Republican War on Women and Other Great Myths - "Ladies, Can We Talk?"

Debora Georgatos and Bob PriceEarlier this year, the Democrats and the liberal media created a mythological Republican war against women when George Stephanopoulos of ABC News asked Governor Mitt Romney in one of the primary presidential debates about whether a state should have the right to legislate a woman’s access to contraception. Governor Romney responded very appropriately that no one was even thinking about that, talking about that, etc, but the media picked up on it and really ran with it creating this myth that somehow there is a Republican war on women.

Friday, we saw the Obama Administration sinking to new campaign lows with the release of a video ad, where they equate the first time voting with a womans losing of her virginity. When you look at that, I guess it is easy to see where Democrat DA Candidate Lloyd Oliver somehow equates domestic violence with sexual foreplay. The Democrats really seem to have a warped sense of values when it comes to women and sex.

Last week, I spoke with former Dallas County Republican Vice-Chair and fellow TexasGOPVote blogger, Debbie Georgatos. She has recently published a new book entitled, Ladies Can We Talk? The book takes a serious look at womens role in our political process and particularly in the conservative ideology of politics. She dives deep into many political issues with facts and detailed information, while at the same time, showing women how to articulate these issues through the telling of stories.

I asked Georgatos about the mythological Republican war against women saying, "Debbie, I’m surprised you’re not wearing a combat helmet, aren’t you aware that we’re at war with you?"  She replied, "I hadn’t heard a thing about that war until George Stephanopoulos. No, I do not think there is a war on women. At least by what he means by that."

Rachel Maddow Super Massive Blue HoleGeorgatos achieved national notoriety a couple of years ago when she coined the term "Super Massive Blue Hole" referring to the economic blight of our major cities after years of Democrat control. The phrase caught the attention of CNNs Anderson Cooper, the Huffington Post and MSNBCs Rachel Maddow.

Georgatos explained the term stating, "When, it tends to be in America, that the Democrat party stands more for bigger government, higher taxes, and trying to provide more free things to people, and the net outcome of that...is highest levels of poverty, and what they all have in common is long term Democrat government, Democrat mayors, Democrat city councils, and ultimately Democrat policies that create poverty."

I asked Georgatos what prompted her to write the book, to which she replied, "You know, it’s kind of a combination of three things. One is, I think America is in the middle of kind of an identity crisis about whether we want to be the America of our Founders, basic freedom, or do we want to capitulate to what I see as the Democrat Party’s track or trend right now, which is to grow the size and power of federal government so we’d end up with a government-controlled economy and a government-controlled society. So I think we have an identity crisis: what kind of country do we want to be? The second thing that occurred that prompted me to write the book was really looking at how women tend to vote. I think women like freedom, but women tend to vote Democrat more than Republican, and I felt troubled by that. I don’t think that women today would want the outcome the Democrat Party is offering America, even though many of them are voting with the Democrat Party. So I was looking at that factor. The third one is kind of just more of a personal one, which is women tend to talk more than men. So my goal was to inspire women to really take a fresh look at the facts. Where is America today? What are the two Parties offering us?"  

When I asked her about her favorite chapter in the book, she replied without hesitation, "Chapter 11!"  She went on to explain, "It’s the chapter that refers to ads on our current Democrat president’s website that are encouraging women to vote Democrat, and it actually ties in well with what we were talking about a moment ago about a large social study. The chapter, Chapter 11, is directly speaking to women, and it points out that currently, in 2012, our Democrat president’s reelection campaign website has as its main pitch to women, a fictional character, they name her Julia, and the entire pitch to women is vote for Democrats, we’ll give you more free stuff. That’s how you can summarize it. It lists, starting at age three up to age, I believe it’s 67, all the free things Democrats will give you, and that’s the enticement to women, to my sense, it’s denigrating to women to this notion that we’ll buy your votes with goodies we give you."

This book does a great job of presenting conservative issue, especially as they relate to women. It also shows womens effective ways of communicating these issues to other women and to the public at large. I strongly encourage everyone to visit her website at www.LadiesCanWeTalk.org and purchase a copy of the book, read it and spread the word!

 

TRANSCRIPT OF ENTIRE INTERVIEW

Bob Price: Earlier this year, the Democrats and the liberal media created this mythological war against women when George Stephanopoulos of ABC News asked Governor Mitt Romney in one of the primary presidential debates about whether a state should have the right to legislate a woman’s access to contraception. Governor Romney responded very appropriately that no one was even thinking about that, talking about that, or anything else, but the media picked up on that and just really ran with it and has created this myth that somehow there is a war on women.

