(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Conservative woman listens to MAGA chauvinists, decides not to vote [1] ['Daily Kos Staff'] Date: 2023-08-15 Female support for Republican candidates is dropping in direct relation to increased conservative efforts to deny them their rights. Republicans should’ve romped in the 2022 midterm elections given high inflation and President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, yet Democrats won the female vote 53-45. Considering that women make up a majority of the electorate (52% in 2022), Republicans can’t afford to keep bleeding their support. A fully functioning Republican Party would figure out why it’s losing support among women and recalibrate its politics to better appeal to them. But the Republican Party is not fully functioning, and the fringe conservative response has been to advocate for women to lose their right to vote. That is self-evidently idiotic. Of course universal suffrage isn’t going anywhere, and it obviously alienates persuadable women. But it is even more potentially self-defeating than that: At least one MAGA woman has decided to stop voting in response. “I asked my husband if he wanted me to vote this year, he said going forward he doesn’t want me to vote … and I couldn’t be more relieved,” said Reformed-Her 007, a conservative woman, in a viral tweet viewed over 3 million times and posted on Reddit’s Leopards Ate My Face sub. “I truly think things like voting and law enforcement should be reserved for MEN ONLY.” For anyone trapped in the MAGA information bubble, this isn’t an unreasonable belief. Consider incel ringleader Nick Fuentes, who claims that “women don’t have the right to vote” and has made stripping women of all their rights a key tenet of his popular misogynistic message. John Gibbs, a Donald Trump-backed Republican House candidate in Michigan last year,, once wrote, “Some argue that in a democratic society, it is hypocritical or unjust for women, who are 50% of the population, not to have the vote. This is obviously not true, since the founding fathers, who understood liberty and democracy better than anyone, did not believe so. In addition, all people under age 18 cannot vote, although they too comprise a significant portion of the population. So we cannot say that women should be able to vote simply because they are a large part of the population.” Claiming that communism and feminism were linked, he concluded that “increasing the size and scope of government is unequivocally bad. And since women's suffrage has caused this to occur on a larger scale than any other cause in history, we conclude that the United States has suffered as a result of women's suffrage.” Gibbs thankfully lost his election From Lauren Witzke, the Republican Senate candidate in Delaware in 2020: “In regards to women voting, that was the worst thing to happen to America. Look at us now. Women overwhelmingly vote on their emotions. And the liberals are very good at appealing to their emotions.” She also lost. Southern Baptist religious leaders certainly don’t think women should have any rights, including the right to vote. Responding to an MSNBC story about high female turnout and the bloc’s Democratic vote, one conservative minister tweeted, “Yes, women are more easily deceived than men … yes, the 19th Amendment [granting women the right to vote] was a bad idea. Ann Coulter, who has otherwise tried to distance herself from MAGA Trumpism, would happily surrender her own vote, literally. “Yeah, I’d give up my vote in a heartbeat as long as the rest of you stop voting ...” she told students at Missouri State University back in 2021. “Women see the government as their husbands. I mean when you look at the Democrats getting in there and spending $4 trillion ... wherever women are given the vote in whatever state, in whatever country you see spending going through the roof.” And the Republican Party is happy to spotlight personalities hostile to universal suffrage. “What is the most controversial thing you believe?” anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson was asked on Twitter. Her response was, “I would support bringing back household voting. How anti-feminist of me.” She was then a featured speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention a month or so later. “Household voting,” of course, is the idea that the man decides everyone’s vote—something that is actually a real thing. Single women are far more likely to vote Democratic than married ones. Asked to clarify if the spouses disagreed on a candidate, Johnson replied, “Then they would have to decide on one vote. In a Godly household, the husband would get the final say.” And in case you were wondering, none of this is anything new. Republicans were bemoaning the female vote a decade ago. Now, Republicans seem to regret giving women the right to vote. Bryan J. Fischer, Director of Issue Analysis at the American Family Institute, tweeted a poll showing President Obama leading among women, 50-42, while trailing among men by the same margin. “Women’s suffrage only thing keeping Obama in the game,” he commented. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., made the same point when he said, “If only men voted, Republicans would win every election.” Going back to our Twitter friend, she was immediately asked why not do what Johnson up above advocates: Let the husband decide the vote as to not “effectively cut in half what your current voting power is as a couple.” She replied, “He [her husband] doesn’t want me doing what has for generations before ours has only been for men to do. I completely submit to that.” Other conservatives suddenly didn’t like that. One woman responded with, “It's y'all choice, but by not voting you are cutting your husbands (household vote) in half. I will vote the same as my husband to support him & give his vote full power. But until the 19th is removed it hurts our household if I don't vote.” Another said, “if we do this voluntarily then we’ll never win another election because liberal women will still vote.” Our hero shrugged it off, “I don’t care about liberal women. I go with what my husband has instructed.” We can only hope more MAGA religious-right women live their ideals as fervently as this one does. In this case, it means one less hypocritical conservative. A few more start to heed what their conservative heroes are advocating, however, and this could eventually have electoral ramifications. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/15/2187256/-Conservative-woman-listens-to-MAGA-chauvinists-decides-not-to-vote Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/