Just a few days after the 2012 elections, in which the gender gap helped propel Democrats to major national victories, Charles Krauthammer urged his party not to change its policy agenda. Rather, the pundit said Republicans will be fine if they present their far-right views on women’s health and reproductive rights with greater “delicacy.”
[…] Jonathan Martin reports today on the next step: a new political strategy firm that intends to “help the party’s candidates better tailor their messages to women.”Katie Packer Gage, who served as deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney in 2012], Ashley O’Connor and Christine Matthews this week are opening what appears to be the first Republican firm aimed specially at wooing female voters. They are calling it Burning Glass Consulting – a reference to what they see as the need for a focus on appealing to women that is so laserlike that it can burn glass.
Or, as Tip told Ronnie over drinks in the Oval Office after a hard day legislating, “There ain’t no delicate way to tell a woman that she’s a slut.”
schrodinger's cat
Do they also have a firm to woo immigrants? You suck but we will tolerate you if you vote for the GOP and change your religion.
ETA: Change your religion = Convert to Christianity.
piratedan
the national program to distribute aspirins for clasping between knees as the platform for their new health care initiative
Alexandra
Burning Glass Consulting: The Grift Continues
PeakVT
What are their plans for that other election, the one in 2014?
? Martin
@schrodinger’s cat: They’ll just have the candidates say their ‘I approved this message’ disclaimer louder and more slowly.
EconWatcher
You have to appreciate the entrepreneurial genius. The founders of this consulting firm can bill the GOP up the wazoo, and they will never need to produce measurable results, because they can rest assured they’ll always be able to point to some moron who couldn’t keep his chauvinist mouth shut as the reason their work didn’t successfully woo the lady voters. Perhaps they can also then get hired to conduct required sensitivity training for GOP candidates. The possiblities are endless.
different-church-lady
Frog. Scorpion. Parable. All that all that.
Goblue72
It’s not about women per se. The cross tabs from the recent election cycles is illuminating. White single women vote Democrat. White married women vote Republican. African-American women – married and single – vote Democrat.
The question for Democrats then is why are married white women the outliers? Don’t need abortions or a safety net so more concerned about God & taxes? And how do we get that group to vote like the rest of their sisters?
Emma
I. Don’t. Even.
I usually hate the cute “one period between each word of a sentence” trick but I am reduced to that. The loud screams you just heard were thievery and cynicism jumping off a four hundred foot cliff.
Napoleon
Now I am going to have that Annie Lennox song in my head all day long.
It is amazing that the answer for the Republicans always is that they just need to massage their message a little and all will be good for them. They have spent so many years selling the US their shit sandwiches to the country, which the public has bought in the past, that when people no longer are buying they think all they need to do is talk a little louder, just like how some think talking to non-English speakers a little louder will make them understand.
Frankensteinbeck
I actually think this is the Information Revolution kicking in. Their messaging worked in the time of Reagan. They could carefully tailor a pleasant sounding euphemism that would pass under the radar of women whose reproductive rights were being taken away, while being a little more red meaty in front of their backwards hate freak constituencies. Now that’s breaking down, because there’s always one Akin who will say what he really means, and that becomes the face of the party. Before they could hide him. Now they can’t. And this is why they’re obsessed with messaging, because they know messaging USED to work!
Napoleon
@Goblue72:
Force them all to get a divorce?
beltane
The GOP does quite well with the type of white, married, Christian women the Burning Glass Consulting firm ladies are familiar with,. All other women, however, are of the “you people” class that Republicans, male and female alike, regard as the natural sluts and servants of this world.
Citizen_X
Da fuq?
Uh, Republikaner guys, you kn
Mike E
The Stupid, it burns! Indiscriminately, too; it’ll be fun watching the GOP even attempt to focus that like a laser when the better analogy is backburning the brush to slow down the raging wildfire that’s approaching their million dollar house. This won’t end well.
Splitting Image
You’d think that, having gotten some traction with the “Keep your government out of my health care” routine over the last few years, they would have gotten a wisp of an inking of an idea about why women get all worked up about mandatory vaginal probes, “counselling”-cum-slut-shaming, and the like.
That said, I think we are in the last cycle or two in which abortion will be a major issue. At some point the only way the Chamber of Commerce can retain support for their program of reducing the rest of the country to poverty is to jettison the hardline evangelicals. Removing abortion from their platform is not only a good way to get back in the rest of the country’s good graces, it is also the easiest way to get their most embarrassing factions to leave.
