Posted on 09/23/2004 5:53:56 AM PDT by pabianice
While fretting about Karl Rove, the Democrats overlooked Karen Hughes. How she—and Laura Bush—are winning the election for W.
Should wives matter in a presidential campaign? Is it trivial to weigh Laura Bush’s gentle, Xanax-like demeanor, her faultless librarian’s poise and sincerity, against the imperious sexuality of Teresa Heinz Kerry? We often feel a twinge of guilt over our own fascination with presidential candidates’ wives—as if we are secretly reading the Star for our campaign information instead of the policy journals.
But the iconography that candidates’ wives create is important and a serious medium through which a modern candidate can send out his message. Heartbreakingly for Democrats, this is a lesson that the Republicans have learned to their vast advantage. By manipulating the images of the women around George W. Bush, including Laura herself, the Bush team has brilliantly eroded the traditional Democratic advantage among women.
What happened? Karen Hughes. The true genius behind the Bush success is not Karl Rove; she’s a suburban working mom in sensible shoes. It was clear from the start that Team Bush realized that the old, white, male face of the Republican Party was a recipe for losing those crucial suburban women in the swing states who are socially progressive and fiscally conservative. As long as the face of Republicanism was that of Newt Gingrich, ready to talk about women soldiers getting gynecological infections in foxholes, the GOP would face a Democratic hegemony, to paraphrase Rove, for the next twenty years.
So they devised a deliberate strategy that went unnoticed by Democratic strategists, most of whom are white guys over 50: to showcase a moderate, mainstream feminist makeover for the Bush brand. Everyone fell for it, including the press. Bush’s speeches are routinely cast before the eye, I am convinced, of Karen Hughes, who spins tax cuts as a boon to women entrepreneurs, like the one Laura Bush mentioned in her convention speech (Carmella Chaifos, “the only woman to own a tow-truck company in all of Iowa”). The fallen heroes of Iraq are “moms and dads.” Afghanistan was the first time U.S. troops were deployed for a feminist goal, “so Afghan girls could go to school.”
Abortion is an issue not of Ms. Magazine–style fanaticism or suicidal Republican religious reaction, but a complex issue on which “good people can disagree.” (W. mimicked his father’s trick of catering to his religious base while leaking the fact that his wife is pro-choice.)
Look at the language. Starting in 2000, every Republican-male dinosaur on TV began to sound like Oprah. Suddenly they all used the words—sensitive, comfort (or comfortable), and appreciate. George Bush is “comfortable in his skin.” Laura Bush and her husband want to “comfort” the bereaved families of dead soldiers. Republicans would speak of Bush as “sensitive” to the complexity of issues and as being someone “appreciative” of working moms. It worked frighteningly well: The words “changed the tone” of Washington Republicans from that of the losing old boys’ club of 1992 and 1996.
“Let’s start with ‘Heinz.’ There is no genteel way to put this: Teresa is publicly, subliminally cuckolding Kerry with the power of a dead man...”
Thanks for the ping, Happy. I'll go check #9 out!!
FUNNY! I was thinking it was someone who LIKED Teresa!!
I think the Lame Stream Snooze Media picked up on that too and quickly dropped any Beslan stories.
If the full horror of what happened there were to be shown as a "Movie of the Week" John F'ng Kerry wouldn't get 25% of the vote.
hehe ..
LOLOL!!
Mark
Amazing how feminists have to put everything into sexual terms --- like some kind of star-struck teenage girl who believes it's all about image only. You'd think women -- especially feminsts would find all that very insulting but then again the feminists all acted like they had big girlish crushes on Bill Clinton.
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