Today we’re with Debbie Georgatos, former Dallas County Republican Party vice chair and author of a new book called Ladies, Can We Talk. Debbie, I’m surprised you’re not wearing a combat helmet, aren’t you aware that we’re at war with you?

Debbie Georgatos: I hadn’t heard a thing about that war until George Stephanopoulos.  No, I do not think there is a war on women. At least by what he means by that.

Bob Price: It really was surprising. Governor Romney looked shocked when that question came out, and they just took off and ran with it. You’ve written a book now talking to women about conservative issues, and bringing forward ways of talking about that, what prompted you to write this book?

Debbie Georgatos: You know, it’s kind of a combination of three things. One is, I think America is in the middle of kind of an identity crisis about whether we want to be the America of our Founders, basic freedom, or do we want to capitulate to what I see as the Democrat Party’s track or trend right now, which is to grow the size and power of federal government so we’d end up with a government-controlled economy and a government-controlled society. So I think we have an identity crisis: what kind of country do we want to be? The second thing that occurred that prompted me to write the book was really looking at how women tend to vote. I think women like freedom, but women tend to vote Democrat more than Republican, and I felt troubled by that. I don’t think that women today would want the outcome the Democrat Party is offering America, even though many of them are voting with the Democrat Party. So I was looking at that factor. The third one is kind of just more of a personal one, which is women tend to talk more than men. So my goal was to inspire women to really take a fresh look at the facts. Where is America today? What are the two Parties offering us? What kind of future do we really want because I think most women want the future of the founding  freedoms of our country: a government limited by the Constitution and they want the freedom that the free markets and free enterprise system bring, the prosperity, the strength of the country that can only come from freedom. So I decided to write about inspiring them to look at the facts, and once women are on board, I encourage them to be talking more about America and what kind of future they want.

Bob Price: And by talking about America, you’re not talking about waving the flag and the red, white, and blue, all that patriotic kind of thing, but really important day-to-day issues and the impact that the government has on people and their daily lives. 

Debbie Georgatos: Yes, in fact that ties back to your question earlier about the war on women. Part of a discussion that has occurred as a result of that little media interaction is that for example, under Obamacare or  the federal health care takeover, HHS has a mandate that insurers provide women certain forms of health care, birth control, health care related to female care, completely free of charge to women. Insurance companies are not to provide a co-pay or deductible. So in essence, you’re mandating insurance companies to provide free health care to women. I think that number one, that creates or advances the idea that women are dependent on government. Once that happens and women go for a decade or so, and then we decide gee, this is really expensive, the insurance companies cannot afford to keep giving free care and then we try to change that regulation, we’ll have the argument that women are being picked on, but really there is no reason that insurance companies should be forced to provide anyone free health care. The Democrats took that issue about whether under the federal health care takeover, HHS should mandate insurance companies, give free things to women and argue that if you don’t support that, that constitutes a war on women, and it’s insulting women’s intelligence.

Bob Price: When I first met you a couple years ago, you had coined a phrase, super massive blue hole, referring to some of the inner city communities where they’ve been under Democrat control for decades and this kind of infuriated some of the people on CNN and from Huffington Post, but tell us a little about what you meant by that phrase.

Debbie Georgatos: When, it tends to be in America, that  the Democrat party stands more for bigger government, higher taxes, and trying to provide more free things to people, and the net outcome of that, in fact, it wasn’t my research, I was reporting on some research about the top ten cities in America that have the highest levels of poverty, these are the big cities, the highest levels of poverty, and what they all have in common is long term Democrat government, Democrat mayors, Democrat city councils, and ultimately Democrat policies that create poverty. The point is that Democrat policies, maybe even sounds nice and are intended to help people, but they create poverty, and that’s true both in that one study I mentioned earlier, these massive blue holes. I mentioned Detroit, but there are other big cities that are similarly experiencing high poverty rates, also high crime rates, high drop-out rates from high school. It all stems from a philosophy of government that is government attempting, perhaps to give the kindest interpretation, attempting to help, but ultimately creating a citizenry dependent on government and not inspired to achieve and become self-reliant, and actually recently, there was another finding. In 2010, after elections, some states had Republican governors take over and some states had Democrat governors, and a study after that that occurred this year shows that the states that chose Republican governors did much better at improving their employment picture, that Republican-led states, Republican  conservative policies led to a lower employment rate. Those states that chose Democrat governors had an employment rate that stayed as bad as the national average or only improved as well as the national average did. Republican policies did better at creating jobs and reducing unemployment.

Bob Price: Now, when you coined that phrase and picked on the city of Detroit, Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow both really got outraged about that. What that tells me is that there is a lot of truth in what you said and it struck a nerve, and they felt like they had to retaliate back against you. What we’ve seen since President Obama came into office is there are more people on welfare now, more people on food stamps now than we’ve ever had in the history of our country. Today, some figures came out that we’re spending a trillion dollars a year on poverty, and yet poverty is increasing. It seems like we’d almost be better off if we just took that trillion dollars and just wrote checks to people instead of funding all these bureaucratic processes. What impact does that have particularly on women and single mothers?

Debbie Georgatos: You know, I want to start by mentioning about the money spent on the social programs. Backing up just a bit, we began the great society in 1960, the war on poverty under Lyndon B. Johnson, and since that time, we have transferred $16 trillion from the private sector from taxpayers over to these social programs that try to help people, and I am the first to say I think that most people and women voters who vote Democrat because of those kind of programs have the kindest and most noble intentions, but after we spend $16 trillion over the last forty years, we have more poverty in absolute numbers, more poverty in percentages than before. So, it’s just an approach that hasn’t worked to heal poverty, and on the subject of women and children, I think that compassion inspires a lot of women to vote to support those programs. We ought to take a look at what is really the most compassionate thing for children in those communities because many studies have shown that the breakdown of the American family paralleled the growth of the social programs, and really all that means is that people who, they’re the impact of programs that pay you because you’re living in an impoverished condition, the outcome has been families break down, the father figure, which is in many cases the wage earner, is no longer on the scene, and children suffer. There’s just a lot of data out there that tracks the growth of welfare, the breakdown of family, and then on top of that, it’s not just that the family has broken down, but that children suffer in those families. There are a lot of statistics, that I will not pretend that I’m great at memorizing numbers because I’m not, but there are many, many studies that look at this that children who grow up in single parent homes tend to be more likely to drop out of high school, get arrested, have trouble with drugs, alcohol, and end up in jail. There are many wonderful single parents who end up in that situation through no fault of their own and God bless them, they do a wonderful job, but as a society, when we decide how to help people best, we should look at what is the real impact on families and on children of these massive government programs, and I think in net outcome, it has harmed them.

Bob Price: Sometimes the media has created this perception that Republicans are uncaring, they’re harsh, that their rhetoric is not sensitive or compassionate, and sometimes we do that to ourselves in the way that we talk about things. One of the things that I liked about your book is that there is a lot of real meat and solid information in here, but there are also sections of the book where you talk about how to convey that information and how to do it in a more conversational way and not a confrontational kind of way. Tell us a little bit about that.

Debbie Georgatos: I’d be happy to. I wanted to mention one thing, which your question alluded to. There are also, I mention studies a lot, I do read a lot. I love to research and understand what people looked at. One area of research that I mention and quote a lot in the book has to do with charity in America and who really are the people who are donating to charity, donating time and money and efforts, even donating blood because I think that there is a conservative approach in life, a kind of consistent overall thing that is conservatives tend to not support large government spending programs, but they do support charity, and then one book I mentioned in there, and I met the author and told him I think he did a fabulous job, the author is Arthur Brooks and his book is called Who Really Cares. He’s actually written many books, but this book Who Really Cares is a big study about what kind of charities we really have in America, the truth about charity, who helps, how does it help, and I encourage people to read that book too. The summary of it is that people who tend to do the most charity, the most giving of time, money, donating blood are conservatives, people with religious backgrounds, people who are Republican, people who oppose the redistribution of wealth, so it’s a really important factual context to recognize that I know the popular media picture is that Republicans are being unkind if they don’t support large spending programs, really the way they live their lives, they’re far more generous than those who have a more liberal outlook on America, even when you adjust for income level. In fact, the average Democrat led household in America actually has a slightly higher income level than the average Republican led household, but it’s Republicans who donate far and away, much, much more than Democrats do. It’s a factual context to keep in mind what really is the best way to be compassionate. I think personal charity has many attributes to it that make it more effective and make us more whole and bonded as a society

Bob Price: And that’s not a new trend either. About twenty years ago, I was in the business of working with nonprofit organizations and their fundraising activities, and at that time, the trend of Republican donations to charitable organizations versus Democrat contributions to philanthropic organizations was way out of skew. You can look at examples of even President Clinton and President Obama and their level of contributions. President Clinton donating his underwear literally, there has been this long trend in charitable giving and through philanthropy because it’s more of an efficient way of delivering social services than the government is.

