Conservative females take the spotlight

At the beginning of the Senate confirmation hearings on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Lindsay Graham observed that it was a great moment for young conservative women, because they finally had someone who they could look to as a role model on the highest court in the land. His words echoed my own, when I wrote a few years ago in the Columbus Dispatch about President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to fill the seat left vacant by Anthony Kennedy:

“After years of hearing minority groups push the idea that they need to see their faces and voices reflected in our political institutions, and then watching those institutions yield to the idea that color, gender and sexual orientation actually matter, I realize that they might be right about one thing: Whining loudly enough gets results. So if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Here is my whine, for the next time that Trump gets to appoint a justice. The next person on that court should look like me, sound like me, think like me, act like me and do it fearlessly.”

A conservative female. Enter Amy Coney Barrett, stage … Right.

Lindsay Graham was on to something. Conservative women have been called “not the right kind of women” for years in the mainstream media and among those who always talk about “empowering” the sisters. Some have even questioned whether we even have the right to call ourselves women, while others have come right out and said we are traitors to the gender. This played itself out yet again when Trump nominated Judge Barrett when the Kamala-HironoKlobuchar Cabal started questioning her qualifications for the bench (as if.)

But it extends far beyond the judiciary.

We, in this district, have the opportunity to elect a woman to Congress, who reflects many of the principles and ideals of women, just not the type of women we have been told represents the entire gender: Women on the right side of the aisle. While the woman I have in mind intends to serve the interests of all of her future constituents, she reflects values, policies and principles that have been too long ignored among those who tout the power of our shared gender

asha Yermakova Pruett is challenging U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon in the 5th Congressional District. I’ve written about her before, with a particular focus on her rich and fascinating backstory as the child of Soviet refugees. Dasha is someone who appreciates, more than virtually anyone else living in the district, what it means to live under a regime where the government rations out liberties and rights under the guise of protecting our welfare. So do I, having represented refugees from totalitarian states. Americans often take our freedoms for granted, until something happens that highlights their tenuous nature.

The idea that a woman could actually be a conservative rarely enters their minds, and when it does, we are usually viewed as being aberrational.

We are not aberrations. Donald Trump won the votes of white women in the last election, which is interesting considering that a white woman was running against him. But even if you take Trump out of the mix, there has been this effort on the part of mainstream pundits and party spokespersons to marginalize the voices and votes of conservative women, be they white, minority, young or old.

I have met a slew of young women who are socially conservative, fiscally conservative and who believe that life begins at conception. We are out here, all of us, and we are tired of being represented by those who, simply because they share our biological apparatuses, do not reflect our concerns.

A woman who fought that stereotype of the liberal woman being the “only” sort of acceptable female was Phyllis Schlafly. I interviewed her daughter Anne Schlafly Cori. a few months ago and asked her about how her mother was able to square her very public, independent profile with her embrace of traditional values such as motherhood and the family, and she replied:

“My mother viewed the family as a pleasure, not a burden. She felt that being at home gave herself enormous freedom to engage in the activities of her choice, because she did not have a boss. She objected to Betty Friedan calling the home “a comfortable concentration camp.” Phyllis Schlafly’s message was one of optimism and opportunity for women.”

I don’t like identity politics. But ideology is something different from race, creed or gender. It is important to have diversity of thought in the public square, and Sen. Graham was right in noting that finally, young women will have a mirror which reflects their own ideological identities on the Supreme Court.

Hopefully, congressional districts, including our own, will have that same opportunity.