With the midterms fast approaching, and GOP messaging on their one unifying platform beginning to fall apart, the party has decided to take on the Democrats’ successful “War on Women” theme. While the reality is that Republicans in midterm elections have a “built-in midterm turnout advantage” due to the overwhelming percentage of older white voters that tend to turn out in off-year cycles, another undeniable fact is that Republicans are hemorrhaging female voters. In 2008, Barack Obama received 55% of women’s votes and, in last year’s hotly contested and closely watched Virginia gubernatorial election, voters gave Republicans the boot across the ticket with women leading the charge.
It would seem that the infinite gaffes, the Hobby Lobby case, a strong anti-abortion platform, and state-level attempts to clamp down on reproductive rights would be enough to support the left’s message that Republicans are bad for women. But the Democrats have stepped up their game and are now successfully tying their long-held desire for a minimum wage increase to women’s rights and hammering the GOP on pay equality.
So what’s a Republican party to do?
Well, there’s this weak attempt to shore up some girl love by building a team of “young volunteers” to spread the message that the party really does have something in their platform that benefits females. Though exactly what that something is kind of remains unclear. And there’s some idle chatter about hypocrisy on the left (*Bill Clinton was a womanizer!!).
But this is the big one: Variety reported yesterday that FOX News is about to launch a new daytime panel program called Outnumbered. The show will feature four female hosts and one rotating male role.
“Fox News said the dynamic of the gender-weighted panel would result in a ‘fresh take’ on news of the day. During each segment, the panelists will examine the top news of the hour, and deliberate the leading pop culture and relationship issues dominating the headlines that day, the network said in a statement.”
On any other network, this would (and often does) look like simple pandering in an attempt to draw in female viewers. But it’s no secret that FOX News is in the trenches for the GOP. The network’s president Roger Ailes notoriously tried and failed to win the 2012 election for the Republicans, and founder/Chairman/CEO Rupert Murdoch is on record as saying he “saved” the party from ruin. Mark my words, the number one mission of this new program will be to act as an attack machine against the Democrats’ pro-woman message.
-Alibi
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