Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Last of Her Kind (Pro-Choice Republican Woman)
NY Times ^ | 30 December 2007 | GAIL COLLINS

Posted on 12/30/2007 7:13:43 AM PST by shrinkermd

There was a time when the Republican Party was the ship that flew the banner of the Equal Rights Amendment. Mary Crisp went down with the Titanic, railing about women’s issues to the irate Reagan revolutionaries in the days leading up to the 1980 presidential convention.

All revolutions have their heroines and heroes whose heresies lead them to be burned at the stake,” wrote Tanya Melich in “The Republican War Against Women.” “Mary Crisp was ours.”

It was quite a finale for a woman who was basically a career volunteer, the prototypical ’50s suburban housewife who worked to put her husband through medical school, then retired to raise the kids and donate her services to the community.

In Crisp’s case, her favorite cause was the Republican Party and its local hero, Barry Goldwater. She became so invaluable that she eventually rose to a post at the Republican National Committee and, in 1976, the role of secretary of the party’s presidential convention. (She took her responsibility of reading the roll of the states so seriously that she spent weeks learning the pronunciation of every single delegate’s name in case of a procedural challenge, which never occurred.)

...Crisp said she had done no such thing. But she went to Detroit, where the 1980 Republican convention would be held, bent on continuing the long support of the E.R.A. and in beating back a plank calling for an anti-abortion constitutional amendment. She lost both fights. Incensed, she lashed out in her departure speech to the party’s platform committee, forgoing the traditional words about the good work that she and Brock had accomplished and instead saying that her party was “about to bury the rights of over 100 million American women under a heap of platitudes.”

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: abortion; babykiller; murderess; nfrw; prochoice; prolife; republican; rncplatform
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-44 next last
27 years and counting and there is no anti-abortion Constitutional Amendment yet.
1 posted on 12/30/2007 7:13:44 AM PST by shrinkermd
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

Where is the article on the ‘last of her kind’ the pro-life Democrat?


2 posted on 12/30/2007 7:23:59 AM PST by tdewey10 (Can we please take out iran's nuclear capability before they start using it?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd
This is a tale of how we bagged our very first RINO, and there she was, slim and trim, preparing to read the lists of names in case of disputes, her figure unsullied by the rigors of excessive childbearing ~ undoubtedly saved from that fate by her friendly neighborhood abortionist.

Oh, the horror we felt when we discovered that the class enemy had infiltrated to the very top ....... years later the NYT would call us the heretics.

3 posted on 12/30/2007 7:31:47 AM PST by muawiyah
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

Liberalism is a religion and abortion is its’ sacrament.


4 posted on 12/30/2007 7:32:59 AM PST by iowamark
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: tdewey10

She went the way of the Dodo a long time ago.


5 posted on 12/30/2007 7:43:29 AM PST by BenLurkin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

So what happened to Mary Crisp? Is this an obituary, or just a random essay?


6 posted on 12/30/2007 7:44:08 AM PST by docbnj
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

and there never will be.

Why would you solve the problem? Why then would the Right to Life voters show up?
Seems to me the abortion issue is trotted out to rile up our voters, a few piecemeal things are passed leading up to an election, and then the issue is dropped.
If the republican party was serious about ending abortion, there could have been something done when we had the presidency, congress and the supreme court.

I just can’t believe the Right to Life folks have fallen for the same bait and switch game for 30+ years. Every 2 years Republican candidates talk about how bad abortion is. And then they spend the next 2 years before the election trying to avoid the issue.
Occasionally they throw the Right to Life folks a bone, but the party elite are never going to end legal abortion because it is not in their political interest to end legal abortion. It’s like Democrats with poverty. Why would they honestly want to help poor folks find jobs and be independent? If the poor found good jobs, independence and self esteem, they would be less inclined to vote democrat. Especially after they start paying taxes!


7 posted on 12/30/2007 7:49:48 AM PST by Will_Zurmacht
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

I have to question the timing, and the source.


8 posted on 12/30/2007 7:53:29 AM PST by Regular American
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: docbnj
So what happened to Mary Crisp? Is this an obituary, or just a random essay?

I wondered, myself. Never heard of her, but I suppose I'm sorry if she's died.

9 posted on 12/30/2007 7:55:13 AM PST by Tax-chick ("The keys to life are running and reading." ~ Will Smith)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd
Reader's might be interested in these quotes from a recent Washington Post Article:

"...First, there are women, who used to vote disproportionately Republican. (In 1960, for instance, women backed the Republican Richard M. Nixon, with his 5 o'clock shadow, over the dashing Democrat John F. Kennedy.) But in the 1990s, troubled by the Republicans' ardor for the religious right and opposition to social spending, they began voting disproportionately Democratic -- especially single women, working women and college-educated women. In the 2000 congressional elections, single women backed Democrats over Republicans by a whopping 63 percent to 35. Even better news for Democrats: Women are more likely to vote than men.

"...Second, there are professionals, once the most Republican of all occupational groups. In 1960, they backed Nixon over JFK by 61 percent to 38. But as professionals -- including nurses, teachers and actors as well as doctors, scientists and engineers -- have become a larger proportion of the workforce (about 7 percent in the 1950s, and about 17 percent today), they have turned decidedly blue. In the four presidential elections from 1988 to 2000, professionals backed Democrats by an average of 52 percent to 40 percent. The reason: Professionals typically used to see themselves as pro-business entrepreneurs, but by the 1990s, most had become salaried workers, wary of big corporations and the untrammeled free market. Moreover, as members of the post-1960s college generation, the new professionals grew up celebrating Earth Day and Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and admiring the (pre-2000) Ralph Nader.

