When I make comments on Twitter about the need for Fox News to give Mary Katharine Ham her own show, it’s pieces like this one from the current edition of The Weekly Standard that form the main body of exhibits:
The storyline relies on a misunderstanding of Scozzafava, willful ignorance of the recent behavior of women voters, and denial of the GOP’s 2010 candidate field.
Scozzafava’s ouster had little to do with her sex and a lot to do with the fact that she was a “moderate” Republican only if you believe “moderates” are endorsed by Markos Zuniga of Daily Kos, support card-check and the stimulus, work closely with ACORN-entangled liberal advocacy groups, and are funded primarily by Planned Parenthood and the Service Employees International Union.
Scozzafava is far from the model for reasonable, moderate Republican women. She’s the kind of woman who calls the cops on a reporter for asking her policy questions. But she’s the woman liberals wish represented Republicans–because she’s a liberal herself, which is why she became an improbable fetish of the Fourth Estate.
If the media had cared to look beyond the fluky, three-way race in NY-23 for national implications, they could have considered women voters in battleground Virginia.
I could have just as easily taken the analysis of the voting patterns in Virginia, or the lineup of women in and running for prominent offices, or her calling out Carly Fiorina’s playing of the gender card in California’s Republican Senate race against her primary opponent Chuck Devore, but I don’t want to steal her entire work.
