odanu

Originally published at Am I the Only One Dancing?. Please leave any comments there.

Image by Steve-h via Flickr

The latest spin from the GOPis that women are being ‘brainwashed’ into thinking that there is a Republican war on women, and that, by the way, it is ‘scary’ and ‘unfair’ for the President to remind the Supreme Court that their role is limited to a judicial role, not a legislative one.

Whatever.

There is a rebellion of Republican women going on right under the noses of the men in their lives. They aren’t missing the GOP sponsored laws and bills revoking equal pay, making it more difficult for them to get basic health care including but not limited to contraception and abortion, and cuts to basic services such as food stamps, education, Medicaid and other entitlements that effect woman proportionately more than men.

There’s only so far that cognitive dissonance can stretch.

Republican women hear their husbands, and preachers, and fathers talk about the poor as though they’re a different, ‘undeserving’ species that ‘got what was coming to them’. More and more, though, the poor are their friends, their neighbors, their family members, themselves – folks who fell on a spell of bad luck and then couldn’t get back up, held there by vanished opportunies, disappearing safety nets, and new laws to ‘protect women from themselves’.

These women still believe in limited government, in God and country, in family and in community, but more and more they’re realizing that their leaders are mouthing platitudes out of one side of their mouths while hurting people the women know and love with both hands.

And they’re re-thinking what they want.

Maybe Obamacare isn’t so bad. After all, cousin Joe would still be alive today if he could have gotten that pre-existing condition paid for. Or maybe just let everyone buy in to Medicare. “I hate to admit it,” they whisper amongst themselves, “but I kind of envy Grandma and Grandpa their Medicare.”

Maybe Planned Parenthood isn’t so bad (well, except that abortion thing, they correct themselves loyally). They remember when they were young women and determined to make a good life, and got their yearly pap smears and monthly birth control there. And no one else seems to be filling that gap, despite the promises.

They see that, despite the worries and fears, Obama has not taken their guns or their religion, and their memories are long enough that they know that his excesses of executive power were made possible by Bush’s adoption of the unitary Presidency. And, well (they shrug), they would like to reverse some of that power, but the whole birth certificate thing really was silly.

Taxes on the rich? As everyone around them struggles, begins to despair of ever retiring, of ever achieving financial security again, with their 401k accounts in tatters at their feet? Maybe not so bad. They’ve seen those memes being passed around Facebooks by friends and family on the Other Side and sheer repetition has them wondering. If taxes on the rich stop production, why was the middle class so much better off in the Eisenhower, the Kennedy, the Johnson, the Nixon, the Ford and Carter years, when the highest taxes were over double what they are now?

Their preachers tell them global warming is a myth, that even ‘climate change’ is a silly notion and that even if they weren’t ridiculous, human activity couldn’t possibly be the cause, but these big storms, and unseasonable fluctuations in weather are planting just a seed of unease in their minds. Just a seed that grows on every 70 degree winter day and with every huge outbreak of tornadoes.

They read their Bibles (as do many of their Democratic counterparts) and search for where Jesus said that the rich are his blessed people, in vain. They see his admonishments to take care of their neighbors as themselves, to heal and feed the sick and hungry, to build communities and share with one another, and wonder just how things got so mixed up.

They catch those headlines, the ones that I started this post with, that the ‘Republican war on women’ is a myth, and they catch themselves scoffing, before stifling it carefully. But maybe, just maybe, in November on that first Tuesday they will be too busy to vote for anyone who thinks they’re less than human. Just maybe.

Add to RSS and walk with me!