From: puccio@media.mit.edu (Jim Puccio)
Subject: Republicanism Considered Harmful to Women
Keywords: Party demonizes women as 'lesbian spearchuckers'
Organization: M.I.T. Media Laboratory
	<1992Aug18.211711.5606@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
	<1992Aug19.105746@IASTATE.EDU>
	<1992Aug20.030810.13510@nntp.uoregon.edu>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 18:31:19 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.030810.13510@nntp.uoregon.edu> eisimps@cie.uoregon.edu (Eileen Simpson) writes:

> "We will vote for a gerbil if necessary to get rid of George Bush and Dan
>  Quayle."  Ms. Magazine.

Right on.

  "If the fight over abortion within the G.O.P. has done nothing else, it has
energized the Republican center -- especially women -- a major segment of the
party that has been steadily losing influence for the last three decades.  'At
some point I realized that what was at stake here was my being comfortable
within my owm party,' says Hazel Gluck, the Rebublican consultant from New
Jersey.  'When I was heckled at my own convention for supporting the Equal
Rights Amendment, I realized that things had gone too far.'

  "Eileen E. Padberg, a Republican strategist 3,000 miles away in Irvine,
Calif., voices similar feelings.  'I'm a true-blue conservative and 
Republican," Padberg says.  "But increasingly I ask myself:  What are *those*
people doing in the party of Abraham Lincoln, of individual freedom and
privacy, of separation of church and state?  And what is George Bush doing on
their side instead of ours?

  "The answer may not reassure them.  A series of New York Times/CBS News
polls conducted in June and July show that while many Americans oppose 
Government interference in the lives of individuals, a majority of Republicans
and Democrats alike believe that the Federal Government should help 'uphold
traditional family values.'  In addition, only one-third of the Republicans
samples say abortion should be 'generally available,' while some 60 percent
oppose using tax dollars to pay for it for poor women.

  "But the Padbergs of the party say they will not surrender, even if they
lose their fight to overturn the party platform endorsing constitutional
restrictions on abortion.  They argue that their cause is just, nor only on
principle but on political grounds.  The flight to Perot among Republicans
earlier this year, they point out, tended to be heaviest in areas that were
not only economically depressed, but also dominated by the radical right.  In
New Jersey, where the party is controlled by self-described moderates, a Perot
groundswell never materialized.  But in Orange County, where Perot support
was extremely strong, ultraconservatives have long been in control.  And in
the Republican primary two months ago, Padberg and other challengers to the
entrenched right wing were denounced by ultraconservatives as 'lesbian spear-
chuckers.'

  "Ann E. W. Stone, chairwoman of Republicans for Choice and one of the party's
most tenacious activists, says that in Washington state, where support for
Perot was also strong, the party has been virtually taken over by 'zealots who
have passed resolutions calling for bans on pornography, witchcraft and yoga.';

  "We're going to take this party back to its roots,' says Stone.  'We're going
to stop the trend towards church fascism, the tail from wagging the dog.  No
matter what happens in November, this war will go on."

  -- Judith Miller, New York Times Magazine, 16-AUG-92

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "My friends, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right." |
|   -- Dan Quayle, to Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, Winter 1992       |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Xref: sparky alt.politics.bush:2110 alt.politics.elections:10924 alt.fan.dan-quayle:2647