Skyla Freedman: The Palin Effect

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It's no coincidence that the GOP nominated its first female vice presidential candidate in 2008, and now just two years later, more Republican women are candidates in national and statewide political races than in any previous year. Sarah Palin has not only inspired women to seek public office, but many of them have sought her endorsement as well, a testament to Gov. Palin’s influence in the conservative camp. In a Daily Caller opinion piece, freelance writer Skyla Freedman says the former Alaska governor has demonstrated that she can win hearts, and now she's out to prove that she can also win races:

It’s worth looking beyond well-known candidates like Haley and Fiorina and asking about all the other women running in 2010 – the ones Palin hasn’t endorsed. Why are they here? The increase in female candidates since the last presidential election is startling: almost twice the number of GOP women are running for U.S. House or Senate seats now than were in 2008. The difference between then and now is Sarah Palin. The seismic shift in women’s roles at work and at home had, until Palin, gone largely unacknowledged among Republican leadership, where the majority of conservative female role models have been candidates’ wives. Just this year, the number of women in the American workforce exceeded men, a reality that working mothers – struggling to make ends meet while rearing their kids – see reflected in Palin. She does it all, and she doesn’t make it look easy.

Palin’s gritty, optimistic, “mamma grizzly” style is immanently relatable. She has five kids. She has a job. She has a husband who travels a lot. She has a child with a disability. She’s not a Hollywood glamour-puff or a silver spoon baby, but a real woman with real problems and real responsibilities. Her life is messy. While Democrats like Hilary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi are idealized versions of modern womanhood, with all the advantages of brand name education and political pedigree, Palin is everywoman. She’s spunky and homespun, your better-than-average-looking neighbor down the street who probably buys store brand soup instead of the fancy Campbell’s stuff.

It’s this unapologetic normalcy that draws women to Palin, and inspires them too. When Palin walked out of the unknown and onto that convention stage in 2008, conservative, pro-family, pro-life women looked at her and finally saw someone they recognized: themselves. This year, Republican women are acting on the possibilities of that night, in spite of significant challenges. Ironically, Palin’s trial by fire has helped here too. She survived an unbelievable amount of vitriol – but survive she did, and today, no conservative female candidate faces an unknown landscape. A hostile landscape, certainly, but not an unknown one.

Gov. Palin warns women that a nod from Sarahcuda is a double-edged sword which is likely to bring with it the wrath of both the political left and the GOP establishment. But instead of scaring off conservative women, says Freedman, the hostility of both liberals and Vichy Republicans toward Sarah Palin only seems to be strengthening the resolve of these "mam grizzlies." Whether officially endorsed by the governor or not, conservative women across the country are proving without a doubt that she is their inspiration.

h/t: roy y

- JP