Wednesday, April 30, 2014

A Word for Paul Ryan: White Women

Recently snarky BuzzFeed reporter MvKay Coppins followed Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) around as he worked to build outreach to blacks.

Yeah.  Whaddya know. Ryan was uncomfortable relating to black male convicts.  But when he went on to a lunch with businessmen he had all the one-liners down perfect.

I think it's wonderful that Paul Ryan, who is my idea of a worthy and principled politician, is trying to find ways of connecting to black voters.  It's not going to yield much in the way of votes for a long while, I'm afraid.

But there is something for more important out there for Paul Ryan to work on.  White women.  And I'll tell you why.

I attended a reunion at the consulting firm I used to work for up until 1996.  It was an engineering firm, and most of the folks there were practicing or retired engineers.  Salt of the earth guys, and all that.

But one thing hit me between the eyes.  I talked to some of the women there, technicians and assistants mostly, and a couple of them said they were "looking for work."

These are women in their fifties to sixties.  And they are looking for work.

Hello Obama economy.

Here is my advice to Paul Ryan and the Republican presidential contenders. Forget about the black vote for now.  Get to work on the white women vote.  Because white women are getting hammered, and I reckon they are up for grabs in 2014 and 2016.

What are these women thinking?  What do they think has gone wrong?  How can Republicans communicate the idea that government is not the solution?  How can Republicans gently shift them away from the idea that Hillary Clinton needs to be the First Woman President?

The problem is that women more than men are suckers for the liberal line in everything from the schools to the local news to the War on Women propaganda.  Women are more social; they are more conformist; they go with the program.

But we conservatives and Republicans are asking women to buck the local news, show the finger to cries of sexism, ignore their aggressive liberal women friends, and try something new and dangerous.

We are asking women to buck the collective consensus on women's victimhood that lets government take care of things.  Instead we want them to become responsible individualists and vote for small government and large people.

We want them to buck the idea that free contraception and unlimited abortion are the keys to women's liberation.

We want them to back away from government schooling, global warming, hyper-regulation of business, when all the government experts are telling women to go with the program.

How do we do that, Rep. Ryan?  That's far more important and necessary than a worthy -- and necessarily long term -- effort to find common ground with African Americans.

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