I think we are still about two or three years away from the Republican talking points about the drive for unregulated free markets making them the “pro-choice” party (what are free markets about if not choice, amirite?) and big-government liberals being the ones that have always wanted to take away women’s health care, but it is definitely coming.
Joey Maloney
Or, as Tip told Ronnie over drinks in the Oval Office after a hard day legislating, “There ain’t no delicate way to tell a woman that she’s a slut.”
“…isn’t that right, Nancy?”
Southern Beale
Looks like they found those “Binders full of women.”
chopper
please proceed, cabbageman.
TR
Burning Glass is an apt name because it calls to mind the image of a crackhead with a lit pipe.
Punchy
To get Richie Incognito released? To seek professional help with anxiety?
Matt McIrvin
In the crosstabs, is “married/single” just serving as an imperfect proxy for “old/young”?
Citizen_X
@Citizen_X: Urk. I was gonna say, you know that glass is used to focus lasers because it’s, you know, transparent to light. It also doesn’t burn, because it already has as much oxygen as you’re gonna get in there.
Mighta worked as poetic license, but when you have some marketing git trying to explain it? It just comes across as stupid.
maya
Burning Glass Consulting – AKA, Winkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod, will focus their glass directly on women voters and run subliminal adverts attached to feminine hygiene products which will convince women that old white guys with beer guts and pencil extenders strapped to their large girths really, really do love them and care about their welfare more than libruls do. They call it their “Tuff Love Concept” (TLC fer short)
It’s a tall order, but with the proper amount of cash up front, it’s doable. And, they’re HOTTIES! to boot.
Southern Beale
Well, look what they’re doing in a vain attempt to garner the youth vote:
And after the guys and gals drain the kegs they’ll go back to enjoying their free birth control and legal abortions and nobody giving a shit if you’re gay, bi or straight.
Seriously, these guys have waaaaay too much money.
Gin & Tonic
I wonder about the physics. I know heat can melt glass, but can a laser melt it?
Matt McIrvin
@Splitting Image:
That’s the one cultural issue on which conservatives keep racking up big policy wins! And most of the polls I’ve seen suggest that there is not nearly as much of a generation gap there as on, say, gay rights or pot.
I think the anti-abortion faction is going to have the reins for a good long time.
Waspuppet
@Napoleon:
And focusing! Don’t forget focusing! They’re totally gonna focus any day now! They BRAG about how much they’re gonna focus! They’re gonna kick your ASS at focusing!
Which is totally not hopeless bro behavior at all.
Patricia Kayden
I assume this “burning glass delicately” strategy will involve reaching out to certain segments of White females (since the majority of White women already vote for Republicans). I can’t imagine that Black women will be interested in voting for a party which is so openly hostile towards Blacks/minorities. This should be interesting.
Keith P.
@Southern Beale: There’s a great photo-op waiting with some sorority girl puking into a garbage can while Creepy Uncle Sam holds her hair up.
Betty Cracker
@Goblue72: Great point. There’s a gender gap in the white vote, but it might almost all be attributable to single white women for all I know. Has anyone seen data broken out by white married women and white married men?
Matt McIrvin
…”Burning glass” is an old term for a lens or mirror that can be used to concentrate light to burn things. Not the glass itself. The article may have just garbled the origin.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodinger’s cat: Aren’t most immigrants (especially Latinos) already Christian? I don’t think Republicans care about the religions of dark people. If that were the case, they’d love Black Americans who probably attend church more than the average White American.
Face
Burn glass? WTF? Do they mean melt glass? Cuz I’m quite sure you cannot oxidize inorganic silicon dioxide and sodium oxide into carbon dioxide and water.
Dumb fuckin shmucks cant even message basic chemistry. And they just lost the glassblowers and window cleaners unions.
MattF
I don’t see Repubs ever taking their ‘little problem’ with women seriously. Women didn’t vote for Ken-the-Cooch because his views on sex are seriously creepy– and for your average young, unmarried woman detecting male creeps is a survival skill.
Patricia Kayden
@TR: TOOO FUNNY!
Brian R.
@TR:
We have a winner.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Punchy: Golf clap.
@TR: Also excellent, in a different way.
? Martin
@Gin & Tonic: Yes. Any conventional glass isn’t perfectly transparent. With the right frequency and enough power, you’ll melt the glass.
Laser etching of glass has been around for decades now. It’s pretty cheap. You can probably get a shot glass with your initials on it at one of those carts at the mall. That’s a laser melting glass.
