More Flash, Less Substance for the GOP

This is becoming a sport for me, though I'm not intending it to be so. Over at the National Review, Andrew Stiles decries how Democrats are fanning the flames of the "war on women" by trying to pass legislation like Violence Against Women Act and the Lily Ledbetter Fair Act. I suppose one could hypothesize that the Democrats are pushing these initiatives because they believe in them, but Mr. Stiles assigns a more nefarious purpose:

Democrats have nearly perfected the following exercise in cynical electioneering: 1) introduce legislation; 2) title it something that appeals to the vast majority of Americans who have no interest in learning what is actually in the bill, e.g., the “Violence Against Women Act”; 3) make sure it is  sufficiently noxious
 to the GOP that few Republicans will support it; 4) vote, and await headlines such as “[GOP Lawmaker] Votes No On Violence Against Women Act”; 5) clip and use headline in 30-second campaign ad; and 6) repeat.

Now I'm immediately going to move past the pot vs. kettle name calling that could ensue when Stiles notes VAWA and I mention the PATRIOT Act. No, instead let's just consider how dejected Stiles must be, how cynical he must be to suggest Democrats push these policies. But if this is "cynical electioneering" shouldn't these then be issues where women support what the Democrats are advocating? Here again is more from Mr. Stiles:

The policy proposals Obama has offered since beginning his second term — gun control, universal preschool, the minimum-wage hike, immigration reform — may not be specifically targeted toward women voters, but the White House is keenly aware of what the polls are saying. “These are issues that play very, very well with women voters, and further put the Republicans in the corner,” Politico’s well-sourced White House reporter Glenn Thrush said on MSNBC last week. Universal preschool is an especially favorable issue, Thrush said, because “chicks dig it.”
On gun control, women favor “controlling gun ownership” over “protecting gun rights” by a 57–38 percent margin, according to a recent Pew poll. Male opinion is reversed, favoring “gun rights” by 51 to 44 percent. Significant majorities of women support proposals to ban assault weapons, ban high-capacity magazines, ban online sales of ammunition, and track gun sales with a federal database, nearly all of which measures are unlikely to pass Congress owing to Republican (and substantial Democratic) opposition.Recent polling on the minimum wage suggests overwhelming support among women for Obama’s proposal to raise the current minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $9 per hour. Nearly 80 percent of women support raising the minimum wage, and 64 percent say they “strongly” support it. Support is significant among non-college-educated women (82–9 percent), independent women (82–13), and even Republican women (58–30),

So there you have it. Women support these policies according to the polls. Okay so the Democrats have advanced bills that have the support of a majority of women, and because Democrats have advanced these bills, they enjoy an elecotral advantage among women. Where's the nefarious part again? Back to Mr. Stiles:

None of these policies has a particularly good chance of passing both houses of Congress any time soon. But that has never stopped President Obama and his Democratic allies from pushing such issues as a means to achieve political advantage.

Wait? What? Haven't we been hearing from Republicans during the sequestration battle that they can only do so much? That the responsibility is on the Democrats to offer a plan since they control the Senate and the White House? Just so we're clear, when the Democrats offer up proposals that are popular among the population they would help, but have a hard time passing the GOP-controlled House it's about political advantage. However, when the Democrats want the GOP-controlled House to advance a bill that might get along with the Senate and the White House it's seen as shirking responsibility. That's where we're at?

But it gets funnier. The Democrats are absolutely crushing the Republicans in wooing women votes because they're advocating for policies that women like, but Republicans don't want to support. Now one would think the Republicans, if they are interested in wooing some of those women voters away from the Democrats, might reconsider their policy positions, right? Wrong. You see, the Republicans of today think it's a problem of communication. Sabrina Schaeffer from the Independent Women's Forum says, "There are ways to reach out to women, to address their concerns, without pandering, simply by finding a better way of communicating."

In the words of someone else's Yiddish grandmother, "Oy vey!" I...just....can't... Pretty much every "serious" GOP operative quoted since the election has advised that it's not that the policy position is wrong, even when the effing columnist says the polls are in favor of the policy, no, it's communication. If they talked about it better, they would be doing better.

I stand by my warning that there are some in the GOP youth movement that are likely to make the party more relevant, but good grief. Right now, in the party Mr. Stiles advocates for, you have another explicit suggestion that they need more flash and less substance.