Secretary of State Kim Wyman.
OCEAN SHORES, Jan. 27—At this year’s big be-there-or-be-square Republican gathering in Ocean Shores, the talk was of their ‘War on Women’ – and the puzzled women of the GOP spent the weekend wondering how it could be.
Mary Lane Strow had to admit she was flabbergasted when she learned from the Democratic political campaigns of 2012 just how much she hated women. “What, do I hate myself? Do I need to see a shrink? I’m a member of a party that is at war with members of my sex?”
Strow, public information officer in the House Republican Caucus and a former communications director for Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, was among speakers at the annual Roanoke Conference in Washington’s seaside resort city. If the Republican Party hates women, you wouldn’t have known it by looking at the agenda. Weighted heavily toward the female side of the divide, the slate of speakers at the annual meet-up raised the usual big-picture questions about the future of the party – the big opportunities presented by disastrous rollout of Obamacare, the outreach to minority groups, the young, and especially to women.
No matter how strong the distaste for the war-on-women campaign theme, and no matter how much it seems to be disproven by the numbers of female Republican candidates winning office at the state and federal levels, they had to admit the Democrats were on to something back in 2012. Pick up on the anti-abortion sentiment held by some in the party, multiply it by a few wild statements from candidates about “legitimate rape” that left the bulk of the party gasping – and suddenly the Democrats had an argument that was good for several points at the ballot box. A brilliant wedge-politics play, Strow said during one of several breakout sessions over the course of the weekend.
“This is what they do,” Strow continued. “They pick different issues and then say, oh, it is a war on women – like what they are doing right now in Olympia with the Reproductive Parity Act. They aren’t doing it because they are motivated out of the goodness of their hearts or because it is so difficult to get an abortion in Washington state. They are doing it because Obamacare is sending their polling numbers down the toilet, and they are like – don’t look at this, look at something else, so they bring these issues up. The way I try to approach it is with a combination of mockery and then really exposing the idea for what it is.”
Might be cheaper than seeing a psychiatrist.
Event Just Keeps Growing
Banquet is attended by 550.
The annual meeting at Ocean Shores, now in its 5th year, has fast become the place to be for Republican elected officials, candidates, party stalwarts and activists. Named for the Mercer Island tavern where Republican activists hatched the idea of an annual conference a half-decade ago, the conference has become a must-not-miss for those on the right side of the aisle. Unlike the biannual Republican Party convention, there is no business to conduct, and the emphasis of the public sessions is more on the big themes than on speechifying by individual candidates. Though of course just as much gets done in the hallways and the multitude of receptions, as Republicans from across the state mingle and greet and face one another eyeball to eyeball. This year’s gathering drew 550, the biggest yet.
Kim Wyman, Washington’s secretary of state and the state’s top Republican elected official, said the 2014 gathering as always offered a change for Republicans to recharge batteries and start looking to the upcoming elections with enthusiasm. “I’m always energized after attending Roanoke,” she said. “The overall point is to really remind us as Republicans that we are all on the same team, and we have a lot of objectives and goals, but at the end of the day what we are really trying to accomplish is getting Republican leaders elected to office so that we can move the state in a direction that is more in line with the overall direction of our party.”
At afternoon breakout session, Mary Lane Strow, center, denies that she hates women. She is flanked by Minnesota strategist Scott Cottington and Heidi Kelly of Competitive Strategies.
Unlike last year’s rather subdued gathering, when Republicans were licking their wounds from losses in statewide and national races, albeit with a few gains in the state House and Senate, this year’s confab was filled with enthusiasm for the election to come this fall. Just as on the national level, Washington-state Republicans are looking for ways to overcome what they call a branding problem – one recent Gallup poll indicated that just 28 percent of Americans identify themselves as firmly on the Republican side of the aisle. But negative public reaction to the congressional shutdown last October – prompted by Republican efforts to delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act – has since been overshadowed by the disastrous launch of the federal health reform program. Results aren’t in yet – the final federal sign-up deadline comes in March, but already a told-you-so theme seems to be permeating discussions. “Obamacare is the gift that keeps on giving,” joked state Republican chairwoman Susan Hutchison.
But the Democrats’ war-on-women pitch – that’s still a point that still stings.
Talk About the Seahawks
State Republican Party Chairwoman Susan Hutchison.
Hutchison credited the other team with identifying a potent theme, and said Republicans need to avoid giving them ammo. Seems like no matter what they say, it’s going to be taken and twisted and used against them – especially if a bit of hyperbole is involved. Case in point is former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. At the winter meeting of the Republican meeting of the Republican National Committee last week, Huckabee touched off a firestorm when he mocked the Democratic message: “If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it.”
Suddenly the news was full of comment about a former Republican presidential candidate who wanted to talk about women’s uncontrolled libidos. Huckabee’s meaning was clear enough to those who actually heard the full sentence, said Hutchison, who attended the meeting. But you can’t expect people to parse the wording of a sentence – and Republicans ought to be wary before treading onto that minefield. “All that got picked out of that were the words ‘libido’ and ‘uncontrolled,’ and the Dems and the left-wing media have had a field day with it, so I would like to add – please, don’t mention the word rape in any way. Also, let’s not talk about anything having to do with women’s reproductive cycle or women’s sexuality. Leave that to the women to discuss. Could we just agree on that? And if somebody tries to needle you if you are a candidate, just change the subject. Talk about the Seahawks.”
A Settled Issue
Sometimes you just have to wonder, Hutchison said. The war on women has become an essential element of the Democratic playbook – as if a political party seeking votes from the entire electorate would decide that half the populace is the enemy. “I’ve been accused of being anti-women,” she said. “Every woman who has run for office on the Republican side has been accused of being anti-women. It makes no sense, but they get away with it.”
Well, actually, maybe it does make sense – if only as a matter of politics, said John Carlson, the KVI radio talk host and former Republican gubernatorial candidate in the year 2000. No matter how many times the abortion issue is debated and settled, it always seems to come up again in infinite variations, precisely because it seems to work so well. “Have you ever noticed that whenever there is a statewide contest abortion always stands front and center as a major issue for the Democrats?” he asked. “Now, Washington voters have gone to the polls I believe four times in 40 years and this issue is settled. And yet it keeps coming up time after time after time. …That is because they know that that issue unites their base, divides Republicans, divides Republican voters and appeals to independents. What we need is a counter strategy that does exactly the same thing. Run on issues that reunite our base, that divide the Democrats and appeal to independents.”
Those core issues, of course, are jobs, a prosperous economy, and a limited government that takes a smaller bite. And one way to make the point is to articulate it with female candidates. Wyman pointed out that nationwide there are 636 Republican women legislators and three female House speakers. Last election cycle the national Republican State Leadership Committee identified 185 female candidates in 36 states; 84 were elected. Next time out, it hopes to identify 300 candidates and elect at least half.
Ask Wyman how she feels about the war she is supposed to be waging on women and she laughs. “I am not,” she said. “Not at all. I don’t have time for that. We have so many other things to do.”
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