Women for the GOP

Scott Milfred of the Wisconsin State Journal had an editorial yesterday about the need for the Wisconsin GOP to recruit a woman to run in the 2nd Congressional District against Rep. Tammy Baldwin. He's right that the GOP would probably have a better shot at winning that district with a woman candidate, but she would have to be a moderate and with the Wisconsin GOP as hostile as they are to moderate Republican women these days, it doesn't seem likely that that will happen any time soon.

When a Republican woman is considering running in our state, how can she not see how moderate Republican women have been treated by the GOP lately and then decide not to run? The state GOP has been busy over the last couple of years chasing out the moderate Republican women.

Former Republican Senator Mary Panzer was a leader and they had no problems throwing her out of the senate entirely because she wasn't conservative enough. Never mind that she actually got it on recruiting women to run for seats when they were the best shot at winning. For example, she recruited Senator Shelia Harsdorf to run against former Senator Alice Clausing in western Wisconsin. A woman was the best choice for that swing district and now it will be hard for the Democrats to win that seat back.

The GOP might also be regretting standing by and watching former Senator Peggy Rosenzweig get ousted from a seat in the Milwaukee suburbs now that they have seen Senator Tom Reynolds in action. He has made that seat vulnerable for the Republicans again.

The Republican women that are left in the state legislature have been moving to the right in order to keep positions of power too. Republican Senator Alberta Darling used to vote more the way her district would want her to vote. These days, she is nothing more than a rubber stamp for the extreme wing of her party. Did she change her views or feel like she had to move to the right to head off a conservative primary for her seat?

And how does a moderate Republican woman look at the man the GOP has recruited to run the state, Rep. Mark Green, and see anything but a party that has grown increasingly hostile to women's issues? Rep. Mark Green is not only extreme on abortion rights, he's part of the crowd that thinks pharmacists don't have to fill birth control prescriptions. Some moderate Republican women might be anti-abortion, but it seems doubtful that they support this outright attack on a women's right to choose when to have a child so that they can control their own career and have a child when they are prepared to do so. It's better for them and better for the child, but Rep. Mark Green and the GOP don't care.

If you were a moderate Republican woman considering running for office in this state, would you want to ask this group of people running the GOP for help with an election?