Her War With The Gop
Higgins, Heather R.
Books Her War with the GOP By Heather R. Higgins You have to feel sorry for Democrats, what with 200 of their elected officials switching parties since Clinton was elected and almost no...
...In any case, "reproductive choice" logically resides at intercourse, which is why contraception is widely approved...
...The harassment of Geraldine Ferraro by the Reagan team proceeded "with the same ferocity exhibited 300 years ago by the 'good Puritans' of Salem...
...While quick to cite public opinion whenever it supports her views, Melich conveniently forgets about it when propounding her own vehement opposition to popular measures such as parental notification, restricted federal funding, waiting periods, and testing for fetal viability...
...So it's not surprising that Frank Rich rushed to embrace Tanya Melich and her "profusely documented, tell-all account," The Republican War Against Women: An Insider's Report from Behind the Lines (Bantam, 356 pages, $23.95...
...Thus, President Bush instituted "policies that sought to relegate women to their pre-Enlightenment status...
...It is a nuanced question, and Melich does not do it justice...
...Equally original is Melich's standard for gauging the Republican party's "assault on women...
...As for House speaker Newt Gingrich (who sends "misogynist and racist messages"), his Opportunity Society "will limit women's right to reproductive choice, eliminate affirmative action, punish poor women for having children, and make life more miserable for women in general...
...Whenever Melich's side loses a fight over policy, she tells us that "the misogynist strategy worked...
...In short, it's hard to tell why Melich was a Republican for so long...
...While Melich claims to be opposed to an intrusive government, she seems to mean it only in the area of abortion...
...Democrats, by the way, are spared these epithets...
...Elsewhere, Melich practices revision by omission...
...But this is not an argument...
...The misuse of language to vilify the majority of Republicans only begins with "misogynist" and its close companions "bigot," "hater," "racist," and "zealot," to name a few...
...Start with the word "misogynist," which appears nearly 70 times in one form or another, for an average of once every four pages...
...When conservative women are highly regarded, whether Phyllis Schlafly, Jeane Kirkpatrick, or the current Republican congresswomen, they are being used or "co-opted...
...Rather, Melich for once discovers understatement, noting that while the hearings may have been "less civilized than many in the past," the vituperativeness was wholly the fault of Republicans who were trying to "pack" the court to "reflect their views of justice...
...No, here a "misogynist" is anyone who disagrees with the liberal policies Melich advocates...
...Geraldine Ferraro's nomination restores to Melich "dreams assaulted by the Reagan years"- but her candidacy is recounted as a simple tale of bigots and misogynists seizing on the little "wrinkle" of the candidate's "husband not wanting to release his tax returns" and using this to attack Ferraro because she is Italian, a Catholic (the good, pro-choice kind), and a woman...
...Words like "vindictive," "vicious," and "virulent" Melich saves for Republicans and their party of "theocrats and the usual unprincipled power seekers...
...Of what those tax returns ultimately revealed, as well as what other evidence (as opposed to "innuendo") turned up, there is not a whisper...
...What we are wrestling with as a nation and what the Republican party is discussing internally is when, if ever, and under what circumstances a decision to abort is morally acceptable and should be legally permissible...
...How can I stop my husband from beating me?' they asked...
...When someone she disapproves of wins an election, it's the fault of "incumbency and regional bias...
...Indeed, the "individual freedom of women to make their own reproductive choices [is] bedrock Republican philosophy," she announces, and "each person must follow his or her own conscience...
...In short, this is not a serious book making a legitimate argument...
...Yet Melich contends that what really motivates pro-lifers are concerns like states rights, political timing, and party loyalty-with barely a mention of anything more profound...
...Rich and others who champion this book, however, face a wee problem: The documentation is shoddy and highly selective, the tales that get told are so flagrantly revisionist that even a political amateur would smirk, the premise depends on Orwellian doublespeak, and the "insider" simply isn't...
...But she never acknowledges that the behavior of the opposition was so extreme and indifferent to truth as to produce a new verb: to bork...
