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HALLI CASSER-JAYNE - bio
RED, WHITE 'N TRUE™
GUYS AND DOLLS
Posted, September 15, 2008,  12:01 p.m

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Listen up guys and dolls. Women will never make it to the Oval Office as long as they continue to split their vote between the Republican and Democratic Parties over the issue of Roe v Wade.

This issue has come back to the fore since that guy, John McCain, selected Sister Sarah Palin as his running mate and opened up the real possibility that a woman might sooner rather than later be one step away from the Oval Office.

You would think that women would be shouting from the rooftops…”if I were a bell I’d go ding, dong, ding dong ding!”

Instead women are shouting at each other “Take back your mink, take back your pearls, what made you think that I was one of those girls.”

Palin, the Republican Party’s nominee for vice-president is currently the Governor of the State of Alaska, also a wife, a mother of five, a hunter, and an anti-abortion Christian. And in case any one hasn’t noticed, Sarah Palin is also a woman and for that reason alone you would think that women would be rallying behind her in droves.

Not exactly.

In a country where  voters tend to vote for their own -- think better than 90 percent of African-American’s support the bi-racial Barack Obama -- women as a  voting bloc are split between McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden. They’ve been split as a voting bloc, much to their detriment, for a long time.

Republican women call Palin a role model. Her sisters on the left mostly call her that ding, dong, ding, dong, ding, an Adalaide’s Lament, a throwback, “the average American female, basically insecure.”  She can’t be a woman we can support, the feminists cry. No self-respecting feminist, they say, could possibly be against a woman’s right to choose.

Eve Ensler, the writer of the famed Vagina Monologues was rapid in her views on Palin’s candidacy:

“I don’t like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

“But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.”

Ensler adds: “Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.”

And goes even further: “I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover.”

Lynnette Long, a Hillary Clinton supporter and longtime Democrat sums up her choice in a different way. “I can vote for my party and its candidates, which have demonstrated a blatant disrespect for women and a fundamental lack of integrity. Or I can vote for the Republican ticket, which has heard our concerns and put a woman on the ticket, but with which I fundamentally don't agree on most issues. 

“Right now, for me, gender trumps everything else. If Democratic women wait for the perfect woman to come along, we will never elect a woman.”

On Salon.com last week, Cintra Wilson branded Palin a "Christian Stepford Wife" and a "Republican blow-up doll." Wendy Doniger, religion professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, added on the Washington Post blog, "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

Yes, if nothing else, Sarah Palin’s candidacy is certainly rockin’ the boat!

No one here is exactly following the fold and straying no more, stray no more, stray no more. It appears that women are continuing their history of failing to bloc vote and even in the wake of Palin’s historic candidacy are continuing to consider their choice for the future President and Vice-president of the United States an individual decision while they ponder two very important choices.

What is more important, women must ask themselves. Getting a women in as number two to nudge the door to the Oval Office open? Or waiting for their idea of the right women to come along to do it?

But therein lies the rub. Because is it not true that as long as women define their idea of the right kind of women using the definition of whether a female candidate is for or against Roe v Wade -- that women will always be split on their vote and unlikely  achieve what ought to be their overall goal…to vote a women into the White House?

“Luck be a lady tonight 
Luck be a lady tonight 
Luck if you've ever been a lady to begin with 
Luck be a lady tonight.” 

Under that scenario women will be lucky to see themselves represented at the seat of power anytime soon except by the roll of the dice.

Men have the luxury of determining their choice for their leaders based on criteria different than women. They own Washington, D.C., have always owned American government. It is not men who earn 79 cents to the dollar every man earns. It is not men who have less research dollars spent on their health futures than women. There are 9 seats on the Supreme Court; there is one lone woman sitting on the bench.

It seems to me that women who are worried about a Republican ticket with the anti-abortion Palin making it to the White House and thereby threatening the right for a women’s right to choose are short-sighted in their thinking.

Let’s assume McCain and Palin win. McCain is 72 years old. He won’t agree to say he won’t run for a second term, but it’s unlikely that he would. Palin is positioned to be the Republican Party’s next candidate. If McCain makes it to the Oval Office it will be as most of our elections are these days, a squeaker.

From the beginning of Palin’s tenure as vice president she would be thinking about 2012.  Winning the Republican Primary nomination is one thing, winning the presidency is another. To win the party's nomination she wouldn't sell out her Christian base, but the Democratic Party owning Congress would protect her on that front.

Because she knows she would have to rally women behind her in a presidential run  she would unlikely alienate more than half of American women (more American women and men, too, want Roe v Wade to remain the law of the land) by aggressively seeking the overturning of Roe v Wade. 

To do otherwise would be political suicide.

Don’t believe me? With all the opportunity afforded the Republican Party Roe v Wade has not been overturned.

I suspect I could sing until I’m blue in the face. Pro-choice women are so indoctrinated to their beliefs they hear only what they want to hear. This is probably a Fugue for the Tinhorn-EAR.

Too many of America’s women on both sides of the issue have lost all sense of reasoning when it comes to Roe v Wade. Too many American women are pointing their guns at Sarah Palin defining her as that radical Evangelical, hell-bent on overturning Roe v. Wade, that gun-totin’ huntress, and in so doing, shooting themselves in the foot.

Where's the action? Where's the game? 
Gotta have the game, or we'll die from shame. It's the oldest established, permanent floating crap game, which is housed in Washington, D.C!

And it’s an insider’s game.