“They’re at home, doing the laundry”
by David Atkins
Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio said Wednesday at a Romney campaign rally that his wife was at home doing laundry while he gave political speeches.
“You know, Jane Portman, Karen Kasich, and Janna Ryan, they operate an awful lot of the time in the shadows,” he said in Owensville, referring to the wife of Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, his own wife, and the wife of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, respectively.
“It’s not easy to be a spouse of an elected official,” Kasich continued. “You know, they’re at home, doing the laundry and doing so many things while we’re up here on the stage getting applause, right? They don’t often share in it. And it is hard for the spouse to hear the criticism and to put up with the travel schedule and to have to be at home taking care of the kids. And where is the politician? Out on the road.”
This is the problem Republicans have with women–and frankly with every other traditionally dispossessed group with whom they tank in the polls. Kasich was trying to say nice things about the women in male Republican candidates’ lives. The mundane but sincere point he was trying to make is obvious.
But these people are so steeped in the normative language of oppression (to use academic jargon) that they can’t help themselves.
Conservatives know they have an impending demographic implosion on their hands. They think they can just retool their message and the faces of their candidates to overcome it. But it’s not going to be a simple matter of rebranding. The latent contempt for anyone who isn’t a white male is woven into the very fabric of their being.
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