Republicans Say She’s a Radical

The Republicans have described the enemy and she sounds like me.

She thinks independently and respects values and beliefs other than her own. She calls this “personal” and she’s got an attitude about it. She expects others, especially those in government, to respect her values too.

This enemy may be a mother, and a wife, but she may need more than that to make her feel fulfilled. The Republicans hoot at that. They call her plain old selfish, and they hint that she flouts a higher law.

But the enemy looks at her own life quite differently. She thinks she is making a contribution to society, one that goes beyond the walls of her own home, and this society includes Republicans too.

Why, some of her best friends are Republican. . . . Or, who knows, maybe that should be they were .

Oh, and something else. The enemy does not play dumb, not for a date, or a job, or to make a lesser man look good. Her parents, both Mom and Dad, taught her self-respect. Yes, girls can be anything they want.

The Republicans call this enemy a “radical feminist.” I call her an American woman with common sense. She is me and many of my friends and millions of other women whom I have never met.

This is more than a failure to communicate between liberals and conservatives, if anyone really knows what those labels mean anymore. This is closing the door to kinder, gentler campaigning with a slam and a kick.

No, we “radical feminists” haven’t yet appeared in TV ads as the equivalent of black murderer Willie Horton in drag. Maybe it’s too early, or perhaps too dangerous, to play the racial card now.

And the gay and lesbian demons--the caricature that many thought would be Horton Redux--haven’t materialized yet. Perhaps because, unlike a Hillary Clinton, the Republicans haven’t yet found a gay donkey on which to pin this tale.

No matter. The Mommy Wars are plenty potent stuff. An administration in trouble is reaching for that which divides us and then yanking at it hard.

And, yes, it is enough to set my hair on end.

Marilyn Quayle, a lawyer who gave up her own career for her husband and kids, sent out this call to her troops the other night.

“Most women do not wish to be liberated from their essential natures as women,” she intoned. “Most of us love being mothers or wives, which gives our lives a richness that few men or women get from professional accomplishments alone.”

And, in separating herself from the unnamed others of her generation, she said this: “Not everyone believed that the family was so oppressive that women could only thrive apart from it.”

The message could hardly have been more clear: Women’s liberation--how ‘60s, no?--was not only a flop, it was flat-out wrong. Women are not men. So, please, ladies, stay home where you belong.

Marilyn Quayle, of course, does not speak for all Republicans, nor all Republicans of the “fairer sex.” Barbara Bush, despite her recent public foray into the mud, usually takes a more conciliatory approach. The Republican Party has worked hard to cast her as grandmother to us all.

But, increasingly, the voices that the Republican Party has chosen to showcase have been unyielding and shrill.

Now when I hear talk of the party’s “big tent” I can’t help but think of a circus where the clowns run the show. And in this corner: The Contortionists: Yes! They are pro-choice and pro-Bush!

The Clinton campaign has naturally been watering the seeds of such partisan discontent. The other day they scheduled a news conference to ballyhoo eight high-level defections from the breadbasket of California Republicanism, Orange County, U.S.A. This coincided with 17 such news conferences in other states.

Real estate developer Kathryn Thompson, formerly one of the top Bush fund-raisers nationwide, said she would be voting for Clinton because the “extremists” have commandeered the Republican party that she has worked for during the past 30 years.

And then there was this: Word was that Thompson’s husband, Gus Owen, would likely be asked to step down as president of the Lincoln Club, the local party’s fund-raising arm, because of his wife’s move.

Ah, if only Kathryn had stayed home. . . .

The economy would be booming, unemployment would virtually disappear, our children would be well educated and behaved, our health care system would be affordable and first-rate and, of course, there would be far less tension in the Thompson-Owen home, for one.

When in doubt, blame the “radical feminists.” Who cares if it doesn’t make any sense? It diverts attention from the real problems that are hounding the nation today. And it’s certainly more fun.