun
Here, in descending order of priority, are the GOP’s priorities when it comes to running wimmin candidates:
(1.) Appeal to the party’s right-wing base.
(2.) Do that with a pretty face.
Number One automatically rules out the support of vast swaths of swing-voting women.
Number Two automatically rules in the support of vast swaths of Viagra-popping men who put their teeth in a bedside glass before turning in at night.
trollhattan
@Brandon:
The bang-head-against-the-Boxer-wall campaign has been given relatively short shrift by the press on account of the full-on billionaire governorship scramble/cat fight over “who’s more righterer?” I’m willing to give Carly the benefit of a doubt that she’s as wacko as she’s advertising herself to be, since all I ever see is Meg & Steve.
And I approve this message.
Randy P
@ksmiami:
It’s a long explanation why, but this weekend I watched Richard Nixon’s famous 1952 “Checkers” speech on YouTube. While presenting himself as this fine, modestly-living, upstanding citizen (and also defending McCarthyism), he mentions his wife Pat, who doesn’t own a mink but has a fine Republican cloth coat. We pan to Pat while he’s saying this. She is smiling adoringly up from an easy chair.
Maybe 20 minutes later, we go back to Pat. She’s still in the same position, still has the same grin, her face staring adoringly up at exactly the same angle. As far as I could tell she didn’t blink or move a muscle in the entire time the camera was on her, or for that matter in between times the camera was on her. It was extremely creepy.
Speaking of Stepford Wives.
Incidentally, that speech was considered a raving success in swinging public opinion toward Nixon.
As far as the religious nut thing, I’ve got to agree with you there. There was some incident recently where we were hearing somebody’s death threats and hate calls in the news (maybe it was the Bart Stupak “baby killer” thing) and I was struck by how many of the callers were female and just how hate-filled they were.
inkadu
As someone who enjoyed wrestling in middleschool and was introduced to a liberal love of Europe with the WWF tagteam British Bulldogs, I can’t fault McMahon for bringing me Wrestlemanias. I certainly agree it is a political liability, but I don’t think it’s a real reason to vote against her.
gocart mozart
McMahon has been carpet bombing the airway with content free ads for weeks [business woman, Washington outsider, end politics as usual, bla, bla, bla] Blumental has yet to run any ads and still leads by 5% or so despite his recent kerfluffle.
I don’t think she is all that conservative at least socially. She may even be pro-choice. Economics is another story.
I eagerly await ads showing WWE Divas ripping each others clothes off in the ring or as I like to call it “Porn for 13 year old boys.” I wonder what the nice Catholic ladies at the Knights of Columbus will think. She also has a steroid problem. (snicker)
JCT
@Bubblegum Tate:
Yes, with the usual picture of Ann Coulter. Funny how she is less visible with the advent of the Alaskan grifter.
gocart mozart
Has anyone ever asked Jesse Ventura what he thinks of his old boss because somebody really should. I think his opinion would be very interesting to say the least.
gocart mozart
@JCT:
She is well past her sell by date.
Brandon
@Karmakin: I believe it involved a lot of spying on board members and senior management. Followed by the destruction of the HP “brand” that they cultivated over the years as a company that was more of a family and focussed on innovation. Then she almost destroyed that company with the Compaq deal. Thankfully for HP they were able to oust her in time and right the ship. Lucent was never so lucky. This woman is total FAIL. She’s the female GWB, but without the blueblood pedigree. Somehow though she keeps failing up. With her HP antics ruining any chance of another company in their right mind hiring her as CEO, she was smart enough to realize that her next logical step was politics, particularly Republican politics, where we have seen first hand how incompetence is rewarded.
inkadu
@gocart mozart: I also have no idea what kind of conservative McMahon is. I really doubt that coming from Greenwich and running in Connecticut that she is even going to pretend to be a tea-partier. She hasn’t yet. Simmons dropping out of the primary makes it even more unnecessary. She seems like a politically bland woman looking for a sinercure. The hardest part of being a senator is raising money; and she clearly has no need to do that.
Personally, I’d rather see someone for the UFC run this year.
jl
Maybe I missed a couple of comments that pointed out something: many of the male GOPers are just as nuts as the women.
Hayworth thinks that there was no state of war between the US and German during WWII because the working FDR sent to Congress was to ‘recognize’ that a state of war existed because Germany declared war on us. So, that means, accroding the Hayworth, that all this postWWII foggy dodgey authorization of force, and unilateral Presidential military actionizing have a firm precedent from good ol’ WWII, which is Holy and everything then was done right or you hate the Greatest Generation.
Then, I read about this guy on TPM just now:
Worst Candidate Ever?
First-time candidate Vaughn Ward was on a roll. Until he got caught plagiarizing a speech by President Obama and insisted that Puerto Rico was a FOREIGN COUNTRY.
[emphasis added. You gotta read the whole story in the link, it is priceless. The guy is walking BP oil spill, politically speaking.]
Then there is this guy:
A Tea Party Too Far?
Tim D’Annunzio is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination to challenge conservative Dem Rep. Larry Kissell (D). But the state GOP says he’s unfit for office and is circulating divorce court records claiming that D’Annunzio once claimed to be the Messiah, traveled to New Jersey to try to raise his stepfather from the dead, believed God would drop a 1000 mile high pyramid on Greenland and even that the Ark of the Covenant would be found in Arizona.
I should provide links, but my nerves are shot just thinking about any of these moronic loons, man or woman, ending up in Congress. So go check out the stories at talkingpointsmemo.com, front page for today, May 25, 2010.
Tecumseh
I was going to say I didn’t think Fiorina would even win the primary but I see that she’s up ahead now, thanks to more money and the fact Campbell has a reputation for being a bit of an oddball who often makes political decisions based on what the right thing to do is versus what the right says he should do. I’m surprised the Tea Party guy DeVore hasn’t done better as he’s full on crazy and that’s how we make our Republicans over here but I guess Fiorina has successfully outcrazied him. Well done, Carly.
Still, Boxer should be able to take her down pretty quickly with an ad or two detailing her career at HP as well as various investigations against her, including one now about bribing foreign officials.
All of which will mean, of course, that she’ll probably win.
tofubo
good looks and emotionally potent oversimplificaion will go far
The Truffle
It’s a sign of feminism’s progress when female candidates are proven to be as dumb and loopy as male ones.
Joey Maloney
@Lisa K.: I don’t think Mesdames Snowe and Collins are wingers by inclination or temperament. What they are, are party loyalists. They vote the way Mitch McConnell tells them to vote. They may go home afterwards and vomit in their bedside wastebaskets from self-loathing, but when the sun comes up they take a big mouthful of Scope and head back up the Hill to do it again.