...So as Tanya Melich closes the door on her "birthright Republicanism," let all good Republicans hope that she prospers-as a consultant to Democrats...
...Indeed, she lays out a record of astonishing consistency, a particularly brave admission for someone who apparently runs a political consulting firm...
...But abortion is the area where Melich's inability to see beyond her prejudices is most evident...
...Heather R. Higgins is a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation...
...What she certainly is, however, is a Victim...
...Her disdain for accuracy and subtlety, however, really shines in her historical analogies...
...At the International Women's Year conference in Houston, women "argued about . . . the stereotyping of women into traditional roles...
...Nor is it a true insider's account with genuine revelations and fresh information...
...Just in case women were wondering where our property, suffrage, and right to divorce went...
...Anyone who makes a principled argument for a position Melich disagrees with is merely "cloaking attacks in a mantle of religiosity and morality...
...And you thought Republicans only wanted to go back to the 1950s...
...Examples abound...
...to them, any "right" to choose abortion is as meaningless as a property "right" to own slaves...
...Looking ahead, Melich anticipates that women will punish Republicans at the polls in '96...
...It's a simplistic view, a world where the typical choice is "between a misogynist fiscal conservative and a feminist moderate"-but it's the only paradigm that allows this rancorous woman to avoid confronting herself...
...As a member of the Coalition Against Bork, she knows better than to present as legitimate the deliberate distortions of Bork's opinions that were used to slander him during his confirmation process...
...The first was] in 1866 when Andrew Johnson vetoed legislation giving civil rights protection to the newly freed slaves...
...And the same legitimacy, too...
...In fact a liberal moving under cover of feminism, she favors government intrusion and spending, whether in the guise of affirmative action, "extension" of the Equal Pay Act, federal funding for and regulation of day care, and, apparently, all other entitlements and social spending...
...When they agree with Republican positions on particular issues, they are at worst motivated by "genuine conviction" (Sam Ervin, who opposed the ERA) or "sanctimonious" (Carter, who wouldn't fight for federal funding for abortions...
...But throughout her book she admits time and again that her predictions have been wrong, the product of wishful thinking and other forms of self-delusion...
...She asserts that these constitute gross infringements of reproductive freedom...
...And even the appointment of the right kind of woman doesn't quite count for Melich unless the women in question are "placed in a position to affect reproductive health policy...
...Whatever one's position on the issue, it is hard to ignore the fact that for right-to-lifers, abortion is a moral issue...
...When a woman is criticized for the policies she espouses, her critics are "anti-woman" and "extremists" who have "women as a particular target" or "don't want to share power...
...It's rather like calling the Democratic party racist, with racist redefined to mean anything Thomas Sowell would disagree with, and racist behavior the appointment of anyone other than black individuals, who hold Sowell's views, to positions responsible for race-related matters...
...Silly you if you thought it meant someone who hates or distrusts women...
...She assures us, for example, that to be truly uninvolved, the federal government must pay for abortions...
...Abortion is different...
...Yes, the predictable denunciation of those cruel Reagan spending cuts is here, along with a contradictory concern about rising deficits...
...Books Her War with the GOP By Heather R. Higgins You have to feel sorry for Democrats, what with 200 of their elected officials switching parties since Clinton was elected and almost no Republicans returning the compliment...
...Rather, it is a screed, a long whine, with the intellectual depth of a wading pool...
...It takes no account of real gains by women in the party hierarchy, but only measures gains by the right kind of woman-the pro-choice kind...
...Ah, yes, the favorite traditional role-and no stereotypes here...
...Nor does she recognize that public sentiment on abortion is complicated and nuanced, distributed along a bell curve, depending on why and at what stage an abortion is sought...
...After all, in her Wendell Willkie childhood, laws governing all sorts of personal behavior, from loitering to abortion, were on the books and widely accepted, by her party and everyone else...
...Bush's veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1990 was "only the third time in American history that a president had vetoed a civil rights bill...
Vol. 1 • April 1996 • No. 29
