Friday, May 15, 2009

Palin Speaks the Language of Women

The Republican Party is known as the Daddy Party--a little rough and gruff at times. Everyone knows that the Democratic Party is the Mommy Party. It will try to make everything better with a check.

What Republicans and conservatives need, I've written, is a Mommy Conservatism. But it ain't easy.

How do you persuade the moderate white middle-aged woman voter to sign onto reform? You are asking her to change a government school system that is all she has ever known. You are asking her to agree to health system changes that will confuse and annoy her aging mother.

After watching the YouTube video of Sarah Palin's Right-to-Life speech in Evansville, IN, I'm here to say that Palin is one that can lead us to a woman-centered conservatism.

At least, she knows how to speak the language of women.

Most women don't think in the strident language of male politics. They think in terms of the "dilemmas" they have faced in their lives.

And that is how Palin spoke in Evansville, reported by the Washington Post.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told an antiabortion audience in Indiana on Thursday night that, "for a fleeting moment," she considered having an abortion after learning that her son Trig would have Down syndrome. The experience, she added, "now lets me understand a woman's, a girl's temptation to maybe try to make it all go away." Ultimately, Palin said, she decided she had to "walk the walk" concerning her long-standing antiabortion views.

This is the way that women talk. This is the way that conservatives need to talk. And if conservatives learn how to approach women as women, appreciating and respecting the "dilemmas" of a woman's life then we will earn the right and the support we need to reform the welfare state.

And make it not just a woman-friendly thing, but a human-friendly thing.

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