Debbie Georgatos: Yes, and I mentioned it makes more of a bonded society, you know, when you are donating your time and your money at a food bank or charity in person, you’re connecting with other people in society and they reciprocate and you see them and they feel a connectedness to society. It’s a very much more bonding and connecting thing for our society, and I think it helps both the donors have a genuine personal awareness of the struggles others have and helps those recipients feel more connected and a part of society and recognizing others care and want to help us.

Bob Price: What’s your favorite chapter in this book?

Debbie Georgatos: Oh, Chapter 11.

Bob Price: You didn’t even pause on that.

Debbie Georgatos: Yeah, it’s the chapter that refers to ads on our current Democrat president’s website that are encouraging women to vote Democrat, and it actually ties in well with what we were talking about a moment ago about a large social study. The chapter, Chapter 11, is directly speaking to women, and it points out that currently, in 2012, our Democrat president’s reelection campaign website has as its main pitch to women, a fictional character, they name her Julia, and the entire pitch to women is vote for Democrats, we’ll give you more free stuff. That’s how you can summarize it. It lists, starting at age three up to age, I believe it’s 67, all the free things Democrats will give you, and that’s the enticement to women, to my sense, it’s denigrating to women to this notion that we’ll buy your votes with goodies we give you. The other thing is it really lulls or attempts to lull women into joining the dependency class to joining the class that thinks I can’t really function without government. I need government to provide me with all sorts of things , that for most of human history, people have provided for themselves, and the other thing that really strikes me about it is, you know, feminism is not a popular word right now; I actually read a recent study that says most women do not like that term anymore. Whatever term you use, women worked hard to get equal rights in America. We worked hard to have the Equal Pay Act of 1963, we have the Title VII  laws, you have to pay women equal pay for similar work, we have laws against discrimination in employment, we have laws that prevent discrimination in education. We worked so hard to be on actual equal footing with men in terms of competing in the working world and education and what prompted that was women prior to that time were really dependent on their husband or their dad to function in life. If you became widowed or were on your own, women didn’t have equal rights to make their own way in life, so we women, broadly speaking, fought for those rights. We obtained them legally, and it seems like what the Democrats are doing to appeal to women is 180 degrees opposite of what we’ve fought for. We fought to be equal, to have equal rights, and now what the Democrats are saying is you women, you really can’t make it on your own, we better make some special rules for you, you’re going to have free health care or at least portions of your health care and force insurance companies to give it to you for free.  It’s insulting. It’s also assumes that women don’t have any economic intelligence because that old adage about how nothing it free or there’s no free lunch, well even if the insurance companies are forced to give you certain coverage for free, it’s not really free. Someone’s paying for it, and in the case of the insurance companies, they’re not just going to give  away that benefit and choose to lose money, they’re going to spread around the loss of that which they’re forced to give for free to other Americans who’ll have to pay higher premiums, higher deductibles, they’re somehow going to adjust for it. So to make the pitch to women on the Democrat side, look at all the goodies we’re giving you, is very insulting to women’s economic intelligence.

Bob Price: It’s interesting the way the media plays this war against women. They went ballistic this year when Congressman Akin in Missouri  made his unfortunate comment about women and legitimate rape, certainly wasn’t what he meant to say, but it was one of those things you say on camera when the words just don’t make it out the way they’re supposed to, and yet in Harris County, in Houston, we have a Democrat who’s running for district attorney who wants to be the chief prosecutor in one of the largest district attorney offices in the nation where he would be responsible for prosecuting crimes of domestic violence, and he literally said in a debate with his opponent about domestic violence that some women just like to be beat up before making love, and the media virtually ignored that statement.

