While the Democrats play the “diversity” and “inclusion” game until we’re blue in the face, someone’s “sneakin’ ‘round the corner”—and it’s not Mac the Knife.
It’s conservative women.
Could one of them be running for, even winning, the presidency in 2024?
Disturbing as it may seem to some, the idea that women can be national leaders is older than old, going back not just to Hatshepsut, who was something of a Donald Trump of her time (circa 1480 BC), building many great edifices in Ancient Egypt, but the first recorded female ruler Kubaba, who was queen of Sumer, now Iraq, about 2400 BC.
In modern, more democratic, times, the United States has been rather late to the co-educational party. Indira Gandhi became prime minister of India in 1966, shortly after her father’s death, Golda Meir prime minister of Israel in 1969. Even supposedly backwards Pakistan had a female leader twice (1988–1990, 1993–1996) in Benazir Bhutto.
And then, of course, there was the extraordinary (and very conservative) Lady Thatcher, who served as prime minister of her country from 1979–1990, collaborated with Ronald Reagan on the downfall of Soviet communism, and brought prosperity back to a suffering United Kingdom.
The USA had its chance with Hillary Clinton in 2016, who failed, she would say, for misogynistic reasons. Others might feel differently.
In this country, female candidates have largely, although far from exclusively, been the province of liberals, but suddenly three conservative women have emerged as Republican presidential possibilities in the post-Trump era of 2024.
All three women were among those politicians selected to speak at the Republican convention. Noem and Blackburn are most definitely card-carrying members of the dominant Trump wing of the Republican party, Haley intermittently so, although she did not display her ambivalence at the convention.
Blackburn and Noem are both such reliable deliverers of the Trump message they may even do it better and—excuse the sexism—more tactfully with yet greater success than the original. In any case, they would have the potential of significantly widening the base, especially to women.
I used the words compelling and entertaining deliberately, though this is not a formal review, because that’s how I found the book. Marsha and her husband Chuck are new friends of mine and my wife’s, disqualifying me as a reviewer (not that a million people have not broken that rule). Furthermore, you can find a blurb from me on the back along with many far better known people.
Part memoir, part political analysis, part advice/self help book for women, although not exclusively for them, the book is a reasoned and heartfelt response to the prejudice against conservative women that stems, ironically, from their adherence to faith, family, and tradition.
I enjoyed the book straight through but was most engaged by Blackburn’s descriptions of her bookish childhood in Mississippi, because it told me things about that Deep South state this biased Northerner would never have imagined, and by her encounters with Thatcher whose funeral she attended as part of a delegation.
In “A Hero for Us All,” Blackburn’s chapter on the “Iron Lady,” she wrote:
Speaking of which, I first heard others mention Blackburn for higher office about a year ago at a fundraiser for her senate campaign. It was at the manse of country star John Rich and it was Rich himself who, in the midst of a set he was playing for everyone from his night club-sized home bandstand (hey, it’s Nashville), talked up a “President Marsha.” (Songwriters tend to like Blackburn because years ago she sponsored legislation increasing the royalties for their work.)
At first I went, “Really?” But seconds later, I went “Yeah!” Whether it was the moment or the bourbon, it seems to me now, months later, that nothing would be better for this country than a conservative woman president.
Meanwhile, buy the book.