Citizen_X
@Matt McIrvin:
That makes more sense.
Unfortunately, it brings to mind a sadistic kid burning helpless ants with a magnifying glass, which is even more apt for today’s Right.
Villago Delenda Est
The Annie Lennox song I’m thinking of for this is is “Would I Lie to You”.
Which is what these rethug asswipes do all the fucking time.
Jay Arcey
They got the explanation for their name wrong. A “burning glass” is actually a lens, like a magnifying glass, which focuses the sun’s rays to a searing point. Malicious boys have traditionally – perhaps apocryphally – used this to fry ants. (Not that I didn’t try!)
So would the name actually mean they intend to focus so intently on women that they, well, burn them up?
Suffern ACE
@Goblue72: Perhaps, not knowing any liberals themselves, they are under the impression that liberals are the reason their children won’t do their homework, and those liberals would give their daughters drugs and pose their boys for porn magazines if given the chance.
beltane
@MattF: Many of the married white women who supported Cooch have probably not been sexually active in years and would happily wield ultrasound wands against all those young, attractive hussies out there. Slut-shaming is a sport that certain women, just as much as men, excel at.
Suffern ACE
@Jay Arcey: That may also be the point. If single women won’t vote for them, vaporize the women an the voter problem goes away.
Frankensteinbeck
@Splitting Image:
That’s not realistic. Without the evangelicals, the CoC doesn’t have a party. 1% of the vote doesn’t win you any elections. The CoC needs the evangelicals way more than the evangelicals need them. Switching over to supporting democrats would only be a slightly better option. We’re the party of NOT fucking over the other guy. Their lobbying money would slow down liberal economic policies, win them a congressman here and there, but the basic message of the party is against them.
beltane
@Jay Arcey:
Being that they consider Democratic-voting women to be witches, this could very well be their intent.
Marc
Yes, yes, oh God yes, please put Mitt Romney’s campaign manager in charge of all Republican messaging for women.
Because putting Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock in charge is just too much to hope for.
Ash Can
@EconWatcher: This. I hope they soak the GOP for bazillions.
@Frankensteinbeck: And this too. Even if they’re sincere about this and not just running a scam to shake the GOP down for as much as they can, they’re going to get precisely nowhere with women who aren’t already voting GOP. Unless a miracle happens and the GOP decides to cut its base loose and changes its policies, they’re going to have squat to show for their efforts.
nineone
They can try all the autopsies, re-branding, outreach(around), and new marketing strategies they want, but it will be to little avail if the Party cannot stop acting on their RAPE FANTASIES on camera and in legislation and governing. Not surprisingly they all, and I mean ALL, seem oblivious to this simple observation. Perhaps because they are all rapey an’ shit.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Jay Arcey: We found a witch! May we burn her?
Freemark
@Jay Arcey: I also used mine to melt plastic army men. Malicious girls have also been seen to use them to fry ants, at least they did in my neigborhood
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
FTFY. Also, too, I think “tolerate” is a bit strong; it’s more like moving them a few lines down the enemies list rather than actually tolerating them.
Amir Khalid
This is the story of their minority outreach effort all over again, isn’t it? The medicine they had to take was a policy agenda that would serve minorities (and everyone else) better, rather than indulge their prejudices and/or obstruct the party that was trying to govern. But they hate how the medicine tastes, so they’re not going to take it. Simple as that.
Lex
Krauthammer isn’t just a sociopath, he’s a dumber-than-a-box-of-linoleum-tile sociopath. My only question is whether Katie Packer Gage is as dumb as he is or if she’s just grifting the GOP. I could at least respect the latter.
Roger Moore
@Citizen_X:
Depends on the laser. I can tell you from much practical experience that light from a CO2 laser is absorbed by glass very nicely, even kinds of glass (e.g. fused quartz) that are especially transparent to visible light. The part about it just getting really hot and not actually burning is correct, though.
chopper
@Southern Beale:
yeah! let’s convince college kids that they’re invincible by getting them so drunk they get sick.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ash Can:
Never underestimate the ability of people to believe they’re fighting the good fight while skimming 80% off the top.
Origuy
This is what you call going over the line:
Omnes Omnibus
@Origuy: Wow. Just wow.
Redshirt
Weren’t they going to use lasers on jobs, too? Where are the jobs, Boner?
schrodinger's cat
@Patricia Kayden: True, I was thinking of immigrants of the Jindal and Haley variety, not born as Christians but accepted into the wingnut fold after converting to Christianity.
