The midterm elections are fast approaching… okay, so it’s still January. But the midterms are coming this year, and with that knowledge, Republicans are quickly realizing… again, that their outreach to voting groups should go beyond rich white men.
Mike Huckabee began that outreach last week trying to convince women that Republicans are their friends. And today, Rand Paul picked up where Huckabee left off. Of course, Huckabee’s conclusion that Republicans don’t have a war on woman and Paul’s misguided understanding that women are doing just fine thank you, are both wrong. But they will keep saying it because they don’t have a clue, and the midterm election is almost here.
Said Paul on CNN.
“The whole thing of the ‘war on women,’ I sort of laughingly say, ‘Yeah, there might have been – but the women are winning it,'” the Republican senator from Kentucky said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He said women have made great strides and, as an example, now make up more than half the students at medical and law schools.
“I think women are doing very well, and I’m proud of how far we’ve come,” the potential 2016 presidential candidate continued.
“And I think some of the victimology and all of this other stuff is trumped up. We don’t get to any good policy by playing some sort of charade that somehow one party doesn’t care about women or one party is not in favor of women advancing, or other people advancing.”
As the GOP gears up for the 2014 midterms, some in the party have acknowledged that Republican candidates could do better when it comes to talking about women’s issues.
“Some of our members just aren’t as sensitive as they ought to be.” House Speaker John Boehner said last month, when asked about efforts by the House GOP campaign arm to improve how candidates appeal to female voters.
CNN’s chief political correspondent, Candy Crowley, pressed Paul on whether the issue is a “matter of words and tone.”
“Somewhat,” Paul said. “I think also a lot of the debates we have in Washington and in the public, generally, are dumbed down. They’re characterized and we get to the point where we’re talking about stuff and throwing stuff back and forth, and we are never getting to the truth.”
