The GOP's working mom hypocrisy

[G_j]

http://www.880therevolution.com/articles/politics-104707/the-gops-working-mom-schizophrenia-12072411/

Posted Monday, February 17th 2014 @ 10am by Joanne Bamberger

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For months, Texas State Senator and gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis has had her mothering credentials attacked for supposedly abandoning her children while she earned her law degree to be able to better provide for her family. The right-wing echo chamber on Twitter has painted Davis as selfish for pursuing a career rather than staying home to raise her children and putting her own ambition ahead of her children’s needs, the clear implication being that such a person would never be fit for high political office.

Maybe that’s just because she’s a Democrat. Because when the motherhood shoe is on the other foot, it seems Republicans are OK with an ambitious mother of young children who spends a lot of time away from the kids.

Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), a woman with some striking resume similarities to Davis, is apparently the new Republican weapon to woo women voters. Rodgers was hand-picked by GOP leaders, including John Boehner, to give the Republican response to this year’s State of the Union address, and it’s no secret that she’s being groomed for more leadership roles.

While it’s true that McMorris was not yet a mother when she earned her college degrees, she’s been a mother since 2006, and is now a mother of three children under the age of eight, including one special needs child. Since she was elected to the U.S. Congress in 2005 (she was a Washington State Senator for ten years prior to that), her ambition has certainly been on display—she is the highest ranking GOP woman in the House of Representatives, she’s been on the influential (and time-consuming) Armed Services Committee and she is currently the Chair of the Republican Conference, the arm of the party charged with messaging—the kind of messaging that’s crucial to persuading voters.

But how can McMorris and the GOP square the obvious messaging that McMorris is a conservative ideal of motherhood, while others fan the flames of the attacks on Davis? If they’re trying to paint Davis as having abandoned her mothering duties to spend time in law school, how can they suggest that Rodgers is fulfilling her parenting obligations when being a leading GOP player means, by definition, long days and nights on Capitol Hill?

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[Scuba]

1. Since when has the GOP worried about "squaring their message"?

[Nay]

4. Indeed, when? They never have cared about their message to their base

making any sense in any context other than a soundbite. The base is truly too dumb to know about Republican women who are doing the same thing. As thousands of studies show, if you tell the base about the R woman, they will reject the evidence outright anyway because it doesn't fit their ideology.

[Stargazer09]

2. It's all about the R

If McMorris was a Democrat, she would be derided and ridiculed and shamed for what she's doing. And Davis would be treated much better by those hypocrites if she was republican.

[Make7]

3. IOKIYAR ( n/t )