Republicans have spent the past year and a half insisting they were really, truly, seriously going to start appealing to women this time—even creating their own version of finishing school for white men, attempting to learn how to talk to women voters. Unfortunately, charm school does not seem to have paid off for Republicans:
Steve Southerland is under fire in FL-02 for holding a men’s-only fundraiser, which was advertised with instructions to “tell the Misses not to wait up” while the men enjoyed “after dinner whiskey and cigars.” [Buzzfeed, 9/3/14]
- The NRCC debuted a shockingly sexist ad in AZ-01, reducing Representative Ann Kirkpatrick to literally a pair of shapely legs. [Arizona Daily Star, 9/2/14]
- Stewart Mills III apparently thinks the way to win over women is by walking around in pink high heels. [Politico, 6/25/14]
- In CO-06, Congressman Mike Coffman’s best attempt to appeal to women by touting a bill he passed 20 years ago in the state Legislature that is now obsolete…glossing over his more recent votes against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, measures to deny women birth control and for defunding Planned Parenthood. [NBC 9 News, 9/3/14]
“From reducing female leaders to their legs to holding no-girls-allowed fundraisers, it couldn’t be clearer that the Republican Party is still stuck in the Mad Men era, and no amount of charm school and what-women-want coaching will fix that,” said Emily Bittner of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “If this is what Republicans do when specifically instructed to appeal to women, it’s little wonder that their own report shows women think Republicans are ‘intolerant’ and ‘stuck in the past.’”