With progressives worried their hold on power may be tenuous, they are honing their attack on the driving power behind the rise of the Tea Party movement: conservative women.
Former President Bill Clinton – of all people – was recently unleashed to pointedly criticize conservative women running for office across America. It’s ironic that the man with the legacy marred by womanizing — no matter how popular he may be in his retirement — is the one warning that these conservative women are allegedly an affront to the political process.
And no one gets the progressives ire up these days more than Sarah Palin. The Tea Party favorite is the top target of their anger.
For example, when she was the 2008 vice presidential nominee, Tina Fey portrayed Palin as a simpleton on "Saturday Night Live” shows that aired in the weeks before the election. Clips of Fey’s skits went viral and became fodder for the establishment media’s obsession with putting Palin down.
Fey’s unfair portrayal of Palin became so ubiquitous that it undoubtedly defined the Republican ticket to many voters. For example, in a survey of Obama voters by pollster John Zogby conducted just after the 2008 election, 87 percent identified Palin as saying she could “see Russia from her house.” In reality, it was a line from Fey.
Sarah Palin, however, is not the first conservative woman to incur progressive wrath. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, activist Phyllis Schlafly, Representative Michele Bachmann and columnist Michelle Malkin are but a few more conservative women upon whom harsh abuse is common.
Why? Conservative women dispel the myth that the only women with good ideas and the tenacity to fight for them reside on the left wing of the political spectrum.
Conservative women are playing a leading role in the tea party movement, from speaking at rallies, to participating in radio and television talk shows to organizing local and national tea party groups. The conservative woman’s role is at the forefront of the movement and cannot be denied as a positive force in the Tea Party movement no matter how progressives try to spin it.
“Fire from the Heartland,” a new documentary from Citizens United Productions, is an oral history of the role women have played in the modern conservative movement from its earliest days up to today’s Tea Party movement.
President Obama’s change — the encroachment of government on liberty and what it is doing to the nation’s already ailing economy — is acutely felt by the women of America who largely do the shopping, pay household bills and attend to sick family members. Seeing the clear and present danger of this change, they are standing up and saying “no.”
Consider the story of Jenny Beth Martin. Martin was living the American Dream with two kids, two SUVs and a nice house in suburban Atlanta when her husband’s business failed. After declaring bankruptcy and cleaning houses to pay the bills, Martin was appalled at the Obama administration’s out-of-control spending and the rewards it bestowed on bad behavior. She helped organize the first Atlanta Tea Party gathering. She is now the CEO of the Tea Party Patriots, and was recently chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
She’s one of the reasons why the left declared hunting season on “mama grizzlies.”
There are no “you’ve come a long way” platitudes for conservative women. From the way progressives act, we should be back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. It’s kind of ironic.
As a black conservative woman, I face even more criticism since I break two progressive stereotypes. Yet the NAACP — despite pledging otherwise to me on national television — has yet to denounce racist comments made against black conservatives.
Despite this glaring hypocrisy, conservative women will shoulder on as they always have — promoting true hope and change based on family need and not a dream of reordering society.
Deneen Borelli is a Project21.org fellow and Fox News contributor.
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