Bachmann told me in an interview Tuesday that she wouldn’t call herself a feminist—instead, she simply described herself as “pro-woman and pro-man.” When I pressed her on the matter, the Minnesota congresswoman said she sees herself as an “empowered American.” – Kirsten Powers
I’ve been waiting for this particular moment for a long time. The Hillary effect continues to produce political opportunities for women to break out, regardless of whether Michele Bachmann can rival Clinton’s 18 million cracks, though she’s on a course to be the first Republican female to win the caucus state of Iowa, much to T-Paw’s chagrin.
Political moments like this don’t come along often. This has the potential of being a seminal moment for the conservative movement and their outreach to women, though it remains to be seen whether the macho misogynists who run the Republican Party will see this for the historic opportunity it is.
Kirsten Powers gets the story, for which she deserves credit, with her Fox News channel access proving the perfect channel for Bachmann to broadcast the message. That it happens to be the most important breakthrough for the Right where women are concerned is undeniable, though we’ll have to wait to see if they understand what Michele Bachmann has done. I doubt she even knows the importance of what she said, because it takes a feminist to see it.
I’ve written about this for quite some time, wondering what woman on the Right would go beyond contorted conservative feminist-esque rhetoric by offering a positive alternative vision for Republican femmes that left their lame and divisive selective “pro life” mantra behind.
Then along comes a so-called gafferiffic “flake” named Michele Bachmann, the first politically competent conservative female to run for the presidency, offering a free at last path. That she did so in an off the cuff comment to a Democratic feminist is precious.
After watching Palin’s tortured conservative feminist cry when she spoke at the Susan B. Anthony event last year, I wondered when, if ever, conservative females would finally give up the ghost on feminism, a model that can never fit or worked for them, which history has proven. Asking continually why conservatives don’t disavow feminism, with the only answer from the Right sniping derision, which came off as petulant defensiveness.
Since Phyllis Schlafly ruined the Right’s coolness, the Republican Party has been struggling to break out of their past restraints and go beyond their abortion rights opponent stance and selective “pro life” mantra. That Bachmann’s comment comes when modern women are now primarily focused on economic issues makes the timing perfect.
Mrs. Bachmann could potentially change the conservative playing field, going well beyond Schlafly, as well as Sarah Palin’s unimaginative verbal femme contortions, while mining a seminal Republican talking point that is actually modern. Bachman’s premise is that women no longer need a separate activist wing to get what’s due them. Nothing fits the Supreme Court Wal-Mart decision era more perfectly than Bachmann’s “empowered American” mantra, coming in an age of austerity and amidst the Obama era’s diminished capacity for fighting for Democratic Party principles.
Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has also added to her authenticity while giving Republican female conservatives a genuine path to rhetorical relevancy.
The opening for them came in the 2010 midterms, with women breaking evenly for Republicans and Democrats.
For four decades, the Republican struggle among female voters has been tortured, with the last conservative star Sarah Palin adding to the pretzel logic by declaring an “emerging conservative feminist identity,” a ludicrous pronouncement, because there can be no such thing as “conservative feminism.”
You simply cannot be a feminist if you do not support women’s full freedoms, which the Right clearly does not. Their war against women, which is being waged through their Planned Parenthood assault, but also demeaning women’s personhood through state government ultrasound pregnancy tests, “heartbeat” bills and other invasive laws directed only at pregnant women, proves it conclusively, even as these onerous legislative laws make a mockery of “small government conservatism,” which now only aims to control women’s lives on the wings of extreme ideology.
Into this Michele Bachmann steps, not only declaring the Right’s separate status on the political playing field by rejecting the feminist label outright, but she instead simply offers another label saying she’s an “empowered American.”
Shorter Bachmann: Modern conservative women don’t need your stickin’ feminism. This is the 21st century and I’m an “empowered American.” It’s brilliant, for her purposes and for the agenda of the Republican Party.
