Concerned Women for America president Penny Nance is getting herself in the involved debate over UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s potential nomination to be Secretary of State. Nance has attempted to paint President Obama as somehow anti-woman by claiming his campaign is “misogynistic” and views women as “a bunch of cheap floozies.” She even mocked Obama supporter Sandra Fluke by saying she and her colleagues couldn’t afford birth control because they spent too much money on beer, while refusing to defend her from Rush Limbaugh’s sexist attacks. Nance’s group launched the SheVotes campaign to energize conservative women and during an Election Day interview with VCY America’s Jim Schneider, she insisted that polling data shows Obama’s efforts to reach out to women voters were a “disaster.”
Of course, Obama carried women voters by eleven points, but being completely wrong about the women’s vote in the election hasn’t stopped Nance from claiming that women across the country are appalled by his purported sexism.
How is he acting like a sexist now? By defending Rice from baseless Republican attacks.
Nance writes that Obama is acting like Tarzan and even threw out the debunked claim that the White House practices paycheck discrimination. She says that instead of speaking out in favor of Rice, he should be defending people like Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter and Michele Bachmann from “his own misogynistic attack dogs.” Speaking out against the attacks against Rice, Nance explains, is effectively “an admission that left-leaning women aren’t nearly as savvy and strong as conservative women and, therefore, need a little extra protection.”
Basically, if Obama doesn’t defend women like Palin, Coulter and Bachmann, it is sexist, and if he speaks out on behalf of a Democratic official like Rice, it is sexist and a sign that liberal women are weak. Get it?
It’s absurd to think Obama would similarly defend his male subordinates. Such statements made by the president would undermine their authority and insult their professional capabilities.
But maybe public displays of “Me Tarzan, You Jane” are just one of the perks you get when you’re part of an administration that pays its women an average of 18 percent less than their male counterparts.
Or maybe it’s finally an admission that left-leaning women aren’t nearly as savvy and strong as conservative women and, therefore, need a little extra protection. Heaven knows there were plenty of times (a la Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann, etc., etc., etc.) when the president could have — and should have — called off his own misogynistic attack dogs. Those were full-on, unbridled, unrestrained, vicious attacks on conservative women. But honest-to-goodness, hard-but-relevant questions pointed at a female, Obama administration mouthpiece is what finally gets the president in an uproar?
