It seems that it has finally gotten through to Republicans that they aren't doing too well with women. They also aren't doing well with minorities and young people, but they seem to have given up trying to appeal to those groups (and now just are trying to keep them from voting). But that effort won't work with women. They outnumber men, and tend to vote in larger numbers.
So the Republicans decided they needed to do something to appeal to female voters, and to figure out what to do (it never occurring to them to change their anti-women policies) they had five elected GOP women meet to find a solution.
They decided that Republicans just needed to act nicer on the campaign trail, and tell more stories to illustrate the wonderful Republican policies. In other words, women aren't smart enough to understand the Republican policies, so the GOP men need to be nicer and explain it so the women can understand.
And one of those officials, Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina (pictured), actually put those thoughts into words -- saying women just don't understand all the pie charts and graphs the Republicans use when speaking (and don't have the time to try and understand since they take so much more time to get ready in the morning). It just shows how little respect Republicans have for women (since even a small child can understand a pie chart). Ellmers said:
“Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level. Many of my male colleagues, when they go to the House floor, you know, they’ve got some pie chart or graph behind them and they’re talking about trillions of dollars and how, you know, the debt is awful and, you know, we all agree with that.”
“We need our male colleagues to understand that if you can bring it down to a woman’s level and what [sic] everything that she is balancing in her life — that’s the way to go.”
Now it is obvious that while most women are very smart (probably smarter than most men), Ellmers is not the brightest bulb among the female population. But it is downright sad that her obvious mental deficiencies have led her to accept the Republican mantra that women are just not as smart as men, and need men to take care of them and explain complicated things like politics and religion for them (especially old white men).I'm not surprised though. Republicans have always thought that women should be second-class citizens -- undeserving of equal rights (or equal pay). And as long as they pursue their anti-woman policies, they will have trouble getting women's votes (and that's as it should be). They can talk nicer and talk down to women, but until they change their anti-woman policies and attitudes they will never get a majority of women to vote for them.
I saw video of Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina giving her statement in it's entirety. She complained that her words were taken out of context by the media. She should not have complained because the context was even more damning. She is what the Republicans want in a female spokesperson, compliant and willing to throw her gender under the bus. Problem for the GOP is that women are too smart to fall Ms. Ellmers' party-line rhetoric that “Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level." B*llsh*t.
ReplyDeleteHistorically, the communication gap, not an intelligence gap but a communication gap, between professional and public men and women comes from when women had no rights. They were teaching kids and changing the style of explaining things as the kids grew, so we evolved to communicate on whatever level is appropriate for our audience to understand the point we’re making. (I’ve done effective presentations at business lunches and for middle school classes. If I was a Republican I’d have to turn in my ovaries!)
ReplyDeleteIn the past men have been in situations where intimidation through communication was used and talking over the heads of the audience was a quicker way to compliance. (Kids have stronger minds than Republicans?) In today’s world, the multi-level approach is more effective because most voters are harder to manipulate, at least that’s true with educated voters; college tuition wouldn’t be an issue if there weren’t so darned many educated voters. That communication approach does work well for most of the women and men I know.
It’s a somewhat sexist answer to a sexist comment, but the truth is that the Republican men need to grow up and be more like non-Republican women. They need to learn to communicate rather than intimidate with their language because intimidation is a political tactic that’s starting to lose its effectiveness. At least the Republican women seem to agree with that.