Lady Parts 2016: Playing the left’s identity politics game

Apparently, the GOPe has anointed our very own Renee Ellmers with the responsibility of getting more girls elected.  Not necessarily conservatives, mind you.  Just folks with lady parts: 

The effort to recruit more women to run for office on a Republican ticket is finding that it doesn’t have a lot of room to grow for the 2016 election cycle.

Project GROW (Growing Republican Opportunities for Women) was started in 2013 with the goal of recruiting and electing more female candidates for office. Now that the GOP has a historic majority in Congress, that means that growth options are limited, Roll Call is reporting.

In its first election cycle, Project GROW helped six Republican women get elected to the House, but 2016 is shaping up to be a much different election.

“It’s a great project, but I think because we’re looking to the 2016 election, we’re trying to see how we can change it,” said North Carolina Rep. Renee Ellmers, one of the Project GROW founders.

“We’re just taking in input from members now on how we might be able to improve it. We want it to be a long-term project,” Ellmers added. 

I’m not a big fan of evaluating people based on characteristics they were born with (i.e., skin color, hair color, gender).  Chris Fitzsimon, Rob Schofield and I are all members in good standing of the male gender.  But our similarities drop way off beyond that common characteristic.  

Would you rather have a female candidate — like Ellmers — who derailed a late-term abortion ban?  Or a male — or even female candidate — who will fight to end that godawful practice?  Would you prefer a female candidate — like Ellmers — who has been a reliable vote for increased taxes and spending, or a male — or even female — candidate who reliably opposes increased spending and new taxes?

Would you prefer a male — or female — candidate who passionately fights against ObamaCare and amnesty, or  a female candidate — like Ellmers — who sells out on both issues?

There are four open seats available in 2016, with only one leaning Republican. The others are toss-ups. By comparison, in 2014, there were 12 open seats that were competitive and six favored Republicans, two were toss-ups, and the remaining four leaned Democrat.

Besides not having very many open competitive seats to work with, Republicans have more seats to defend in 2016 than they did in 2014.

National Republican Congressional Committee Recruitment Chairman Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina told Roll Call that NRCC’s Young Guns program will likely merge with Project GROW. 

“The goal now is not to just go find female candidates and throw money at them, but to bring female candidates into the Young Guns program, so that we’re helping them to develop as candidates so they can be more successful,” Hudson told Roll Call.

“[Project GROW] was just running parallel to Young Guns, and now we want to run it with Young Guns,” he said. “The end goal being we want successful candidates. We want to help these candidates develop.”

The GOP will need to focus on keeping female candidates in office in 2016. There are two who may be vulnerable next election cycle — Reps. Martha McSally of Arizona and Barbara Comstock of Virginia, although both districts lean Republican.

“It’s more of an idea that we have to protect the ones that are elected, the ones that we have in office now, and then also, where we see the opportunity to have a woman run, we want to be reaching out to that woman,” Ellmers added.

That sounds just like the racial and gender quota crap that the libs have been touting for decades and the alleged conservative party has allegedly been opposing. Again, I am not hearing a whole lot about rounding up candidates who actually walk the walk and talk the talk of the party platform.  Not a peep about finding actual conservatives to contrast with the Other Party and oppose the Other Party.