Category Archives: Conservatism

UPDATED (3/6/019): Republican Women Over 65 Are The Most Anti-#MeToo Group. SMART.

Conservatism, Democrats, Feminism, Gender, Republicans, Sex

Believe it or not, liberal Republican women berate their older, #MeToo skeptical sisters. Beware Republican Women for Progress, especially. Just as Democrats do, these prog Republican fems patronize older Republican ladies, depicting them as afraid to even talk to progressive GOPers like themselves. Republican Women for Progress also claim older ladies who vote Republican are afraid to break free, instead, letting “their (Republican-voting) husbands fill in their ballots.” Needless to say, there is little daylight between prog Republicans and Democrats.

#METOO And Conservatism
The Economist

NO GROUP HAS swung against #MeToo more than older women who voted for Donald Trump. They have gone from barely worrying about false accusations of sexual assault, with only 8% agreeing in November 2017 that these were worse than unreported assaults, to 42% saying so, according to two polls conducted for The Economist by YouGov, a pollster. They are now the most likely group to agree that a man who harassed a woman 20 years ago should keep his job, and that a woman who complains about harassment causes more problems than she solves.

Two things stand out. First, even though Americans on average, and Republicans in particular, have become more negative about #MeToo over the past year, the change among this particular group is spectacular (chart). Second, a generational gap now yawns between Republican women who are over 65 and those under 30, the cohort least hostile to #MeToo within the Republican Party.
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One obvious difference between the two groups is that many of the over-65s have grown-up sons. In 2018 some of them fell off their pedestals as hundreds of men were publicly named and shamed over sexual misconduct allegations. Many more feared that “some lady” from the past could, with one accusation, destroy them and their family. This lady became personified in Christine Blasey Ford, when in September 2018 she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, threatening to derail his nomination to the Supreme Court. All this helped fuel a backlash against #MeToo, and not just among men. Many Twitter threads on #HimToo, the hashtag about false accusations, were posted by worried mothers.

“We saw the split among Republican women widen around the Kavanaugh hearings. A lot of the rhetoric illustrated the generational gap,” remembers Jennifer Pierotti Lim, from Republican Women for Progress, a campaign group. “There’s a feeling amongst that generation that a little light sexual assault is no big deal. For women of our generation that’s hard to understand.”

Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative advocacy group, recognises what the movement has done in encouraging people to speak out against prominent men who “people have known were problems”, but wonders whether it has gone too far. “I don’t think the mantra ‘believe all women’ is sufficient,” she says. “Men need to be able to make mistakes, and have conversations with women and not be walking on eggshells.”

Yet the biggest split on #MeToo, as with any question pollsters ask about gender is not between genders or generations but between political affiliations, says Juliana Horowitz from the Pew Research Centre. Democrats have barely changed their views on #MeToo over the past year, even as Republicans have grown more sceptical. No split separates the generation of Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren from younger female Democrats. In fact boomer Clinton-voting women have increased their support for #MeToo over the past year.

The partisan gender gap has already widened. In 2016 Hillary Clinton won 54% of women voters; in the 2018 mid-terms 59% of women voted for Democrats. Republicans appear unconcerned: a recent poll found that 71% of likely primary voters expressed no concern that only 13 of the party’s 200 House members are women (the lowest number in 25 years) and 60% said nothing had to be done to recruit more female candidates.

One explanation of this partisan gap is that it reflects a difference of opinion over what true feminism is. Some conservative women resist what they see as special treatment for women as vaguely patronising. There is another explanation, too. Ms Pierotti Lim of Republican Women for Progress remembers campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan in 2016 and being astonished by the number of older women who were afraid to even talk to her and who let their (Republican-voting) husbands fill in their ballots.

RELATED: “Truth and consequences: American politics after a year of #MeToo.“

UPDATE (3/6/019): R. Kelly.

UPDATED (3/14): Tucker Suggests That POTUS Has Not YET Delivered On Equality And Freedom For Deplorables

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Elections, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Republicans, Technology

Will his Republican viewers punish Tucker Carlson for his brutal, journalistic honesty, rather unusual on Fox News?

