Posted on 08/14/2012 4:47:26 PM PDT by SJackson
Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s newly chosen running-mate in this year’s presidential election race, is a strong candidate on many grounds. He is a brilliant man, a thorough master of government finances – which as we all know need work these days – and he is more conservative than Romney, which should appeal to the party’s skeptical Tea Party faction. He is a good speaker, and at age forty-two he is a generation younger than Romney — and also a good deal younger than President Obama – which might help the GOP connect with younger voters.
All this is just fine, but in watching the news today I also heard it suggested more than once that Ryan might be more popular than Romney with women. Romney, we are told, is an old-fashioned, milk-drinking square who wants to deprive women of their rights and privileges and send them back to the 1950s.
Ryan, by contrast, is a good-looking guy, tall and trim, said to have fantastic abs, and blessed with that enviable Irish charm. His line of chatter over cocktails might be off-putting to women – few of whom care much about the federal budget – but they probably figure that if they can corner him for a moment they can make him stop talking.
Many women, it seems, vote with their gonads.
When John F. Kennedy was running for president, hordes of young women invariably lined his parade routes. Theodore White, the author of the “Making of the President” series of books, observed that the women in the back rows would frantically jump up and down to get a glimpse of the dazzlingly charming candidate.
When JFK’s opponent, Richard Nixon, went riding by, not a single woman onlooker lifted a foot. Probably most of them were into middle-age or older, and suffering from arthritis and gout.
The people who run for president are not unaware of this female tendency. John Kerry, when he ran at the head of the Democratic ticket in 2004, chose John Edwards as his running-mate. I can’t think of any special qualities that Edwards brought to the ticket, except perhaps an ability to appeal visually to giddy, young female voters.
Bob Dole seems to have made a half-hearted stab at it when he ran against President Clinton in 1996, choosing as his running-mate the charismatic but slightly superannuated ex-football player Jack Kemp. I don’t know what George Bush the elder had in mind when he chose young Dan Quayle as his running-mate, but the ticket did win the first time around, although Quayle himself turned out to be a dud.
I don’t enjoy having to write this, but I think the time has come to limit women’s suffrage. The noble experiment that began when women were granted the right to vote in 1920, by the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, has failed.
In the years before the amendment was passed, women’s suffrage was opposed not only by men, but also by some women. The historians tell us that it was opposed by married women who circulated in political-leadership circles, who had a behind-the-scenes influence on women’s issues with the decision-makers, and who didn’t want to see that influence turned over to the hoi polloi.
These women also argued that if women had the vote, they would want to impose prohibition of alcoholic beverages on the nation. Who is to say that they were wrong?
Those arguments aren’t the ones we hear today, but there still seems to be something wrong with letting women vote. The mere fact that they strongly favored Obama in 2008, and that they continue to strongly favor him in 2012, should be argument enough for some kind of reform.
I do not favor taking their votes away entirely. I don’t perceive any threat that they will re-impose Prohibition. But I wouldn’t allow them to vote in any election featuring male opponents, because they are too likely to make their choices for reasons that have nothing to do with the welfare of the republic.
I see no danger in letting them vote in elections where both opponents are women, but so far there has never been a presidential election in which even one of the major party tickets was headed by a woman. And there has never been one in which both V.P. candidates were women. So we are dealing only in theory for now.
I would even go so far as to suggest, in my even-handed way, that maybe men shouldn’t be allowed to choose between two women, especially in the unlikely event that one of them was good-looking.
Suppose someday a woman runs against a man for the top spot? Should we let women vote in that case? I would say no, because they unquestionably would vote for the woman for chauvinistic reasons, unless her male opponent was a fantastic hottie like JFK, in which case they would totally overlook the female candidate’s good qualities. No matter how a woman voted, it would be a flawed choice.
Some of the most vitriolic opponents of Sarah Palin were liberal women. So I’m not sure that Bernie’s analysis holds much water when he argues that “women will alway vote for the woman.”
Just listening to women talk critically about another woman (when she is not present) is instructive.
This type of argument only helps our enemies. Do women have the natural right to be free or not?
Exactly. What the hell?
The women’s vote has been far, far, to the right of the Catholic vote since it started.
END WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE - THEY’VE SUFFERED LONG ENOUGH!
This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870 to 1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did.
96% for Obama as against 88% for Kerry in 2004 or 90% for Gore in 2000?
It’s whimsy, folks. Lighten up.
I assume you have more than a passing familiarity with the enemy?
“Maybe we should take the vote away from black Americans since they only voted skin color in 2008.”
You racist! Just because 25% of black males have criminal record, are amongst the least educated group, and have significant percentage under welfare, it does not mean that blacks have been greater drain on society than any other voting block. Blacks have been oppressed by the white man for centuries, so it is natural of them to unite against the Man.
To have no voice in your own governance is to be a subject not free.
Would you be free in a republic that denied your right to vote?
I would fight against such a system secure in the knowledge that it denied me my natural rights.
You might be comfortable as a subject but I would mock your claim that you were free.
That comment made me wish for a “Like” button.
to vote, you have to pass a test about the candidates
Well, my definition of free encompasses my right to vote.
But plenty of other people feel they are free whether they vote or not. That’s all I am saying. Stand down.
This is going to be a great debate within the next couple hundred years - sooner if we have a massive economic collapse in the West. We are not ready to talk about it yet - probably not in our lifetimes, but it's coming.
Heinlein’s ideas of distinguishing civilian from citizen and that citizenship must be earned is looking better and better every day.
In the end, I think the real issue here is, we simply can not allow those dependent on the government to vote themselves more freebies. Yes, women tend to fall for emotional political appeals and that is a problem. But it would be enough to simply decide that a full voting citizen (man or woman) is only someone who is not collecting cash from the productive members in society. One day society is going to realize that the dependent class shouldn't be voting.
Definitely not an issue to discuss seriously right now though, any person or party that brought it up would be destroyed at this time.
Keep that a secret. And I even gave a hint.
Leaving aside the satirical nature of the article, in a 21st century context that wouldn't be much different than restricting the vote to landowners.
I'd sign, I don't want women suffering.
Travel on then...
Agreed; but the intelligence requirement must also be contained in that scenario, I have known an awful lot of really dumb service folks. Of course that was back in the late 60s and early 70s when they were drafting any thing that could breath and walk at the same time. I enlisted in 68 and met some real dim bulbs in the Corps; and they were still very particular about the quality of recruit they were willing to take. A lot of them were busted right out of boot camp and sent to other services or the reserve.
It is a fact that Democrats always win the female vote, so while I don’t agree we should prohibit women from voting, their voting is destroying America. That’s a fact. Women elect socialists in much greater numbers than men.
Anyway...
The serious answer to our problem is that freeloaders should not be allowed to vote. If you are on welfare or government assistance, you don’t vote. If you don’t pay state or federal taxes, you don’t vote in state or federal elections.
I would restrict voting just to those who own property or who pay state and local income taxes. That would solve the problem of the parasites voting themselves largesse from the public treasury.
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.