Pol Opposes Women's Suffrage

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2001/sep/28/092806644.html ^ | September 28, 2001

[gumbo]

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) - A female state senator says if women's suffrage were being voted on today she would not support it, because the 19th Amendment was the start of a decades-long erosion of family values.

"I'm an old-fashioned woman," Sen. Kay O'Connor told The Kansas City Star. "Men should take care of women, and if men were taking care of women (today) we wouldn't have to vote."

Delores Furtado, co-president of the Johnson County League of Women Voters, had asked the 59-year-old Republican to the league's "Celebrate the Right to Vote" luncheon, and O'Connor responded: "You probably wouldn't want me there because of what I would have to say."

Furtado said she was shocked by O'Connor's view. As a state senator, Furtado said, "she is the beneficiary of a system she doesn't support."

O'Connor said she does vote. But she said she believes that if men had been protecting the best interests of women, then women would not be forced to cast ballots and serve in the Legislature. Instead, they could stay home, raise families and tend to domestic duties, she said.

The 19th amendment giving all U.S. women the right to vote was ratified in 1920. O'Connor said the amendment began a societal shift that eventually encouraged women to trade homemaker roles for careers.

She said she entered the workplace only because of her daughter was ill and medical bills were mounting.

O'Connor, of Olathe, was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1992 and won a Senate seat last year. She isn't worried if voters don't like her views.

"If I don't get re-elected, my only punishment is to go home to my husband and my roses and my children and my grandchildren," she said. "And if the trips to Topeka get to be too much and my husband asks me to quit, I would."

[JoeMomma]

Kay O'Connor is an embarrassment to not only modern Republicanism, but to the GOP's proud progressive tradition in supporting the women's right to vote in the first place.

My message to O'Connor: Get out of my party! Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[Hillary? Hell no!]

It's ridiculous to blame the left-ward tilt of our nation on women having the vote. Women are roughly half of the population. Since we know that political leanings, logical ability, a basic grasp of economics, etc. aren't limited by race, religion, gender or any other then it's safe to assume that women aren't all in lockstep with each other on politics, anymore than all men. Take away the votes of all women and you take away the votes of a fair number of conservatives. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

In short, it isn't that all women are voting liberal, it's that liberals are voting in greater numbers than right-thinking people. The key to getting this country back on track is to get reasonable, non-socialists of whatever race, gender, or religion to the polls.

[Bella_Bru]

Of course, things like this give the 'Rats more fuel. "See? Not only do they want old people to starve and not have meds, they also want to keep women from voting." And people will believe them. Sataements like this do a party more harm than good.

[JoeMomma]

The Taliban would be proud of Senator O'Connor. If O'Connor would just come out in favor of requiring burquas be worn and women stay at home, Osama bin Laden would probably come to Kansas to endorse her re-election bid.

O'Connor could go back home to her hubby and hear him utter those three little words she holds so dear -- "Where's my dinner?"

[That Poppins Woman]

I think you've eaten some mold-tainted bread and are experiencing some hallucinations. In addition, I fear you are most assuredly NOT a student of human nature.

Just get it - choice to carry a child to term or not carry it is here to stay. The GOP knows this. The reason Gore almost won was because of this issue. The reason he lost is because of the 2A issue.

[Aurelius]

" ... political leanings aren't limited by race, religon, gender,..."

While this is certainly true for individuals it is by no means necessarily obvious that each of the qualities you mention will not be different on the average in different groups made up of the same race, religion or gender. The facts support this in at least some cases, most of us have experience seeming to suggest it in others. And so indeed it is possible, and I believe there is objective evidence to suggest it is probable, that, although there are many strongly conservative women, woman tend as a group to be more left-leaning than men.

[patlaw_guy]

It's an unfortunate commentary on how the quality of discourse has declined on Free Republic in the last year that a significant minority (or even slight majority) of posters seem to think that women should be denied the right to vote.

[Aurelius]

What has it to do with the quality of discourse? The quality of discourse is not determined by the opinions expressed.

[Hillary? Hell no!]

That's still no reason to deny half of the population the right to vote.

[Aurelius]

The eight years of the Clinton misadministration was a hell of a price to pay for giving women the vote!

[Hillary? Hell no!]

Please. There were plenty of women who didn't vote for Clinton and plenty of men who did vote for him.

As I stated above, since groups of people do not vote in lockstep with one another, those of us who would preserve our country would do best to cultivate right-thinking voters regardless of classification.

[Great Wombat]

I certainly would be among the last to defend FDR's presidency under most circumstances, but saying he allowed the Pearl Harbor bombing intentionally by holding back information seems a bit conspiratorially minded to me. I have a hard time swallowing that--and all of the evidence I have seen to back up that theory has been very shaky and often is based on suppositions that cannot be checked.

You are right on the Eastern Europe to Stalin thing, of course, but given the nature of the war against Germany (Russia doing most of the fighting, while the US and the UK waited to 1944 to hit France) I don't see how else that could have been worked out. I suppose we could have tried to continue on fighting with Russia and maybe even nuked them instead of Japan, but that seems a bit much.

So, no, I don't put FDR on MY top 10 list (or even my top 30), but for wretchedness, my vote is still with Harding.

[Tribune7]

Just get it - choice to carry a child to term or not carry it is here to stay. The GOP knows this. The reason Gore almost won was because of this issue. The reason he lost is because of the 2A issue.

The Democratic Party is sick and dying because of it's unrelenting support for "choice" or abortion on demand.

[Tribune7]

Please. There were plenty of women who didn't vote for Clinton and plenty of men who did vote for him. As I stated above, since groups of people do not vote in lockstep with one another, those of us who would preserve our country would do best to cultivate right-thinking voters regardless of classification.

Susan B. Anthony was a great American and the ideals she expressed should be enshrined in gold.

The problems facing this country cannot be laid at the foot of women but men like Marx, Marcuse, Jerry Rubin, Earl Warren (a Republican), and the gutless fools (almost entirely men) who ran our universities and media outlets in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

[gumbo]

saying he allowed the Pearl Harbor bombing intentionally by holding back information seems a bit conspiratorially minded to me...all of the evidence I have seen to back up that theory has been very shaky and often is based on suppositions that cannot be checked

I read this book while my son was writing a term paper on deciphering the Japanese code ("Purple") during WWII.

Checking over my son's research, it seemed clear to me that Roosevelt was in possession of decoded Japanese message intercepts indicating an imminent, major attack on the U.S. fleet.

As I recall, the only question was the exact location of the attack. Pearl Harbor was definitely one of the locations considered threatened.

Yet Roosevelt did not permit his Naval commanders (I believe it was Kimmel and Short at Pearl) to be briefed on this intelligence until too late.

Communications at the time were slower, of course; but a reading of the evidence convinces me that Roosevelt deliberately withheld the intelligence from his commanders.

This book has a wealth of information on the subject.

[Aurelius]

Harding at least did no harm.

The recent book "Day of Deceit", by Stinnett, pretty well ties down the case that Roosevelt: 1) deliberately provoked the Japanese and 2) withheld Washington's knowledge of the impending attack from the two commanders, Kimmel and Short, in Hawaii. He then kept silent when a congressional committee found Kimmel and Short to have been negligent.

[That Poppins Woman]

The Democratic Party is sick and dying because of it's unrelenting support for "choice" or abortion on demand.

No. The Democratic Party is sick and dying because of it's unrelenting, unconstitutional, and short-sighted attacks on the 2A.

Not counting the fact that they have abandoned the more radical and committed factions of their loosely held coalition, i.e., the militant environmentalists, and the anti-drug war folks.