Debbie Georgatos: They did. You can barely find it in the news anymore. You know, Todd Akin’s comments were unfortunate. I’m very sorry he said those things because I actually don’t think that’s what he meant, but whatever it is he meant, the media’s willingness to assume that anyone on the right, Republican or conservative side, is insensitive to women’s issues, and therefore, any statement that is inappropriate, and his was inappropriate, I’m not excusing it, but any statement like that is to be repeated in the news and there were demands from the left that he should withdraw immediately, he shouldn’t be a candidate anymore , is just an extreme overreaction, and he was not in any way justifying or encouraging violence against women, unlike the gentleman in Harris County who is wanting to be in charge of deciding whether to prosecute men and legitimizing, in fact, implying some women he would say like to be the recipients of violence, and so the juxtaposition is outrageous. I actually saw, there’s an email flying around now, maybe you’ve seen it, I don’t know, but it has a lot of very funny comparisons, funny except they’re very sad for America, but funny comparisons between the way that Republicans or conservatives and Democrats or liberals are treated in the media. A whole host of issues, just one little one was Romney is always the extremely rich or some denigrating term, and he earned his money, versus for example, John Kerry, who married money twice, and every time he’s mentioned, he almost always a war hero. The media rarely calls attention to his wealth or how he got it. There’s a section in the book where I mention, I think in Chapter 3, but it’s about how much the media manipulates the vote, and I have talked about twelve universal trues that politicians use to trick voters, and I don’t just mean women, and in addition to that, I talked about the media, and if you don’t think there’s media bias in America that you’re just not really paying attention. There’s a UCLA study that mentions in detail, throw out the book, footnotes right in the middle, UCLA is no conservative bastion by a long shot, they are liberal themselves, and in the study, the overwhelming conclusion they came to is there’s just an extreme left wing bias in American media. They run through the major newspapers you’d imagine, the major television networks, and it was a very comprehensive study, and so I included that just to say, if all you ever do it read the Washington Post, you don’t really have the news. The Internet is full of news sources. Try reading both sides. Read stuff on the other side to find out what’s really going on.

Bob Price: Well, we certainly want to encourage people to read this book before they go out and vote. Early voting starts next week in Texas. It’s already begun in many states across the nation. Where can people get a hold of this book, and get it in their hands so they can become informed about some of these issues

Debbie Georgatos: Thank you for asking. It is on my website, which is www.ladiescanwetalk.org, it’s also available on Amazon, and will soon be available in Barnes & Noble. My website ladiescanwetalk.org, not only can you order the book there, but you can see some tapes of friends of mine talking about the book, I’m been very active politically, so talking about political activity. One thing the book has, I wanted to mention, is near the end of every chapter or most chapters, I have a little did you know section, and they’re just little conversation starters. The did you know section has facts and they’re ways to share things with people when you’re trying to share your political ideas. I’m in the process of embellishing those and will load those on the website, and this goes back to the question earlier that I didn’t I guess really answer, and it was about making conversations with people about politics, and I wanted to mention that because it can be hard to talk to people about politics. Everyone has a relative or a friend that you just know better than to raise politics because you don’t agree and you have maybe some tender conversations, but I think there’s too much of that in America, too much just deference to silence or deference to political correctness, so part of what I’m encouraging is read enough so that you’re comfortable defending what you think, and then when you have the opportunity and you encounter someone who does not agree with you politically, go ahead and have a conversation. It doesn’t have to be a confrontational one. You can start for example with just asking questions. I’ve used this technique with friends recently where one friend was talking about her strong support for gun control laws, and I haven’t even touched a gun in my whole life, I’m not a gun person, but I support the Second Amendment. So I just said to her, do you know about the studies that show that when they impose gun control laws, actually, crime gets worse, and when you have concealed carry laws, where you’re permitted to concealed carry, gun crime goes down, and she had never heard of such a thing. I did the same thing with someone that was advocating raising taxes on the rich. I said, well do you know about the Laffer curve, which is an economist, Laffer, who wrote about the notion that when you raise tax rates, revenues go down for the government. This one was a lawyer, and she said there’s no way that can be true. I said, look it up. Encourage your friends to do some looking, ask questions. The other thing, in terms of sharing conservative ideas, is the notion that if you can do it through stories and real life examples instead of  statistics, I think sometimes people remember those more later, and there are a lot of stories in the book. I interview a lot of women who actually came to America from other countries, where they lived under Socialism, they lived under Communism, they lived under an oppressive government, and they are very insightful about the direction the two parties are offering our country. They see more clearly than a lot of Americans what path the left is taking in America today, which is to grow the size, power, and control of the federal government over society and over our economy. People who have lived under that kind of oppressive system recognize the language, they recognize the attitude of the American left, and they’re more alert than we are really to what may be in store for us if we don’t hang on to our fundamental freedoms.

Bob Price: Well Debbie, thank you for inviting us into your home once again here. It’s always great to see you here in Dallas. I’d like to encourage everyone to go to Debbie’s website www.ladiescanwetalk.org and get a copy of this book and become more informed and more involved in your daily lives and politics.

Debbie Georgatos: Thank you very much.

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