This article can be found: HERE.

10 posted on 12/30/2007 7:55:58 AM PST by shrinkermd
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

Reading again about the misguided fool Mary Crisp makes me think one thing above all: God bless Phyllis Schlafly!


11 posted on 12/30/2007 7:56:22 AM PST by montag813
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: docbnj
She passed away at age 83 on March 24, 2007.
12 posted on 12/30/2007 7:58:40 AM PST by Flora McDonald (Ron Paul '08 - In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Will_Zurmacht

Just what do you think Republicans could DO to end abortion?

With a 50:50 Congress, I don’t think any anti-abortion measures are going to get very far.


13 posted on 12/30/2007 8:00:35 AM PST by Mr Rogers (Huckabee - the Republican John Edwards)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: tdewey10
Where is the article on the ‘last of her kind’ the pro-life Democrat?

I don't think pro-life Democrats are tolerated any more than pro-choice Republicans are.

14 posted on 12/30/2007 8:02:24 AM PST by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd
As the Democratic party embraced civil rights, equal rights, secularism, and the counter-culture, etc, the cultural populists abandoned the dems.

The GOP and Nixon brought them into the GOP by abandoning the previous GOP/Mary Crisp positions.

The GOP rode the coalition between the economic elitists and the cultural populists to power.

Unfortunately, the GOP coalition has shattered with the two wings being opposed to each other.

15 posted on 12/30/2007 8:20:55 AM PST by Ben Ficklin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

“All revolutions have their heroines and heroes whose heresies lead them to be burned at the stake,” wrote Tanya Melich in “The Republican War Against Women.” “Mary Crisp was ours.”

Nothing like hyperbole.


16 posted on 12/30/2007 8:33:57 AM PST by popdonnelly (Get Reid. Salazar, and Harkin out of the Senate.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd
Mary Crisp, 83, Feminist G.O.P. Leader, dies

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/washington/17crisp.html

17 posted on 12/30/2007 8:39:59 AM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

They dug this old hack up in 1980 when Reagan was running and made a big deal about her.

Oh that’s right. Abortion lovers don’t breed.


18 posted on 12/30/2007 8:53:05 AM PST by Luke21
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

PRESIDENT IN 2008

Here we are already discussing the future President of the United States in the Year 2008.

For those of you who would like a choice for President, we have a solution: It is probably time we have a woman as President . One choice is a very special lady who has all the answers to our problems.

PLEASE give it a thought when you have a moment...

MAXINE FOR PRESIDENT!

Very eloquently put...........don’t you think?

Maxine on ‘Driver Safety’ ‘I can’t use the cell phone in the car. I have to keep my hands free for making gestures.’.......

Maxine on ‘Housework’ ‘I do my housework in the nude. It gives me an incentive to clean the mirrors as quickly as possible.’

Maxine on ‘Lawn Care’ ‘The key to a nice-looking lawn is a good mower. I recommend one who is muscular and shirtless.’

Maxine on ‘The Perfect Man’ ‘All I’m looking for is a guy who’ll do what I want, when I want, for as long as I want, and then go away. Or wait nearby, like a Dust Buster, charged up and ready when needed.’

Maxine on ‘Technology Revolution’ ‘My idea of rebooting is kicking somebody in the butt twice.’

Maxine on ‘Aging’ ‘Take every birthday with a grain of salt. This works much better if the salt accompanies a Margarita.’

‘I’m telling you ... she’s the perfect candidate.’

‘The only two things we do with greater frequency in middle age are urinate and attend funerals .’

‘The trouble with bucket seats is that not everybody has the same size bucket.’

‘To err is human; to forgive, highly unlikely.’

‘Do you realize that in about 40 years, we’ll have millions of old ladies running around with tattoos and pierced navels? (Now that’s scary!) ‘

‘Money can’t buy happiness—but somehow it’s more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.’

‘After a certain age, if you don’t wake up aching somewhere...you may be dead.’


19 posted on 12/30/2007 9:13:00 AM PST by HarleyLady27 (Fred Thompson/Duncan Hunter 08; Duncan Hunter/FredThompson 08.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: shrinkermd

oh puh-lEEEze...spare me THIS bit of tripe. This woman may have been the “last of her kind” (don’t I wish!) and good riddance, I say.

They can make all the blather they want about anti-abortion being a “religious” issue, but the plain and unvarnished truth IS, is that abortion has always been a most basic HUMAN RIGHTS issue from the start for those of us who consider ourselves to be to-the-bone social conservatives. In this day and age of medical technology and advances and with what we know about the pre-born child NOW, there is no longer a single justification for abortion. They know it, we know it. But then, this never WAS about womens’ rights OR womens’ health...Abortion is a matter for the states to handle. Heres hoping the SC will reverse its mistake.

As to the ERA...? Conservatives and conservative WOMEN (although, I didn’t consider myself one at the time) saw this bit of claptrap for what it was at the time. It was given an unprecedented TWO attempts at passage. In all those years, they could not convince the voters (including the women!) that it was a good idea.

I, for one, will not miss the “last of her kind”- nor any of the OTHER “lasts of their kind” as THEY depart the social scene.


20 posted on 12/30/2007 9:28:36 AM PST by 13Sisters76 ("It is amazing how many people mistake a certain hip snideness for sophistication. " Thos. Sowell)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-44 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson