Why do they stay?

Middle class voters and battered women's syndrome

As an advocate for abused women, I’ve heard the question a thousand times. Rather than asking why some men abuse or why society does not punish such criminals, people will invariably ask, “If women don’t like being abused, why do they stay?”

There are a number of incorrect assumptions in that question. First, it assumes the responsibility for abuse lies not with the abuser, but with the victim. This is obviously not true.

Second, the question assumes that abused women stay. Statistically, they don’t. It may takes months or years for a woman to safely extricate herself from a violent partner, but most women are so resourceful that eventually they do escape.

I understand the rationale for the question. Lately I’ve been wondering the same thing about middle class Republican voters. Year after year, Republican officials fleece the middle class. They regale us with promises of spending cuts, only to demand more pork than all their predecessors. They claim to be socially conservative while engaging in gay restroom hookups and chasing after teenage boys. They start wars they cannot finish and spend money we do not have. Even as they use patriotic language and religion to entice more recruits for their wars, they cut funding for veterans programs and wounded soldiers.

Throughout eight years of Bush, it has been discouraging to think that our children’s children will still be paying for this war. If McCain wins the 2008 election, our children’s children will still be fighting this war!

It is the middle class that bears the burden. Proportionally, ours is the greatest tax burden. Do middle class Republican voters really believe corporate welfare and tax cuts for rich people will “trickle down” to the average Joe? If it were true, Joe should be rich by now. Instead, Americans are poorer in real dollars than we have been in several decades.

The health care crisis also hits the middle class the hardest. The poorest citizens are still eligible for Medicaid, while programs like PeachCare that help the middle class are gutted and insurance companies are deregulated so they can invent more exceptions that fall outside covered expenses. These days it is hard to know which is rising fastest: deductibles, premiums or the cost of medicine.

Georgia Republican officials are no better than those on the national level. While middle class Georgians struggle with widespread fuel shortages, Governor Perdue and Senator Mullis run off to Spain. While Georgia public schools are failing (some so badly they actually lost their accreditation) and Georgia test scores are falling, school superintendent Kathy Cox goes on “Are You Smarter than a Fifth-grader?” to show off her knowledge. Middle class Georgians do not care how smart Kathy Cox is. We care what our own children are learning in the public schools we are funding with our tax dollars.

Like violent marriage partners, Republican politicians keep promising to change. Even though McCain and Palin support the Bush policies 100%, they somehow claim to be the party of change. Stealing Obama’s lines, they tell us to vote for them if we do not want “politics as usual.” Yet they cannot point out a single aspect where their policies will differ from the president who has the worst popularity rating ever.

Like other abusers, Republican politicians use religion and guilt to keep their victims in place. They set up “prayer groups,” non-profit organizations and TV preachers to proclaim that voting Democratic will imperil our souls. These are the same preachers who threaten women with the wrath of God if they divorce their abusers. When faced with a Democratic candidate who is a born-again Christian vs. a man who divorced his wife for his mistress, the abusers simply make up lies. Obama is a Muslim, they say. Since there is absolutely no evidence for this claim, they make him a closet Muslim, and an unpatriotic guy who befriends terrorists, to boot. None of this true, but lying is no big feat for an abuser trying to hold onto his prey.

Just like abusers everywhere, McCain and Palin claim to be mavericks to whom the rules do not apply. They condemn other politicians for pork barrel projects even though Alaska holds the record for per capita ear marks. They condemn lobbyists in politics, even though Sarah Palin was the first mayor to hire a lobbyist to bring pork barrel money to her little town of Wasilla. McCain continues to push for endless war in Iraq, even as American citizens and Iraqi officials call for an end to the occupation. They’re mavericks, all right.

Four more years of Bush-as-usual is not what voters want. In every state, middle class Americans are tired of war. Yet, for the presidential election, the Republican Party has selected the most crazed war hawk in American politics today. Why do they stay?

As with abused women, the question assumes too much. They don’t stay. They won’t stay. Sooner or later, middle class voters will be brave enough to leave the Republican Party behind.

Palin Pros and Cons

Several readers have asked me to weigh in on the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as Senator John McCain’s vice presidential running mate. The way I see it, there are pros and cons to the Palin pick.

PRO – She’s a woman. Over 50% of voters are women, and we are seriously underrepresented in American government.

CON – She’s against women. Palin is part of the most extremist anti-woman platform the Republicans have put forth in years. These Republicans are on the warpath, trying to limit access to ordinary contraceptive methods like the birth control pill, which the majority of American women depend on at some point in their lives. Palin is right in with this crowd, going on record to state that she is against abortion even in the case of rape or incest.

PRO – The restoration of a female to this election could appeal to some voters who are disillusioned over Hillary’s primary loss.

CON – Palin is no Hillary Clinton. Palin’s resume is so thin, it actually includes her high school basketball “career.” She is a one-term governor of the 4th smallest state by population, and before that she was the mayor of a town smaller than Fort Oglethorpe. Most Americans only heard of her last week. She is best known as the bee-hived governor who was almost Miss Alaska. She has no experience outside the state, much less with foreign affairs. According to the New York Times, Palin only got her passport in July, 2007. Even then, she did not visit Iraq as she has claimed.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton is a serious, seasoned political leader known all around the world. It’s not just the age difference. Since her twenties, Clinton has been featured in publications like Life Magazine. She attracted attention not for beauty pageants but for historic accomplishments, like being the first Wellesley student to deliver the commencement address and using that opportunity to criticize the senator who spoke just before she did.

While Republicans hail Palin as a reformer, it is Clinton who is a true crusader. Hillary was a force to be reckoned with even before she teamed up with Bill. In the late sixties, she fought for civil rights, and in the seventies she helped impeach Richard Nixon. In the eighties, while Palin was strutting down the runway in a bikini, Clinton was fighting for education reform in Arkansas and being named Mother of the Year for the second time.

As First Lady for two terms in the nineties, Clinton was so active in domestic and foreign affairs that critics printed bumper stickers reading “Impeach the President and her husband, too.”

Clinton’s greatest obstacle is being ahead of her time. Consider her bid to reform healthcare. As First Lady she was unable to make it happen, but that plan is now integral to the Democratic platform. That’s what reformers do; they change the way we think about the world. Simply challenging an incumbent in your own party doesn’t make you a reformer.

The differences go beyond education and experience; Palin opposes everything Hillary Clinton stands for – health care, education, individual freedoms, and economic security for the middle class.

McCain must think women are stupid. He hopes to win Clinton supporters simply by adding a woman to his ticket. Some men may believe that all females are interchangeable; women know better.

PRO – Palin is a Washington outsider. After 8 years of Republican corruption, lies, and unjust war, many Americans are looking outside the Capitol for a fresh leader without ties, allegiances and debts.

CON – She is not just an outsider; she has absolutely no national experience. Republicans try to brush this away by pointing out that Obama has never been a governor and therefore has no “executive” experience – but the same can be said for McCain. If Palin is more qualified than Obama, then she is also more qualified than McCain. The Republicans need to reverse their ticket! The truth is, Sarah Palin is the least experienced candidate put forth in recent history. The presidency is far too important to risk on a loose cannon like McCain and a complete unknown like Palin.

PRO – A short resume means less baggage . . . right?

CON – For a politician with such a short history, Palin has been remarkably quick to immerse herself in scandalous abuses of power. Currently she is under investigation for trying to force the firing of her ex-brother-in-law as a favor to her sister.

As governor of Alaska (population comparable to Atlanta or Memphis), she has held her hand out for plenty of pork. Palin claims she opposed the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” Not true. Support for the bridge was part of her campaign platform. She only gave up on it after Washington turned against the project. Then she canceled the bridge, but kept most of the money for other projects. Although she claims she opposes earmarks, she has requested more per capita than any other governor.

While requesting federal dollars to study the mating habits of crabs, Palin used her line-item veto power to slash important funding for education and teen pregnancy prevention. She opposes teaching teens about condoms in spite of statistical and now personal evidence that “abstinence only” education has poor results.

Palin has an interesting strategy on changing Alaska’s status as the rape capital of America: Discourage victims from reporting. Under Mayor Palin, Wasilla women who reported rape had to pay for the cost of the forensic exam, reportedly a charge of $300-1,200. Charging women who report sex crimes is a sure way to reduce rape – well, rape reports, anyway.

PRO – Palin is an avid outdoorswoman, giving her a tough, not-afraid-to-get-her-hands-dirty image.

CON – Sarah Palin’s hands are a little too dirty. Palin wants to turn the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge into a private oil field for her corporate buddies.

Hunting does not always translate into caring about the environment or its inhabitants. Palin scoffs at global warming even as scientists document the shrinking of the ice caps and drowning of polar bears. Not that Palin cares about polar bears; she actually sued the Bush administration to have them taken off the endangered species list.

Wolves have fared no better under her watch. Until the program was stopped by a state judge, Palin was offering wolf hunters $150 for every hacked-off front foreleg they brought in.

PRO – The selection of a female vice presidential candidate is a historical first for the Republican Party. Finally, the Republicans have entered the 20th century. That’s not a typo. The press seems to have forgotten that Democrats met that milestone last century when Walter Mondale selected Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984. The Republicans are, finally, playing catch-up.

CON – In choosing Palin, John McCain passed over a long line of more qualified Republican leaders. If he wanted a female running mate, why not Kay Bailey Hutchison? Hutchison served as state treasurer of Texas before starting her fifteen years in the Senate. She is the most senior female Republican Senator, with a great deal of experience and responsibility.

Or how about Olympia Snowe? Snowe is the first woman who ever served in both houses, both in the state and nationally, and one of the first to serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She was named one of America’s top senators by Time Magazine, and holds a 79% approval rating in her home state of Maine. Snowe is as powerful as she is popular. She chairs the subcommittee that oversees the Navy and Marine Corps and also serves on the Finance Committee. In 35 years, Olympia Snowe has never lost an election.

With choices like Hutchison and Snowe (and Condoleeza Rice, and the list goes on), why did McCain choose a political newbie from the sticks? The answer is clear to hard-working women in all sorts of careers who have watched a younger, less qualified woman soar past them to assume positions at the top. It’s an old gimmick, really: Put a token female near the top to placate the other women in the organization. Just make sure it’s a woman who will fully support the good ol’ boys, without caring what happens to us other women, or our children, or our world.