Federal Judiciary

If Mama Ain't Happy, She May Just Run . . . for Office -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez

EDITOR?S NOTE: This column is available exclusively through United Media. For permission to reprint or excerpt this copyrighted material, please contact Carmen Puello at cpuello@unitedmedia.com.

Women can be completely irrational. They can be over-emotional. They can be downright wrong. Women can also be right. A woman can be a leader. She can notice things a man might not.

The bottom line is pretty obvious: Women are people too. We see the world differently than men because we are different, and complementary. But women also see the world differently from one another, woman to woman.

This is the breakthrough we?re seeing in American history right now, and it?s becoming next to impossible to deny these realities. The evidence is there, from Sarah Palin to Meg Whitman or even Democrat Blanche Lincoln. In the wake of a series of primary elections this June, there has been much talk that we are in another year of the political woman. And this time, she is frequently more right than left.

In truth, this is nothing shocking or new. The celebrated model of the female politician may have been a liberal, like Democrat Barbara Boxer, fighting against the rights of the most vulnerable among us, the unborn. But she was never every woman. In fact, those who fought for female suffrage were a different type, whether women who have voted subsequently realize it or not. They brought a maternal instinct to their activism.

When you meet a Sarah Palin or a Carly Fiorina, or the next woman the media goes into a frenzy over, you?re not actually meeting someone who appeared yesterday or who is somehow contrary to nature. When you look at some of the issues we?re debating today -- issue such as preserving who we are and protecting those innocents -- we?re in exactly the place as a nation where a few good women of this kind might do a world of good alongside a few good men.

The Left willl try to pretend a woman who doesn?t buy the party line of the professional-feminist sisterhood is somehow an oddity, even a traitor to women or a misogynist. (I?ve heard them all.) But the truth is that she may simply represent a commonsense backlash. The feminist movement tried to deny so much that women, uniquely, can bring to the cultural and political table. And America is moving on, Ms.

When you look around right now on the political landscape, you see the shoulder-padded walls of 20th-century feminism crumbling throughout the political scene. Some women will always vote Democrat and have liberal views; the same goes for men. But they do not vote or think uniformly. And it is not simply because a sexy Sarah Palin figure exists that this is true.

A woman who is pro-life and pro-marriage and embraces that which makes her different from a man while loving men for all they are is not something that was invented when John McCain picked the governor of Alaska to be his running mate. She?s been at home raising children. She?s been doing PTA work. She?s been working hard and maybe internalizing some of what the feminist movement told her was the only way to be a success in ?a man?s world? -- internalizations that have frequently left her unhappy and childless and fighting everything she really truly wanted.

Women who are running these days as center-right candidates are not Sarah Palin clones, and they?re not anomalies. They?ve been around, and they?re fed up. Many tea-party groups have been started between children?s tee-ball games by women who see their country in danger. They see so much of what they have always loved about the United States being underappreciated and trampled on legislatively. And so they do the ?mama grizzly? thing and work toward protecting it. But you don?t have to be an outdoorswoman from Alaska to appreciate that. There?s a maternal gracefulness about it. And it manifests itself in different ways, on different issues, because women, just like men, have different issues and different styles and different thoughts and ideas.

It all seems like this would be common sense. But among the chattering classes, common sense is frequently a rare commodity. And so you?ll continue to hear about how bizarre this all is. You can probably just look around your own family, though, to see the writ large writ intimate. The ?National Organization for Women? could never actually represent us all, and now we?re at a point where that?s hard for anyone to deny.

And who, by the way, do you think has been raising all those male candidates for all these years? Conservative men and conservative voters weren?t raised by savages. Mom might have had something to do with how they turned out.

Of course, deny some will. Attack they have, do, and will. If Harry Reid defeats his female challenger, there will be attempts to pretend none of this ever happened and the conservative pro-life woman is just an exotic political animal. If Meg Whitman becomes governor of California and Carly Fiorina takes Barbara Boxer?s Golden State Senate seat, it will be spun, as it already has been, as women doing as the businessmen do, buying their way into office. But the truth is a lot less cynical. Women have free will as much as the next guy. And much of what you?re seeing on the political scene right now is simply natural.

-- Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. She can be reached at klopez@nationalreview.com.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on June 14, 2010 (boomark / email).