The remarkable Tucker suggested that POTUS has done precious little to stop the intimidation, firing, hounding, de-platforming, doxing, and marginalizing of those who do not follow the herd.

(I was shadow-banned by Twitter. I think I still am, as my hashtags go nowhere, mostly. Nobody stood up for me …)

Tucker Carlson asked Trump voters Wednesday to assess whether or not they feel more confident to express their beliefs since the president was elected.

Carlson said that whether or not President Trump is able to build a wall or effect infrastructure legislation, how the president handles the attempted suppression of free speech may be more important.

He said that conventionally conservative beliefs in the years leading up to Trump’s election are now described as “terrorism,” while actual terror by the left seems to go unnoticed.

Among other examples, he noted a former community college professor who in 2017 allegedly hit Trump supporters with a bike lock during a “free the speech” rally.

Charges were dropped against the professor, Eric Clanton, although he was initially charged with a felony.

Carlson then asked viewers to imagine how former President Barack Obama would have responded if similar incidents happened to his voters while he was in office.

Hume: Press ‘Fact Checking’ in Trump Era Becoming a ‘Matter of Opinion’

Spicer Blasts Dems: If We Called Wall the ‘Schumer Border Security Bill’ They’d Pass It

“You think Obama would have done something about that? Hell yes. … You would never get away with threatening an Obama voter for supporting Obama,” he said.

He said that society is becoming “less free,” something the current administration should fight back against.

“Fighting for speech is always the right fight,” Carlson stated.

Ahead of the 2020 election, Carlson added that Trump can exercise his executive powers to defend the Bill of Rights.

He said that if Trump can credibly say in two years that he fought to make sure all Americans are treated equally under the law, he’ll be remembered as a “genuinely great president.”


SEE: “Tucker: Trump Will Be Remembered as ‘Genuinely Great’ If He Fights for Free Speech.”

On the Unz Review, Fred Reed, long since ousted from establishment conservatism, independently (and less diplomatically) seconds Tucker’s thinking:

Curiously, despite the seething antipathy, Trump hasn’t done much that would not have been expected from any Republican. He engineered large tax breaks for the rich, reversed environmental regulations to benefit corporations, and growled about immigration while doing little. He is firmly in Israeli pockets, as any Republican would be. He appointed Bret Kavanaugh, a mildly conservative judge, to the Mini-Legislature of the Nine Cadavers. Whoopee do.

UPDATE (3/14/019):  On being “shadow-banned, follower-throttled, and sensitive content-blocked because the Twitter police don’t want your tweets seen.” (Check)

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‘Conservative’ Jennifer Rubin Calls Pelosi Reaganesque

Conservatism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Neoconservatism, THE ELITES, The Establishment

Left out of this January 3, 2019, report is that Jennifer Rubin, a self-styled conservative, applied the Reaganesque adjective to … Nancy Pelosi, a malevolent progressive.

Rubin bills herself as a “conservative blogger at Washington Post, MSNBC contributor, recovering lawyer and friend of Israel.”  Cliches are Rubins’ stock-in-trade.

But as I apprised you before, more accurately, “Jennifer Rubin is a rubbishy writer.”

The Elites have all converged. They’re all neoliberals-cum-neoconservatives.

A Brief Word On A Short-Lived Brexit

Britain, Conservatism, EU, Europe, Nationhood, Secession

By Sean Gabb

I suppose I should write a formal essay, only I’m presently too worn down by the pantomime to think again at any length about our failed departure from the European Union. So here is a comment I placed last night on FaceBook:

John Pate is right. There will be no Brexit. The parliamentary stalemate will continue into January, when everyone will agree to a deferral of the leaving date from March to December.

The stalemate will then continue until everyone “reluctantly” agrees to a new referendum. This time, the Sheeple will vote as told. This is the only likely outcome. No preparations have been made for leaving without a deal. Some degree of chaos is inevitable – inevitable because planned. The only deal on offer is worse than staying in. If asked, I will vote again to leave. But enough will vote to stay.

This is, I confess, a disappointing outcome. On the other hand, it is better than having lost the first referendum. Enough people will know we have been defrauded this time for the Conservative Party to be ripped apart. And that will be a reasonably positive outcome.

MORE from Sean Gabb.