Republican Ladies, There's A Fella Who Says It's OK For More Of You In Congress-- But Only The Types He Approves

Nice shoes! Can she dance?

New York's North Country Republican Elise Stefanik did well in November. Her R+4 district, the biggest in the state, which stretches from just not of the Albany/Schenectady/Sarasota Springs are along the Vermont border and Lake Champlain to Quebec, along the St. Lawrence, past Waterown and into Lake Ontario. In 2016, the district went for Trump 53.9% to 40.0%, after voting for Obama twice. In November, Stefanik beat progressive Democrat Tedra Cobb 131,981 (56.1%) to 99,791 (42.4%). She won 10 of the 12 counties, spending $2,810,249 to Cobb's $1,538,958. Neither the DCCC nor Pelosi's House Majority Fund gave Cobb a dime.

Stefanik is a well-liked mainstream conservative. Her Trump affinity score was 89.6%. Right around the average for the 9 New York state Republicans. (Aside from Stefanik, there are only 5 left, Faso, Donovan and Tenney having been swept away in the anti-red wave.) Serving on the Armed Services, Education and Labor, and Intelligence Committees, she was an ally of Ryan's and never gave leadership a hard time-- until after the election, when she served notice on GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy that she would no longer work with or pay dues to the NRCC and would be using her own leadership PAC to recruit women to run in primaries (against Republican men). "I am going to keep pointing out to my colleagues," she explained to the media, "that we are at a crisis level for GOP women. This election should be a wake-up call to Republicans that we need to do better... We need to be elevating women’s voices, not suppressing them."

This kind of thing doesn't go over with in the GOP. Identity politics is a no-no for white patriarchs and the new NRCC head, reactionary Tom Emmer (R-MN), blew his top, and menacingly told an on-the-record interviewer that she was "making a mistake" to help female candidates in primaries. Stefanik tweeted that she was informing him, not "asking for permission." Other GOP women-- including even some on the most extreme fringes, like Tennessee sociopath Diane Black-- backed Stefanik... and Emmer was forced to back down and apologize.

But Republicans are still smarting from the little lady stepping out of line and talking too loud. Over the weekend, one right-wing goof-ball, Neil Dwyer, wrote an OpEd for oligarch Philip Anschutz's crackpot misogynysitic website, the Washington Examiner, We need more GOP women, but not in the mold of Rep. Elise Stefanik. He tried-- but failed-- to make the point that Republicans lost so many seats in November was because they didn't have enough extremists and it was "moderates" who dragged the party down. He used long-time far right psychopath Barbara Comstock, who lost her suburban DC district in a landslide to a relatively conservative Democrat, Jennifer Wexton, as an example. "One moderate who did win re-election and has asserted herself in the face of her party's defeat," he fumed, "is Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). She has conducted many interviews describing the level of women in the Republican caucus as at a 'crisis level.' Stefanik has also announced she will be using her political action committee, 'E-PAC.' for congressional recruiting, aiming for more Republican women to get through primaries and win races. There's nothing wrong with recruiting more female Republican candidates for Congress," he condescended. "But is Stefanik the mold we want to see the party's candidates being shaped from?" No, he wants the women to be just like neo-fascist Arizona lunatic Debbie Lesko or like even further right Marsha Blackburn.

Stefanik has voted for a farm bill without the original work requirements, for amnesty, against spending cuts, against tax cuts, and for taxpayer-funded sex change procedures in the military. She voted for $81 billion in emergency aid for natural disasters (two months after a $36.5 billion bill for aid was also passed). Meanwhile Republican women such as then-Reps. Martha McSally, Marsha Blackburn, and Kristi Noem all voted "nay." While Stefanik voted against the major tax reform law passed in 2017, her upstate New York Republican colleagues like Reps. John Katko, Chris Collins, and Tom Reed all voted for it. Katko's 24th District even trends at a D+4 rating on the Cook PVI, yet he won re-election by more than 6 percentage points.

...Republicans who want to limit Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's second term as speaker to two years need to find women who serve as a counterpoint to the Women's March, women who can speak directly to the mothers in these suburban districts and appeal to their family values, which include treasuring life, security (which includes immigration), and prosperity. Recruiting women for the sake of optics will get the party nowhere."

This past cycle, Stefanik's leadership PAC raised $250,167 and contributed $105,000 directly to 68 House candidates, 49 of them men and 20 of them women. Among the Republicans she gave to were very extreme right candidates like Steve Knight (CA), Mimi Walters (CA), Rod Blum (IA), Barbara Comstock (VA), Dino Rossi (WA), Randy Hultgren (IL), David Young (IA) and Marty Nothstein (PA), all of whom were defeated Nov. 6 by Democratic women.

Dwyer should go out on tour-- perhaps with that other long-time GOP woman-hater, Ed Rollins, who referred to Ocasio as "the little girl" a couple of days ago omg Fox. Maybe they can start with an interview with Teen Vogue. I'm sure editor Lucy Diavolo would be delighted to take them on.