Sarah Palin: Warrior Mom or Just Another Yuppie?
I was talking with a Republican activist the other day who offered this startling sentiment: Women would flock to Sarah Palin come November.
It seemed a rather weird thesis, one borrowed from the failure of ‘70s feminism. It presumes women are a monolithic voting bloc with the singular interest of advancing the gender. Weirder still is that when it comes to women assessing other women, sisterhood seems to rarely carry the day.
Consider:
The vast majority of us tend to routinely side with one party or the other, leaving perhaps 20 percent in the middle who will switch back and forth from election to election. They tend to be less ideological, casting votes largely on instinct. It’s a matter of who their guts tell them to trust.
Consider further:
That among that 20 percent, young women likely won’t cotton to Sarah Palin. Last I read, some 70 percent of America is pro-choice. If you wish to make it national law that a woman must carry a baby to term -- even if it’s a product of rape -- you probably won’t do well among the Starbucks set.
Which leaves Palin to grab the middle-aged mom demographic. Here’s where the math gets really tricky.
The age 40-and-up mom may be the baddest species on the planet. She grew up in a time when she earned 70 cents to every male dollar, never had a chance to be president or priest, and remains a 1-in-10 underdog to even make CEO. The world was rigged against her. So she had kids, went to work, handled the lion’s share of domestic life. Hers is a life built on the principle of sacrifice.
The Republican activist? She thinks these women will look up to Palin, a woman’s woman who can knock out five children, get the kids to hockey, and still manage to govern a state.
But I can’t help thinking that the Women of Sacrifice will see Palin as the hyper-ambitious politician who, despite having a Downs baby and a pregnant daughter back home, has decided to spend the next four years letting someone else care for her family. When you really think about it, Palin’s choice is far more yuppie than warrior mom.
Of course, being a man, I naturally don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. So we’d like to hear from you, dear female reader. What sayeth you about these most basic principles and beliefs?
