Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Identity politics, the bane of the Democratic Party, has now infested the Republican Party, reports the inside-the-beltway publication, Roll Call. Worried that too few Republican women serve in the U.S. House, several female Republican U.S. Representatives are actively supporting a woman running for the GOP nomination for the Florida special election to replace Rep. Bill Young, who died before the holidays.
Reps. Diane Black of Tennessee, Lynn Jenkins of Kansas and Ann Wagner of Missouri are supporting state Rep. Kathleen Peters for the Republican nod on Jan. 14. She faces lobbyist David Jolly, and the GOP winner will run in a highly competitive special election this spring.
The number of women in the House Republican Conference stands at 19. At least two of those female Republicans have already indicated they won’t return to the House in 2014, which means numbers could get worse — unless they make an effort to help female candidates win primaries.
“I prefer not to be engaged in Republican primaries. They tend to be messy,” Jenkins said in a Dec. 3 interview with CQ Roll Call. “But in reality, I’ve watched a lot of strong conservative women not make it past primaries.”
Their reason for supporting state representative Kathleen Peters? Peters has two X chromosomes. She’s a she, and the U.S. House GOP women supporting her want more GOP women in the house. It’s that simple. Their message: “Boys, stay home. It’s our turn.” Gender is more important than policy.
This GOP trio’s hostility toward men pales, of course, compared to the widespread hostility Democratic women have toward men. There’s Emily’s List, ostensibly independent and nonpartisan, but functionally part of the Democratic Party’s women’s identity caucus that recruits candidates on a women first, policy second, basis that’s designed to exclude men from public service. That caucus doesn’t see it that way, of course — its members believe they are obtaining compensation for past discrimination instead of committing discrimination — but that’s the effect of their actions, and one reason, I believe, why men tend to prefer the Republican Party; why Democrats have trouble winning elections.
The fundamental premise of identity politics is that only members of a group defined by a shared characteristic, usually a physical characteristic such as race or gender, can fully represent that group’s interests. It’s the downside of diversity, a tribal instinct that successful pluralistic democracies transcend, but it always lurks in the background as a path to balkanization, to political disfunction and destabilization.
Humankind is not doing so well that it can afford to exclude from public service people on the basis of gender, race, or some other identity that has nothing to do with the ability to serve.