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Women vote: 2014

Letter to the editor 2Dear Editors:

Have you noticed that all the while opposite-world conservative republicans are demeaning and patronizing women voters with insulting ads connecting their candidates’ names to wedding dresses, or instructing young women not to vote, that they’re also hiring women to do all the mud-slinging and fear-mongering in their political ads. But then conservatives have always made women do their dirty work – literally. And obviously want them to continue to do so. Maybe they think they’re validating women in some small way by suggesting all that nonsense is more believable coming from a woman. Or maybe they’re just too cowardly to put their own face on all that poppycock. They attack government jobs as useless and wasteful, while they pursue those same political offices with all the money and vitriol they can muster from their wealthy corporate masters, in order to dutifully do their bidding. They hypocritically covet political jobs privately that they claim to hate publicly. And we’re supposed to elect them to a job they don’t have any respect for, or belief in? Like I said, opposite-world. Those are the only jobs left, after all, that pay a decent wage and still have benefits. They’ve made sure of that.

Since conservative candidates can’t overtly run on the issues they really care about – money, more money, and making women’s and children’s lives worse everywhere, they’ve chosen to whine about how democratic candidates are legitimately appealing to, and advocating for, women in Colorado and around the country. As if generations of misogyny and discrimination in republican politics wasn’t reason enough for women to reject conservative principles outright, here are a few things to consider. Almost every issue on the conservative agenda, including denial of global warming, rejection of any kind of gun laws, lobbying against safety regulations, against pollution controls, against voting rights, against civil rights, against gay rights, against human rights, against environmental laws, against health care, medicare, social security, against public education, against minimum wage, against equal pay for equal work, not to mention reproductive rights, disproportionately and adversely affects women and children here, and around the world. A First Quarter report (Guttmacher Group March 2011) after the last time republicans came into power in congress, showed republican legislators introduced 916 measures to restrict reproductive health care for women in just three months. That’s what I’d call a war on women. So, yes, republicans should be held accountable for their reprehensible record on women’s issues, because there is no gender equality without reproductive freedom! So if they want to call this a single issue campaign, let them. The difference is, democrats understand that women’s issues are NOT single issues, and don’t only effect women. Republicans will never voluntarily empower women because they know we’ll VOTE to remove these old, greedy, world economy destroying, oil-soaked environment polluting, disenfranchising dinosaurs to the proverbial wood-shed, and put them out of our misery. They’re right to assume women will be determining elections now and in the future, which is why they’re so terrified. Women, VOTE!

PJ Breslin
Rifle, Colorado