Commitment, Not Sweet Talk

Enough already of finger-pointing about who’s responsible for the fact that a staggering 14% more women voted for President Clinton than for Bob Dole. It’s time that Republican leaders do some serious self-assessment about how to speak to American women.

Moderate Govs. Bill Weld of Massachusetts, Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Pete Wilson of California have argued that women opt out of the GOP because of its stands on social issues such as abortion and gun control. Meanwhile, the media perpetuated the Gingrich-as-Grinch image at every turn, and it had an effect. Sixty-four percent of female voters said they “disapproved” of Gingrich, according to exit polls, and a lot of women just thought that Dole didn’t care as much about them as did Clinton.

So is overcoming the gender gap just a matter of Republicans coming to grip with the “feminization” of politics? And should they thus start lobbying for gun control, expanded federal authority over the private sector and the president’s next budget plan?

Nonsense. Ronald Reagan did not approach 1980 and 1984 with the sort of focus-group mania that dominated the 1996 presidential race. Those races produced a gender gap as well, but Reagan’s resoundingly successful campaigns were not grounded on the patronizing assumption that all women loved big government and all men cared about were their wallets and a strong military. Rather, he understood that Republicans do best when they are unapologetic in espousing basic principles of conservatism.

Reagan addressed voters not as special interest blocs but as people who work hard for what they have and who don’t demand government programs where personal initiative will work. His “shining city on the hill” might have sounded hokey to the intellectual elite, but the vision that Americans should consider themselves an example to the rest of the world was not mean-spirited or negative. It was uplifting. It reminded us of what united us as a nation rather than what divides us by race, politics, ethnicity or gender.

To woo women, the GOP must bring Reagan optimism, spirit and candor to discussions of difficult issues. Bending on cornerstone conservative principles will serve only to weaken the Republican base and embolden the opposition.

Despite not having recaptured Congress, Democrats continue to chirp that they have the edge with women voters because their party’s policies are “female-friendly.” Republicans should respond that such rhetoric is patronizing and dismissive of women’s diverse views and that Republican policies are good for women because they are good for America.

Take the issues that women ranked as most important this election: the economy/jobs, Medicare and Social Security and education. Republicans must make the case that smaller government and lower taxes are pro-family because they help restore choice to mothers and fathers now working longer hours for the same pay. On the entitlement front, Republicans also have the upper hand. After a decade of Republicans urging reform of Medicare and Social Security, the country is finally facing up to the fact that the money won’t be there without a major overhaul. On education, Republicans need to do more than talk vouchers. Why not ask voters, “Is your public school system better off than it was four (or eight) years ago?” Democrats might try to sound like Bill Bennett on education, but most remain captive to teachers’ unions, which stonewall reform at every turn.

Whatever Republicans do in the next few years, they should not try to appear warm and fuzzy to female voters by adopting the Democrats’ dynamics. This is precisely what spurred their autumn pitch to “soccer moms.” The media certainly enjoyed focus group mania because it made their job easier. Suddenly the key to understanding voter angst was found on the sidelines of a soccer field. But how can a group whose most pressing daily dilemma is whether to take the Range Rover or the Lexus to pick up Johnny after practice be the bellwether of our national consciousness? It is demeaning and absurd to treat these women (suburban, in their 30s, with small children, typically married and in middle- to upper-income households) as an electoral monolith. Instead, Republicans should continue to remind women what happened the last time the government set out to help one group of women on a grand scale: It created a dangerous co-dependency between the inner-city poor (women and men) and a miserable federal welfare system.

Gimmicks won’t do much to change the minds of women voters. Republicans must be committed to a serious, sustained dialogue on economic as well as social issues. Republicans have a hope of narrowing the gender gap, but only if they talk to women as individuals with limitless potential when intrusive government leaves them alone, not by posing as their new federal sugar daddies.