New York Times wonders why there aren’t more Republican Women in Congress, spins party ideologies to fit hypothesis

Another in-kind effort to the Democratic Party from the New York Times today as The Upshot wonders “Why so few?” about GOP Women in Congress:

Although women in both parties have increased their numbers in Congress during the past 25 years, the share of Democratic women — now nearly 33 percent — has continued to climb, while the Republican female share has leveled off since hitting 10 percent during the mid-2000s. And political polarization seems to be a major reason.

Moderate Republican women — think of Olympia Snowe, the former Maine senator, or Connie Morella, the former Maryland congresswoman — were once common in the party, according to research by Danielle Thomsen, a political scientist at Duke. But moderate Republicans of both genders are nearly gone from Congress today. Some conservative women, like Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, have been elected, but there are relatively few of them in a traditional pipeline to Congress: state legislatures. In other words, the gap is likely to persist for some time.

Now, Derek Willis goes off on a bit of editorializing when he states it’s an ideological issue:

A root cause of the gap is that Democratic women who are potential congressional candidates tend to fit comfortably with the liberal ideology of their party’s primary voters, while many potential female Republican candidates do not adhere to the conservative ideology of their primary voters.

But to those who pay attention, this isn’t a problem with ideology — it’s a problem with messaging. Which the media is happy to perpetuate. When’s the last time you saw the New York Times or any mainstream outlet bemoan the lack of “moderate” Democrats?

In fact, according to Pew Research, ten years ago, only 68% of Democrats were more liberal than the median Republican, compared to 70% of Republicans compared to the media Democrat. In 2014, only ten years later, 94% of Democrats are more liberal than the median Republican compared to 92% of Republicans. That’s a 26% swing to the far left in only ten years.

PP-2014-06-12-polarization-0-05
Silly facts.

The article then goes on to discuss a low number of elected Republicans who are identified as “moderate,” but that’s a subjective label based on the bias of the researcher, not reality.

But let’s put this aside and look at the reality of the situation here.

While the NYTimes wonders why there aren’t more Republican Women in Congress, the DCCC and Emily’s List put Republican Women on their “Hit Lists” for 2016 (see Jim Hoeft’s post from earlier today).

In the case of women (and even minorities), if they’re Republican they’re attacked relentlessly as traitors to their gender or race by an opposition so focused on a single issue that they forget there’s a diverse electorate out there with just as diverse opinions. This gets lost not just by focus groups but by the media itself, who gets so caught up in pushing the Democratic view of the issues (“War on Women” anybody?) that they can’t see the forest from the trees. But trees make better stories, I guess.

Even with labels aside, part of the lack of moderates on either side isn’t just a matter of gender or even a party eating it’s own — it’s the other side targeting moderates because the electorate can easily swing from 53/47 one way to another.

Take MA Senator Scott Brown for example – hardly an extreme Conservative, Sen. Brown was viewed as the right kind of Republican for that seat. And Democrats by and large used him as an example for how the party could and should moderate itself – why can’t we all just be more like Scott Brown?

Who Democrats then rallied to defeat with Elizabeth Warren in 2012.

As long as the media perpetuates the myth that women aren’t active or welcome in Republican politics – and as long as the media cheerleads the Democratic talking points when it comes to the issues and how women should act and vote – then Republican women are going to have a hard time getting elected to Congress, heck, any office. And that’s not the Republican Party’s fault.

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