It's A Woman Thing

Kathleen Parker is a conservative, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post. Four years ago, after first approving of Sarah Palin's nomination for VP then observing her less-than-stellar performance on the campaign trail for a few weeks, Parker broke ranks with Republicans and wrote a column declaring that Sarah Palin was "out of her league" and should withdraw for the good of the country. She took a lot of heat for that column, receiving something like 11,000 comments, most of them from fellow conservatives and most of them extremely critical of Parker.  

She's at it again this morning with an article at The Daily Beast entitled "What the *#@% is Wrong With Republicans?!" Most of the political commentary in our country is boringly predictable: Left-leaning/liberal pundits and bloggers criticize the Republicans; right-leaning/conservatives criticize the Democrats. So it's always intriguing to me when a conservative writer takes a good hard whack at his or her own side. Money quote:

"To whom, then, are these Republicans talking? Apparently not to women, whom they treat not as equals but as totemic and unknowable. Which is to say, they don’t “get” women. As such, they risk losing not only independents and moderates, whose votes they desperately need come November. They also risk losing their own women, who want very much to cast a ballot for smaller government, reduced deficits, and a confident, job-producing business environment, but don’t want to belong to a club that seems aggressively hostile to women and whose members can’t keep their mouths shut about issues that only reinforce the notion the Republicans are intolerant and rigid."

I don't always agree with Kathleen but this morning I'm cheering. It's a woman thing.