Palin’s Message to Women Bears Repeating

Governor Palin smartly spent most of her Henderson, NV campaign rally yesterday talking about women. Way to engage those Hillary voters, Sarah. You go, girl! The Democratic Party has offered us nothing but threats if we don’t get in line to support their selected messiah, while John McCain stepped up to the plate and put his money where his mouth was and chose a woman who is truly living feminist principles, balancing a very high profile career, home and family – whether we agree with all her politics or not.

SusanUnPC posted an excellent story on Palin’s speech this morning but we thought it important enough to let you see it in it’s entirety. Thanks also to Greta Van Susteren of FOX News; one of the only fair journalists this campaign season, for reporting on the feminists endorsing the McCain/Palin ticket in front of thousands of cheering supporters.

“Today I have another question that is especially for the women in this audience and all across our great country. [A]re you ready to break the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America? (cheers).”

“It is such an honor for me today to have up here on stage some very independent, very courageous, very accomplished women and I am so honored to get to introduce you to these women who have broken a few glass ceilings of their own and I ask you gals to stand up here as I introduce you. We’re honored. We are proud and I thank them for their confidence, for their support and especially for their courage. Thank you so much. Thank you thank you.”

Palin asked the ladies endorsing her to step up and be recognized: Prameela Bartholomeusz, a small business owner and a member of the Democratic National Platform Committee; Linda Klinge, former Oregon president, currently V.P. of NOW; Shelly Mandell, President of the LA chapter of NOW; Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a member of the Democratic Platform Committee (a huge Hillary fundraiser now boldly campaigning for McCain/Palin); and Elaine Lafferty, former editor in chief of Ms. Magazine.

“Our opponents think that they have the women’s vote all locked up which is a little presumptuous – little presumptuous since only our side has a woman on the ticket so, we won’t ignore any of the men in the audience but again this is for the women in the audience here…

When it came time for choosing someone, how Barack Obama just couldn’t bring himself to pick the woman who got 18 million votes in his primary and that seems to be too familiar a story, isn’t it? How it is for so many American women that the qualifications are there, but for some reason the promotion never comes. There is always some long explanation for why they got passed over or some unseen barrier, some excuse and that’s just one of the things I so admire about John McCain he is not someone who makes excuses.”

“You’ve got to ask yourself why was Senator Hillary Clinton not even vetted by the Obama campaign? Why did it take 24 years, an entire generation from the time Geraldine Ferraro made her pioneering bid until the next time that a woman was asked to join a national ticket. In the long history of our country 74 people have held the position of President or Vice-President and why have the major parties given America only two chances to even consider a woman for either office? 88 years after women gained the right to vote and 83 years after Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming became the first woman governor in our great nation and 60 years after Margaret Chase Smith was elected to the Senate this glass ceiling it–it is still there, but it’s about time that we shattered that glass ceiling once and for all. (Cheers.) … There is a difference between what Barack Obama says and what he does and his primary opponent wasn’t the first one to notice this.”

Yes, Hillary did notice the difference between Obama’s “word, just words” and his actions. I certainly don’t agree with Palin on all of her policies but I have to hand it to her: the lady is fearless. She basically grabs Obama by the ears here and invites him to charge – if he dares. This has been discussed on NoQ – the fact that Obama does not pay the women on his staff as much as the men in his Senate office:

“Out on the stump he talks a good game about equal pay for equal work, but according to the Senate pay roll records, women on his own staff get just 83 cents for every dollar that the men get. That’s 9,000 dollars less every year than he pays the guys. Does he think that the women aren’t working as hard? Does he think that they are 17 percent less productive? And Barack Obama can’t say that this is just the way that it’s always been done around the Capitol, because I know one senator who actually does pay equal wages for equal work, Sen. John McCain.”

Ouch. Yes, this sounds like Obama: the man who told Rep. Diane Watson of California that Hillary supporters should “get over it” and basically threatened us with our reproductive freedoms and conservative SCOTUS appointments if we didn’t vote for him.

Then Palin took apart his tax plan and squarely targeted the women she felt would be hurt by it:

“See this is just another reason why American women, Democrat, Republican, independent, should not just let Barack Obama take their votes for granted. And let me give you a few more reasons, starting with his plan to, as he puts it, spread the wealth around. That is how our opponent defended his so called tax cut to Joe the plumber the other day. Or Wendy the plumber’s daughter, there you go. Now this spreading the wealth around really is just a scheme for income distribution. Joe didn’t buy it. Joe the plumber, he would have none of that. He called him on it. In fact he said that he sure thought that sounded like socialism. Joe the plumber.

