Santorum Staffer: Women Shouldn’t Be President Because It’s Against God’s Will
Marie Diamond finds this nugget in a Des Moines Register article discussing the reasons why Michele Bachmann’s campaign failed:
Rival presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s Iowa coalitions director, Jamie Johnson, sent out an email saying that children’s lives would be harmed if the nation had a female president. He wrote it in June, but it surfaced on the campaign trail in the fall.
“The question then comes, ‘Is it God’s highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will, … to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?’ ” Johnson’s email said.
Johnson said the email was meant to be a private message to a friend, that he sent it from his personal email account, not his campaign account, and that he hadn’t intended it to be read by anyone else.
Did Iowa’s Christian conservatives hamper Bachmann’s campaign? Such accusations are counterbalanced by Iowans’ willingness to give her the straw poll crown, the first woman in history to claim that throne.
But in the final weeks of the campaign, as Bachmann’s poll numbers hovered in single digits, her national aides and evangelical organization team privately complained that sexism coursed through Iowa’s religious conservative community, even as the aides publicly rebuffed questions on the topic.
“We did believe that sexism — I use the stronger word misogyny — was at play,” said Peter Waldron, Bachmann’s faith outreach coordinator.
Three influential pastors called for her to bow out of the race, and numerous others said “that a female could not be a civil magistrate,” said Waldron, who lives in Florida and has worked six presidential campaigns dating to Ronald Reagan’s in 1980.
One wonders what they think of Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir.
“Bachmann’s faith outreach coordinator.” Can I get one too?
So let’s get this straight,
Bachman was a victim of sexism;
Cain was a victim of racism;
Perry was a victim of state’s rights;
Santorum was a victim of cyber-bullying;
Gingrich was a victim of unfair attacks;
May I present the 2012 Republican Presidential Candidates . . . . This year’s dance theme has been “Oh, the Irony is Rich and so is our King”
Margaret Thatcher, like Ronald Reagan, would not be elected by this group.
She didn’t dismantle National Health Care, was pro-choice, and had homosexuals on her staff. Not pure enough for the righteous right I’m afraid.
It’s all right to be sexist as long as you do it in private! As Nigel Tufnel says, “what’s wrong with bein’ sexy?”
It strikes me that the GOP has become the “Victim’s Party.” Everything that goes wrong can be explained by being the victim of _______. It sounds an awful like the Democrats in the 70’s and 80’s.
It appears that Mr Johnson needs to spend a bit more time in his Bible, q.v. Deborah, Judge of the Israelites.
Michele Bachmann didn’t lose the election because of sexism. She lost it because she has limited political appeal. But that doesn’t excuse Neanderthal sexist attitudes.
I am no fan of Bachmann’s, nor was a fan of Hilary Clinton; however, to imply that God even cares about American politics is obscene. God is so absent from humanity that he sent an angel to tell the Virgin Mother that she would birth His child and yet all these so-called Christian politicians claim that He speaks to them??? Overblown egoes and perhaps a few cases psychosis in my book.
Perhaps some would prefer that our country were like this…
This is why, as a female, I don’t find much difference between voting against the Taliban and voting against a bunch of Religious Right republicans. In both cases, my life would be awful under them. We’re just talking about different circles of the Inferno….
@Franklin: Don’t know that it is an exact match to the situation, but at times I have written messages to close friends where I was exploring hypothetical political and social heresies–one recent one involved the difference between a pregnant and unwed Bristol Palin and a, say, Chelsea Clinton at the same age in the same condition. Frankly, I would be disappointed if someone hacked into my mail account and published such a discussion. His explanation is fine as far as I am concerned, but in this age, he should be more careful about what he puts on the internet.
When my students asked me back at the beginning of the millennium about what to do to protect themselves from victimization by the Patriot Act cyberspace provisions. As I remember, I told them that if any government decides that it wants to “get” you, that government probably will succeed. My best advice was to avoid saying frivilous thing on the internet so that when the show trial comes, everyone will know what it is. Jamie Johnson, welcome to your show trial. Come onnnnnn down!
@A voice from another precinct: Good point. I had actually considered whether my sarcasm was entirely fair on one level, but not on the level you have suggested. And in fact, he does pose it as a question in the given excerpt. And I would hate for my private communications to be aired publicly as well. So to be fair, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact that I clearly don’t share his worldview that would result in such a question being asked.
Sexism? Among Republicans?
Surely not.