It ends the Right’s feminist problem by refusing to play in that ballpark, which has always been the road to set Republicans free.
Most importantly for consevatives, it disavows a concept that’s weakened Republicans and made them seem anti-women, which they are, though with this rebranding they jump beyond the ’70s to a time when new generations have no loyalty to feminism or the times that forged the laws that aid women across the board, no matter a woman’s politics.
Feminism did the work, now Bachmann is trying to lead conservative women beyond the movement that hamstrung Republicans with women for 40 years, while also allowing Bachmann to run for president in a party that doesn’t respect women’s freedoms. Feminism made Bachmann’s “empowered American” possible, because of gains made through this movement. Hey, but who cares, right? Certainly anything that attempts to wash away feminism is good for the Republican Right.
Bachmann affirms equality unequivocally, with no separate status of “feminist” required for her. She is daring Republicans and the conservative Right to break with the divisive and retro “feminazi” Rush ranting and bashing once and for all.
With “empowered American,” Michele Bachmann looks modern, dare I say it, even post-feminism, a term Republicans have tried to use but no one bought, because they couldn’t sell it. But as women now turn to economics as their primary concern the moment is ripe.
This is potentially a phenomenal political moment for Republicans.
However, Republicans and conservatives like Michele Bachmann still can’t effectively answer the most important question of all: Is freedom just for men?
But they don’t care, because for conservatives, invoking God is the answer for everything else.
” pro woman and pro man. ” What a load! In other words, women should stay home and pop out babies and home school their children. The ‘ MAN ” should not be compromised or made to feel inferior to the woman. Any American woman interested in freedom who votes for Bachmann should get to know these words: ” Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play,, where never is heard, a discouraging word, and the sky’s are not cloudy all day . “
Oh, that’s priceless!
“The opening for them came in the 2010 midterms, with women breaking evenly for Republicans and Democrats.”
Well, that premise is only valid if you acknowledge that tens of millions of women did NOT vote during the midterms. Look at the numbers and it’s obvious that a lot of people (MOSTLY Democrats) were discouraged enough by the lack of any leadership to simply stay home.
ANY woman who voted for the GOP candidate, instead of a Dem, simply deserves to lose all her rights as the GOP-controlled state legislatures and the GOP-controlled House have been so swiftly chipping away.
The simple fact is that ALL the GOPers who were voted “in” by the electorate did so with scare tactics and loads of false promises regarding the economy. Quick, tell me which GOP-controlled legislative body–anywhere in this country–has made good on their JOBS promises. On the flip side, tell me which GOP-controlled legislative body began attacking women’s rights from day one. (The answer to the first is NONE. The answer to the second is ALL.)
Bachmann has LIED about her family’s finances since she first ran for Congress and she’s continuing to lie about them now. When she’s challenged on the finances, she misdirects or deflects the topic.
Taylor, I hate to see you fall into this blind trap of supporting Bachmann SOLELY because she’s a woman. For you to write this “The Hillary effect continues to produce political opportunities for women to break out, regardless of whether Michele Bachmann can rival Clinton’s 18 million cracks. . . .” is an affront to those of us who supported Hillary in 2008. Bachmann is not fit to lick Hillary’s shoes or clean Hillary’s clothes much less be compared to Hillary as a potential Presidential candidate. Bachmann is RIGHTLY described as a “flake” on a FoxNoise show, and what happens? She gets a FORMAL apology from the host, even though the man was quite correct in his description. Hillary would have NEVER made the type of laughable mistakes that Bachmann has–whether claiming that the first shots in the Revolution were fired in New Hampshire or idiotically describing John Quincy Adams as a “founding father” or remarking that John Wayne came from Waterloo, Iowa (there WAS a John Wayne who was born in Waterloo, but that was John Wayne GACY, the notorious mass-murderer). Had Hillary made those types of goofs, she would’ve been roundly (and rightfully) been skewered (of course, from the moment she announced her Presidential run, she faced an anti-Hillary campaign from all sides–she had an uphill battle unlike anything that Bachmann might face).
