Marketplace of Ideas Blog

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Greg Borowski reported Wednesday about Democrats’ latest attacks upon Republican presidential nominee John McCain over, in the words of Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton, his “fundamental disrespect toward women.”

What is this “fundamental disrespect toward women,” you ask?

Lawton was referring to McCain’s quip at a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D., earlier this month that he had encouraged his wife, Cindy, to enter the rally’s beauty contest, a rowdy event featuring scantily clad women.

“I told her with a little luck that she could be the only woman ever to serve as both the first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip,” McCain said.

Said Lawton: “I found that incredibly disrespectful. Things like that don’t come off the cuff when you are careful about how you consider women and their value.”

The first thought that comes to mind is that Democratic leaders have shown, in my opinion, much more “fundamental disrespect toward women” in past years — for instance, serial adultery, in the case of the previous Democratic president. (The speech of U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D–Milwaukee) also noted in the story, implying that McCain is a metaphorical rapist, was just classless.) More fundamentally, if Cindy McCain was offended by her husband’s comment, I suspect she would let her husband know within the privacy of their own marriage.

There is, however, more to this than your usual made-for-media kerfuffle (a term popularized by the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto). Lawton will be this state’s next governor if the rumors about Gov. James Doyle’s likely appointment to a Barack Obama Cabinet position are correct. (And if you look at her Web site, you might conclude she’s already running for governor.) Lawton has focused so far on the “green economy,” something that is fine, even laudable, for individual businesses to decide to pursue on their own, but is more likely to generate great costs and reduced incomes, with no foreseeable payback or appreciable benefit, at a governmental level. And while Lawton may think that “Economic development — good, family-supporting jobs for our hardworking people — is my top priority,” hitching your wagon to only the “green economy” is unwise, particularly when generating “green energy” is considerably more expensive than the more conventional but politically icky forms of energy generation.

Nothing in Lawton’s record looks like Doyle’s attempts to, like the aforementioned previous Democratic president, promote (or at least give the impression of promoting) the “Third Way” between Republicans and legislative Democrats. Lawton’s also decided to focus on half of Wisconsin’s population, apparently to the exclusion of the other half. This includes a peculiar focus on women in Wisconsin prisons, who she seems to believe (based on what I’ve heard her say) are victims who have done nothing to deserve being in prison (such as committing crimes). And that leads to another problem.

Democrats have great difficulty winning over what political types refer to as “traditional values voters.” Both sides are trying to appeal to the swing voter — someone who might work in a factory, belong to a union, hunt or fish on Saturdays and go to church on Sundays; someone who identifies with no political party, but votes on the candidate or the issues. This person — for that matter, this person’s wife, and in fact most people with actual lives — does not go out looking for opportunities to take offense, apparently unlike Lawton. (Nor does this person look to generate offense, apparently unlike Moore.)

Lawton’s taking of third-party offense reinforces the stereotype of the Democratic Party as filled with the humorless and politically correct who will rhetorically blow you to bits (not “kingdom come” — separation of church and state, you know) the first time you say something that offends their sensibilities. Do you really want people like that running the country, or Wisconsin?