Is it just me, or is our Second District congresswoman sounding a lot like Barbara Boxer? Or perhaps our first — or soon to be — ex-wives?
Miss Harnett County told Yahoo News this week:
U.S. Rep Renee Ellmers says the Republican Party – particularly its men – made “unnecessary mistakes” that cost the party the presidential election.
Ellmers, a Republican from Dunn, was participating in an online Yahoo News chat Thursday about how the GOP can better appeal to women.
She said: “Oddly enough, many of the mistakes were made by the men in our party. And this only fueled the misconception that the GOP does not care about women.”
Really? You aided and abetted the House Republican leadership’s efforts to blur the lines between Republicans and Democrats. Miss Renee disregarded the cries for fiscal restraint that sent her to DC in 2010 and voted to jack up the federal debt ceiling. She voted to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, which is little more than a clearinghouse for corporate welfare giveaways to major corporations that really don’t need the government funds. Miss Harnett County has also voted for continuing resolution after continuing resolution that leaves ObamaCare funding in place. She also rolled over and played dead as the Bush-era tax rates were allowed to expire earlier this year.
Elections work a lot like conventional product marketing. To convince consumers to make a change, you have to prove to them that your product is so much different — and so much better — than what they are using now. Renee and her fellow elected Republicans practiced so much me-tooism in DC that a lot of voters saw very little difference and threw up their hands in apathy. Roughly 4 million GOP voters who showed up in 2008 DID NOT show up in 2012.
It also was not helpful to have the RNC stomping all over grassroots activists at the national convention. It was also not helpful to have a presidential n0minee whose own record contradicted a lot of the GOP campaign strategy and party platform. The party planned to attack ObamaCare, but how can you do it if your nominee implemented the same thing on the state level when he was governor of Massachusetts? The RNC and the national convention sure do — and DID — include a lot of gals, Renee.
Miss Harnett County continued to expound:
The GOP needs to focus on winning the economy argument, and less on the social points promoted by Democrats, Ellmers continued. “Women care about how they’re going to feed their families and many other issues, not just their reproductive rights,” she said in the chat. “I continue to remain astonished that Democrats focus on the reproductive issues as if this were the only issue women care about … and get away with it.”
I agree with her on there. But here’s the problem: Renee has been an active participant in the whole gender politics thing. Here she is participating in a Yahoo forum on how the GOP can make special efforts to “attract” women. Renee also was at the forefront in the campaign to replace Georgia congressman Tom Price — a Tea Party favorite — in the House leadership with Washington state congresswoman Cathy McMorris-Rodgers. Renee’s spin? Not a word about her Rodgers’ views on the issues. It was all about her gender, and the need to get a woman into leadership.
The problem with keeping the focus on the economy, Renee, is that you and your bosses John Boehner and Eric Cantor killed off the GOP’s competitive advantage by rolling over submissively on debt and spending. Men AND Women in the GOP establishment were equally at fault for screwing up 2012. 1980 and 2012 worked very well because limited government was THE NAME OF THE GAME during the campaign. Unabashed conservatism works. Taking advice from the mainstream media and their lefty politico comrades will guarantee even more 2008s and 2012s.
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The way I would put it is that weak kneed Republicans like Ellmers who are Boehner’s poodles, are the ones screwing up everything.