0 Security Moms

Jesse at Pandagon takes on the silly idea that "security moms" are a new voting subgroup that the Republicans can target as potential voters. His point is that there is nothing particularly mom-ish about thinking that safety is valuable, and that nothing at all unusual that some people respond to fears of violence with violent impulses of their own.

"Mothers concerned about security? So are singles, men, childless parents, grandparents, etc. It takes a broad issue that affects all Americans and turns into a weird backhanded power grab. "I have noticed that group X is concerned about an issue! Anoint me political savant!"

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He's right but there's more going on than the lame-brained idea that if you take a political stance and find that some women have it, then you've discovered something special. There is a lot of tension in the GOP right now over female voters--they can't appeal to women's self-interest so they have to find something else to try to woo them with.

Luckily, they have a good deal of history to give their strategy some shape. Throughout history, it's been seen as silly or downright unseemly to appeal to women's self-interest in the same way that one would appeal to men's self-interest. No, political appeals to women are usually built around their roles as wives and mothers. The basic idea here is, "Vote for Bush because he will protect your children."

It won't work, of course. Why would women suddenly feel that Bush can protect children if they don't think he can protect everyone else? Appealing to women as mothers as if that is somehow more profound that appealing to them as people is a common strategy, and it usually falls flat unless it's an issue that is about children specifically, like education. And even then, the same argument would and does work just as well on men as fathers.

The point behind political appeals to women as mothers is not that women like those sort of arguments, but that appealing to women as mothers is comforting to people who are uncomfortable with women voting as full citizens with actual self-interest. These arguments pacify sexists who have a knee-jerk negative reaction to female political power, since it's not about women themselves but just an extension of their job duties as mothers. Even feminists have learned the power of pacifying sexism with power-only-in-the-service-of-children arguments--everything from the voting to birth control rights were won with a generous dose of distracting sexists from the issue of women's rights by pointing out how these rights will benefit children.

I guess these arguments probably do work on a handful of women--those women who vote conservative because of the particular social/family pressures she's under but feels uneasy about it. I'm sure we've all known women who vote Republican because their husbands do, but they have their doubts because they don't think the Republicans have their interests in mind. Telling these women that the Republicans help their children probably does make them feel better about voting against their own interests--they can tell themselves that while it sucks that their own interests aren't represented, they can justify it by saying that they're giving it up for the sake of the children. But who knows if that's really going on or if it's just a bunch of wingnut wishful thinking?

Reference: dating-coach-anita.blogspot.com