Immigrants are OK
if
1. They vote for the GOP
2. Are well off
2. Are Christian or willing to convert to Christianity.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: I was thinking of wingnuts of Indian heritage, namely Haley and Jindal. Jindal I believe is a Catholic.
IowaOldLady
Maybe married white women feel their interests align more with the interests of their husbands?
I am embarrassed to be a member of this class.
schrodinger's cat
@IowaOldLady: Is it true that married white women vote for GOP across all age groups? Because I can see the older religious women wanting the younger ones to be punished for being hussies.
IowaOldLady
@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t know how age/race/gender/marriage shake out. I’d guess economic issues trump most everything else though.
Splitting Image
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s exactly the problem. What’s killing the GOP is that all of the other issues which are electoral losers for them come bundled with the abortion creepiness. If someone is willing to claim that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, you can tell without looking what her position is on abortion, because it’s a tribal marker, not a policy opinion.
The fact that so much of their platform is becoming toxic is part of the reason they have been diving so deeply into the slut-shaming the last few years: it’s the only thing left that is working. The more they do this, the more women will be hardened against them. They can’t get women back by shifting the conversation to something like climate change denial, because the hardcore denialists are the most likely to turn into Todd Akins when placed in front of a mike. On the other hand, if they try to moderate their positions on other issues, say by supporting same-sex marriages or cap-and-trade, they have to redouble their opposition to abortion and contraception to convince the evangelicals that they are not Satan-loving RINOs. They are caught in their own trap.
Booger
@Matt McIrvin: Thank you for stating this. Like what kids used to do with a magnifying lens and bright sunlight to ants and plastic army men. before Spacebook and Friendplace and Twitster and what-not.
Betsy
@Goblue72: Wait, unless I am mistaken, most abortions are gotten by white married women? correct my understanding!
Ash Can
@Frankensteinbeck: Seriously, I’d like to see similar outfits open up for black outreach and Hispanic outreach, and for all three concerns to soak the party until they drive it into receivership. Unless and until the GOP acknowledges that it’s not the wrapping that sucks, it’s what’s inside the package, the money financing these outreach efforts is going to be flushed straight down the crapper. I just hope it’s a lot, and I do mean A LOT.
danielx
Shorter: you can too polish a turd, and we’ll be happy to take your money to make the attempt.
schrodinger's cat
Earth to GOP: Its not just the message or the messenger, its your ideology of hate that needs to replaced.
LanceThruster
Will this laser replace vaginal probes as the tool of choice?
Liberty60
@Splitting Image:
Bingo.
As with Cleek’s Law, the contemporary conservative has boiled down to a tribe unified by opposition to The Other Tribe of cultural issues- abortion, immigration, homosexuality, etc. It doesn’t have jack to do with Kenysian/ or Austrian economics, or dove or hawk foreign policy.
The women who vote GOP don’t have any sisterly common ground with other women anymore than a Shiite woman has with a Sunni woman.
And honestly, we liberals need to understand that. There is a small core of people who will never vote Dem, so long as Those People hold the reins of power. Yes, they will gladly roast a sparrow under the bridge, yadda yadda.
johnny aquitard
@Goblue72:Economics is the issue. It’s what puts the married white women in the suburban conservative bracket. Also it skews older as women have been marrying later (also an economic related thing, I believe). Older, more economically secure white women can afford marriage (or they are in a socio-economic bracket where they can marry that security).
So married white women as a group = older, more conservative, more affluent white women. And more racist.
This is the GOP base.
IGMFY white conservative tribalism trumps everything, including sisterhood.
johnny aquitard
That’s very evanglist-y and retribution-y sounding. The GOP base has an affinity for that kind of imagery.
Heliopause
Once again we need to be more specific in what we’re talking about. Married women voted for Romney by several percent last year. So the fact is, the GOP is already doing just fine with some segments of the female population.
So obviously we are talking about younger, unmarried women. If I were advising the GOP I’d tell them to treat that demo the same way they treat African-Americans; make a few pro forma gestures of outreach which are actually aimed at moderates and the media and give up on making meaningful inroads. There simply is no way to dress up the conservative agenda on younger women’s issues that will be more appealing to them so there’s no point in even trying. What they should do instead is talk about it as little as possible, in dogwhistles where appropriate.
jonas
@Southern Beale:
Uh….which would be??? Oh, yeah. Don’t get sick. And how are the exchanges “creepy”? They’re telling this to a generation that has basically done nothing it’s entire life *but* sign up for stuff online. Also, don’t fall for that whole slimy “order books online” scam this “Amazon” outfit is running. Who knows what you’re getting!
