Are We Winning With Women?

This week for my Round Table Tuesday I will be discussing "Winning With Women." This is a theme that two of my guest speakers have used for their campaigns this year. I decided to take the theme a step further and really look at whether we, Republican women, are winning with women. You would think that women voters would naturally gravitate toward female candidates, would you not? For me it seems empowering to have women running for office and being successful in Politics. In recent years, I have been more and more involved in politics and this year I jumped into a state campaign as well. During this time, I have made a point of engaging more young women in conversations about politics and legislation. What I have found is that we, the Republicans, do not do a great job of inclusion with our younger women and we are being far outpaced by the Democrats at recruiting the next generations into the party. Sadly though, their recruitment comes in the form of indoctrination into a mantra about what it means to be a woman, a mantra that is destructive to young women and men alike. (this will be my next topic, as it is too much to include here)

As for Republican women voting for female candidates, well the attached article and more, indicate we are not winning with women. There seems to be at least two basic reasons we are not realizing the female votes we would expect. First, there still seems to be a gap between the masses of Republican women and their perception of what is a woman's role and the trend we are seeing among the women who do choose to step up into public office. Despite the fact that there are more Republican women stepping into leadership roles there seems to be a great deal of female, Republican voters who may have underlying beliefs about it that is affect their vote. More than one source indicates that traditional Republican women see, whether consciously or not, politics as a man's world. It is our very values of strong family and Christianity, the things that make us who we are, that underpin this belief system.

I see the republican party as being unwavering in its approach to inclusion and teaching values to the next generations. I have been told that our values as conservatives such as liberty, freedom, family, work, life, etc., should not be compromised. I agree we do not need to compromise our values, but we do need to reconsider how we present them and how we approach people who are unsure where they fit. This hard line approach to inclusion may have been exactly what we needed to move forward as a party historically, but with the changing landscape of politics and the way new generations communicate, it may be exactly what destroys us as a party in 2020 and beyond. This is clearly one of those two basic issues we need to address as a party to help young people, particularly young women, find their way to our values and our party.

This need to address the unaffiliated, right-leaning voters and the new generations is at the crux of the mission of JustDefy.Org. The democrats are beating us at giving young women a fight to fight for, we must find a way to counter this. Although the liberation that the Democrats offer women is destructive and fake it is captivating. We can continue to address the world from an unwavering stance or recognize where we are right now and how best address that. I need not give up my values to meet someone where they are in their journey.

ref: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/how-women-became-democratic-partisans/606274/