Martha McSally, a retired Air Force colonel who was the first woman to fly combat missions after the prohibition was lifted 24 years ago, is now the Republican Congresswoman from Gabby Giffords' old district in Arizona.
At
The Progressive, Abby Scher writes
The New Face Of Republican Women in Congress. An excerpt:
When Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann retired in December after eight years in office, her fans said she left “big shoes to fill.” Bachmann founded and led the House Tea Party Caucus till it fizzled out, and managed to promote all kinds of wacky rightwing ideas with a straight face, including the claim that getting rid of the minimum wage would boost the economy, that AmeriCorps is really a socialist reeducation camp, and that Nobel Prize winners reject the theory of evolution in favor of intelligent design.
In January, three new conservative women took their places in the 114th Congress: Tea Party darling Representative Mia Love of Utah, fighter pilot Martha McSally, who secured Gabby Giffords’ old Congressional seat in Arizona, and Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, tapped by the Republican leadership to respond to President Obama’s State of the Union address. While it is doubtful any of these women can match Bachmann’s sheer nuttiness, they all share her anti-abortion, climate-change denying, rightwing economic vision—and the habit of smiling when they dish it out.
But unlike Bachmann—or Sarah Palin, or other conservative women of that generation—they did not get their start in politics opposing abortion. These Republican women owe their rise to the money men at the top of the party, not the activist, anti -abortion base. Their rise shows how the free market establishment within the party and on its fringes seeks to groom and control a new “diverse” face for the GOP.
The new Republican women in Congress seem to be benefitting from the GOP’s realization that it needs female frontwomen to sell its regressive policies. All three soft-peddled their rhetoric to win seats formerly held by Democrats—something Bachmann never deigned to do—though it is doubtful they moderated their positions. [...]
In a tight race, Martha McSally, another Republican veteran, captured the moderate Democratic seat once held by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the Tucson area despite a reputation as a TeaPartier. A retired colonel who spent twenty-six years in the Air Force, she was the first woman to fly in combat. She also stood up against the Department of Defense when it required her to wear a traditional robe off-base while in Saudi Arabia. She refused to “send the message that she believes women are subservient to men.” Interestingly, she opposed Arizona efforts to allow businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians. McSally almost defeated her opponent, Representative Ron Barber, a former aide to Giffords, in 2012. In that race, she was supported by the Susan B. Anthony List PAC and clearly stated she opposed abortion even in cases of rape and incest. This time, Susan B. Anthony List did not visibly support her—although Koch-backed outlets and the Christian Right Family Research Council did—and McSally did not run on her abortion politics.
“I think it was her military service that really got her elected and makes her likable, because that’s all she talks about,” says Sandra K. Fischer, president of the Arizona Federation of Democratic Women. The Congressional district is close to the Mexican border and is home to a major Air Force base. “Military is a big deal in Tucson.”
“She’s going to be very bad for Arizona,” she adds. [...]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2006—Straight Talk on South Dakota?:
John McCain, that self-styled "maverick" of Republican politics, continues to try to have it both ways, this time on the politics of abortion and specifically, the South Dakota ban.
A spokesperson said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would have signed the South Dakota legislation, "but [he] would also take the appropriate steps under state law—in whatever state—to ensure that the exceptions of rape, incest or life of the mother were included." |
Well, Senator, the problem is that the South Dakota bill specifically ruled out exceptions for rape or incest, allowing only an exception for the life of the mother, and by golly, the women of South Dakota were damned lucky to get that. I guess it's small comfort to know that their own lives rate just a little bit higher than a fertilized egg.
McCain has tried in the past to distance himself from the Party of Dobson, but the allure of those hard-core, dedicated votes just keeps bringing him back. And McCain isn't the only one.
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Greg Dworkin returns to the show this morning, rounding up monthly jobs numbers news. The RNC actually opts to up the crazy at 2016 debates. A new Q-Poll. BREAKING: President Obama is black. The horrifying story and backstory of Arkansas state rep. Justin Harris. Despite the recent gun-on-campus incident, or perhaps because of it, the Georgia legislature is apparently considering combating rape on campus by arming fraternities. A gun nut scolds fellow gun nuts for their sloppy gun nuttery. A roundup of the good stuff on the bad stuff in Ferguson & elsewhere.
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