Michael Gaynor
Gillibrand's the disease, Long's the cure and Maragos and Turner are Gillibrand's best hopes
By Michael Gaynor
Instead of gracefully conceding and rallying behind Long, the men chose to play into Gillibrand's hands and challenge Long in a Republican primary.
When it came to nominating women to run for United States senator in New York, it was the New York Conservative Party that led the way, by nominating Barbara Keating more than a quarter of a century before then First Lady Hillary Clinton decided to move to New York and push New York Democrats to nominate her.
When Hillary resigned to become President Obama's Secretary of State in 2009, former Governor David Patterson nominated another women — Kirsten Gillibrand — and this year Gillibrand is running for reelection to a full term as the most liberal United States Senator according to independent National Journal and trying to deflect attention from her sudden transformation from a blue dog Democrat and abysmal record, including her critical vote for the enactment of unconstitutional Obamacare, by charging that there on the first ballot and there's a Republican War on women.
The New York Conservative Party is not at war with women. At its convention last March, the highly qualified Wendy Long, a former Justice Thomas law clerk with experience in all three braches of the federal government, won its nomination with 91% of the vote on the first ballot and her nomination then was made unanimous. In accepting the Conservative nomination, Long challenged sounded the Democrats' — and particularly Gillibrand's — