BUSH needs women, blacks, and latinos to win ........so does the GOP:=================GOP tackles an old enemy: The gender gap
The party is framing issues in female-specific terms to woo women voters. Bush is portrayed as a man of compassion.
By Dick Polman
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
You may have noticed how President Bush is spending his vacation. The White House team that scoffs at polls has been crafting female-friendly imagery.
On Aug. 8, Bush hoisted a hammer and helped build a home for a single mother. Last Tuesday, he picked up a handsaw and trimmed some pine limbs in Rocky Mountain National Park. A day later, he read a book to a second-grade class.
What this means is that Republicans are in trouble with women - again - and that they yearn to make amends.
Women cast the majority of votes in this country - about seven million more than men, in recent presidential elections - and Democrats have been the beneficiaries. Al Gore beat Bush among women by a wide margin last November, and recent internal Republican polls indicate that women have become increasingly cool to the Bush presidency, because of its early tilt to the right.
So Republicans, noting that control of the Senate and House may hinge on the mood of women voters in the 2002 elections, are tackling their old nemesis, the gender gap. They're trying to woo women by framing their issues in female-specific terms; by touting a new Web site (www.winningwomen.org) that profiles Bush's top women aides; and by painting Bush as a man of compassion.
Critics dismiss this stuff as superficial, but a top Democratic pollster, Celinda Lake, said the other day: "We need to pay close attention to what the Republicans are doing, more so than in the past, because the Bush team is more adept [at communicating with women].
"The old team talked about getting rid of the Department of Education. The Bush team says, 'We're for education, just like the Democrats.' And the devil is in the details. They're very good at not being painted as 'uncaring.' They make it harder for us to draw clear distinctions."
Still, even some Republicans don't sound totally convinced about their party's new pitch to women. Linda DiVall, a Republican pollster who has spent several decades urging her party to close the gap with women, said: "This is a renewed effort, and clearly a recognition that the party needs to do a better job. The question is whether this is a sustained effort. That's what we'll be looking at next."
Ann Wagner, who cochairs the Republican National Committee, is bullish about the party's efforts. She said: "I'm the first to say we've got work to do. The key is, we're starting early. We need to sound the horn out there, and talk in ways that are relevant to women's lives. And we have a tremendous opportunity with this President, who women like, who women trust more and more."
But the sentiments of women appear more complicated than that. Independent pollster John Zogby reports that, at the end of July, 44 percent of women applauded Bush's job performance, while 54 percent disagreed. In a Zogby poll one month earlier, women had been equally divided. (Men, by contrast, favored Bush by narrow margins in both surveys.)
Zogby said: "Republicans right now have more than their usual problems with women - not just with career women, but with moms at home - because Bush has hurt himself by governing as a fundamental conservative. Moms don't like to hear about relaxing restrictions on arsenic, or carbon dioxide emissions. Regardless of the nuances, those don't sound good."
Some Republicans are confident that Bush can recoup - particularly among married women with children, where he has taken a heavy hit - by talking less about pet conservative issues (tax cuts, drilling for oil in Alaska) and more about centrist concerns (notably education, a top Bush priority, as evidenced by a major reform bill now pending in Congress).
GOP pollster David Winston said: "Clearly, there were issues on Bush's agenda that they wanted to get done early. But if you don't talk about the top issues that matter to women, you'll see support fall off. . . . The good news for us is, we have credibility with women that we've never had before, because of [Bush's] emphasis on education. Our image is better than it used to be."
But Sue Carroll, a gender-gap expert at Rutgers University, said that a renewed emphasis this autumn on the "compassionate" side of Bush's conservatism may not be enough to narrow the gap. She pointed out that women, far more than men, support a government safety net - a stance that is anathema to Republicans.
She said: "Closing the gender gap would require major changes in Republican policy, but those changes would be very troubling to the party's conservative base. That would be tough for them to negotiate. That's their catch-22."
Bill Galston, a domestic aide in the Clinton White House, scoffed at the female strategy: "Bush's punishment for his early sins [toward women] will be to hug trees and bang nails for the next year. But those are just photo opportunities.
"To recoup with women, he'll have to say no to some of the [industry] people he has been saying yes to. Because if you're a woman in the suburbs, you don't see the world in the same way that people from the oil patch see it."
Some Republicans dismiss the new efforts as purely cosmetic. Tanya Melich, a moderate Republican activist and former delegate, said: "They keep doing the same thing, over and over again. I guess we can make a joke and say that it's new, because this time they have a Web site."
Since 1997, in fact, Republican leaders have hired a slew of pollsters, corporate marketers, and communications specialists to find "female-friendly" language for the GOP agenda. They have created (and later abandoned) projects with names such as WomenCare and acronyms such as POWER.
And while Ann Wagner, the new Republican National Committee cochairwoman, talks about the need for Republicans to connect with women's busy lives, her predecessor, Pat Harrison, said the same thing in an interview three years ago: "A lot of our people really don't understand how women are doing 10 things at once."
But nothing has worked. In 1998 and 2000, women voters helped Democrats achieve parity in the Senate, and trim the once-daunting GOP majority in the House.
Wagner suggested that GOP prospects in 2002 hinge in part on how well Bush fares among women: "There were some early missteps [on environment and health]. The President admits it. The perception thing is what got us on the arsenic issue. We haven't done a good enough job of getting the word out about our balanced approach on the environment. And this president, with his likability factor, is a great messenger."
Some Democrats may scoff, but it worked for Ronald Reagan.
Dogged by an early gender gap, in 1983 he appeared in a series of schoolrooms, touting his concern for education. And he won a majority of women in his '84 reelection.
John Zogby said: "All is not lost for Bush. If he can capture the national message as a compassionate conservative, the Republicans are in good shape. He's got the bully pulpit." |