And the rest of us shouldn’t buy it either, especially the millions of women in America who own small businesses. Women start as many new businesses as men start, and they are entrepreneurs, trying to make a better life for themselves and for their families. And trying to make payroll for their employees. They’re women, just like Erma Aggier (sp) is her name, she owns a restaurant close by. She dreamed for years of owning her own restaurant and she made it just a year ago. Erma, she owns the La Madonna Mexican Restaurant, right here in Las Vegas. She employs 20 people.

And she’s exactly the kind of small business owner whose taxes would go way up under the Obama tax plan. And the healthcare fines and the mandates that our opponent would impose aren’t gonna help her much either. They’re gonna force her to let employees go if they are too high and they could even put her out of business. And our opponent thinks he’s got problems with Joe the Plumber, well, he should talk to Erma the restaurant owner, because she’s voting for John McCain too.

The working women of this country, those who work inside the home and outside of the home, they’re overlooked by politicians in Washington and Barack Obama hasn’t given us a single reason to believe that he would be any better. A company’s balance sheet tallies up just the same whether it’s a man who owns the business or a women (sic). And women want the same opportunities as men. And they’re entitled to the same rewards.

See, the point here, the point here is that women would suffer just as much from the massive tax increase that Sen. Obama proposes. And you know, there are a lot of families in this country with no father present. And when we make laws in Washington, those laws need to understand that, they need to serve the mothers who are taking care of their families.

I’ve been very, very blessed to have a husband who’s supported me along the way. He’s a great dad who doesn’t disappear at bath time or run from diaper duty, and I appreciate that. But a lot of women have it much, much harder than I’ve had it. And they need child care, which today can cost some families a third of their household budget. And they need reforms in labor laws that allow greater flexibility in the workplace, including more tele-commuting. And they need a tax code that doesn’t penalize working families. (applause)

They need health care that the family can take with them when they move or change jobs. And they need better choices in retirement plans, and worker retraining when things get tough. Women also need equal pay for equal work, and not just be a talking point. (applause)

Really, it is that simple. It’s a matter of fundamental fairness — fairness in this country. And to make all this happen, working mothers need an advocate, and they will have one when this working mother is working for all of you in the White House.”(applause)

She then closed by praising Title IX, which allowed millions of girls to participate in sports:

“…[A]nd over time, that opened more than just the doors to the gymnasium. Along with other reforms, Title IX helped us to see ourselves and our futures a different way. Women of my generation were allowed finally to make more of our own choices with education, with career, and I have never forgotten that we owe that opportunity to women, to feminists who came before us. We were allowed to be participants instead of just spectators on the achievements of others. And I was lucky to have a lot of support at home, too. Now among the many things that I owe my parents is one simple lesson, and that was this is America and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity. The belief in equal opportunity is not just the cause of feminists: it’s the creed of our country-equal opportunity.”

The ‘participants instead of spectators’ line is one for the books. Well done. She may not be Hillary, but she is clearly taking a page from Hillary’s Beijing speech in 1995:

“And if I’m given the honor of serving you in the White House, I intend to advance that creed in our own nation and beyond because across the world, there are still places where women are subjugated and persecuted as they were in Afghanistan, places we’re they’re bullied and brutalized and murdered in honor killings, places where women are sold like commodities in the nightmare world of the sex trade, and places where baby girls are unwelcome as a matter of state policy and their mothers are forced to have abortions. Now no one person, no one leader, can bring an end to all of those ills, to all of the injustices inflicting upon women, but I can promise you this, if I am elected, these women, too, will have an advocate and a defender in the 47th vice president of the United States.”

John McCain and Sarah Palin have both been channeling a little Hillary – McCain with his “fight with me” speech and now Palin, clearly picking up the feminist torch.

Is it politics as usual? Cynics among you may say so. But it’s hard to sell that when you see two people living their principles, who can point to records that back up what they say. I must also note that after feeling a capitive audience to Senator Obama’s arrogance and dismissive behavior toward Senator Clinton these many months, it is both refreshing and heartening that every single time Senator McCain is asked to speak of Governor Palin, he lights up. You can clearly see that this man has respect for this lady and is proud to stand along side her on this ticket.

Judging by today’s speech, I can see why.