Bachmann is certainly entitled to her beliefs but the simple fact is when she makes asinine comments, she deserves to be skewered from the left AND from the right. Unfortunately, the Far Right have decided that NONE of their candidates may be the source of humor (unlike Pres Obama at the Republican leadership conference a few weeks ago; it’s fine for an Obama impersonator to make jokes about being a secret Muslim but starting to make jokes about Bachmann suddenly earns him a quick exit off-stage) nor may they be hit with substantive interviews. Unless Bachmann’s willing to accept that she’s a fair target for LEGITIMATE political criticism, she doesn’t deserve to be running for President. (Hillary had spent nearly 15 years dealing with unfair poltical criticism–most of it from the Far Right’s noise machine–so she knew what to expect. She’d dealt with it in TWO Senate elections in a state with far more people than in Bachmann’s little Minnesota district as well as the 8 years she spent as First Lady.)
The sooner people recognize that Bachmann is just the same old GOP politician, the sooner they’ll realize that she offers nothing different from the rest of the pack. She doesn’t offer anything for women (not conservative and certainly not progressive) that sets her apart from the rest of the GOPack. I’m willing to say that Bachmann will actually set women’s rights even further back than the GOP men would simply by her running. (I certainly wish someone with some guts would ask these GOP women why they feel that THEY should have the right to run for political office when they so obviously don’t believe that other women should be politically equal to men. They’re willing to attack Democratic women who are unmarried or without children, as though a woman’s FIRST purpose in life is to be a wife or mother and that unmarried and/or childless women aren’t *real* women.)
I’m sorry, but speaking as someone who voted for Cynthia McKinney for President in 2008 and one who understood how controversial McKinney was during her time in Congress, it astounds me that anyone could think that Bachmann is remotely qualified to run for President. (McKinney may have been as “flakey” as Bachmann, but McKinney NEVER hesitated to challenge the Democratic leadership in the House when she felt they were conceding too much to the GOP. When was the last time that Bachmann stood up to her party’s leadership? I will concede that Bachmann had enough foresight to take advantage of the Tea Party and use their faux outrage to win re-election and then “create” that absurd Tea Party caucus. But the Tea Party is a fraud and a bunch of contemporary “Know-Nothings,” which describes Bachmann to a tee.)
I do respect Sarah Palin for becoming the first Republican woman in history to be on a ticket and the first woman Governor of her state. Anyone that is a first should be respected for that. I don’t know what Sarah Palin is going to do, but she can still draw large crowds and has a loyal fan base, and can also raise money, that leaves her with wiggle room, I am sure if she wanted a talk show or something should could have one. She might run for a Senate race or something else, I just don’t believe she will sit back and just stay on FOX, thats just not her at all. She could be making way more than she does on FOX, all the other guys make way more than she does O’ Reilly, Hannity and even Glenn Beck. I don’t know what she is going to do, but I wish her all the best and after what the media did to try to find dirt on her, she deserves a break and good life.
But it’s liberals who are hung up on gender and other identifiers. Conservatives will vote for anyone who’ll stand up and act on what they see as necessary for the country including making Barack a one term president.
It’s about what she espouses, not how she pees. Hasn’t that always been the point of feminism?
The liberals had a woman, ready and damned well able, and they shoved her aside because they fell in love with the narrative of THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT. They didn’t care that he wasn’t really up to the job.
Maybe it shouldn’t be all about gender or skin color. Ya think?
Good comment.
In a post (fill in the blank) time, is there still some kind of entitlement mentalility?
For example, when there was talk about Colin Powell running for president would it still have been that same ‘event’ if he won as a Republican instead of a Democrat. becoming the first black president?
Is there an entitlement for some, that the first women president should be a Democrat and definitely not a Republican?
Or in the future, would it make a difference to some, if the first openly gay president is a Republican or a Democrat?