Mnemosyne
@Heliopause:
Fix’d. By large margins, married Black, Latina, and Asian-American women all voted for Obama. It was married white women who voted for Romney.
I apparently am quite the outlier, because I’m white, married, and over 40 and I voted for Obama (twice).
Suzanne
@IowaOldLady: it embarrasses you? I actually feel good to be a married white woman who votes Dem.
Of course, I’ve had an abortion, and I remember what that feels like.
nineone
@Redshirt: The Boner does NOT abide.
LanceThruster
@Mnemosyne:
What about the 2nd election?
Ba-da-BUMP!
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I don’t want to toot my own horn here but I think I know a little about appealing to women. Based on the demographic data from the recent election, married women overwhelmingly went for Republicans so I think the Republican message should be:
“If you could hold onto a man, you’d be voting Republican.”
johnny aquitard
@Southern Beale: They’re trying to literally kill a lot of young people to figuratively kill Obamacare.
fuckwit
didn’t some dumbass racist columnist talk about white people voting for obama as “suppressing their gag reflex?” isn’t that an obvious dog whistle reference to blowjobs? yeah, it has a food connotation too, but it sems a bit more graphic than “hold your nose”, which is used more often
McJulie
@Mnemosyne: Same here. But I was always a liberal and have never voted for a Republican. The GOP has lost my mom and dad, though — that took some doing.
@Meadrus
@Gin & Tonic: The article author is just being stupid and lazy. A burning glass is a lens used to focus the sun’s rays on a point at high heat, like a cruel kid burning ants with a magnifying glass. It has nothing to do with burning the glass itself. Pathetic editing by the Times; if that’s what the consultants think it means, the article should have pointed out that they don’t understand the name of their own business.
debbie
@TR:
Which is what they’d have had to be smoking to think that name was a good idea.
Another Holocene Human
@Goblue72:
1. I’m sure somebody’s working on that doctoral thesis as we speak
2. Possibly, or at least they think they’re Steinbeck’s embarrassed millionaires
3. Who the fuck cares? Let’s focus on turning out our voters (which include white cis gendered female Millennials) and screw the Freepers.
The worm has turned with these parties. We’ve–we’ve got this. All we have to do is GOTV.
The GOP could come back but that would require the crazies caring more about winning elections and NOT getting their socon agenda enacted than, say, making a stand for their socon agenda. The GOP is caught in a vicious cycle right now which I don’t think they’ll have patched up by 2014. And I don’t see them having a chance of winning the executive office in 2016. They smashed up GWB’s winning coalition, and it will be 16 years after 2000 meaning that a whole cohort has aged out. In the next decade Millennials will only form a larger proportion of the voting public because as they get older their voting consistency rises, and these kids grew up during the Bush years. The very youngest voters will be different… except for that whole demographic thing. They will be coming of age as the GOP stands for calling their parents “illegals” and saying their bottled ice tea addicted classmates deserve to die and that their gay friends should commit suicide and that they and their parents are “disgusting” because of their color.
Excellent job at branding, GOP.
Another Holocene Human
@Napoleon:
It worked for so long, mainly because of inertia in the system that allowed them to take advantage of the great party realignment. But… the gig’s up.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: That asshole Dinesh D’Souza is no convert. Christianity is a minority religion in India. A good friend of mine comes from such a family. She’s happier in the US but it has a lot to do with having done high school/college here and the whole feminism thing. But yeah, there was some scary persecution too, at times.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Could be fear, too. A lot of married white women who vote GOP I know are afraid of everything. Perhaps they subconsciously realize that their economic situation is precarious? Who knows. (Some have jobs, some don’t–the one who works in admin for one of Rick Scott’s companies is peculiarly self-interested and tea partying like it’s 1769.)
I find knowing people less fortunate that yourself and having a lot of interaction with them seem to be a precursor to liberal attitudes, whereas interacting mostly with people doing better than you tends to make you trend more conservative. I know an embarrassed GOPer who is reluctantly voting D in national elections due to GOP derp but most of the people she interacts with on a personal level are horrible people and social climbers, many of whom get money (or benefits–yes, crazy but true) in awful, unethical ways, and many of whom have treated her like shit… she wants the world to punish them and she’s kind of ignorant of the fact that such scumbags will always land on their feet while the punishment consigns millions of innocents living in grinding poverty to even more misery.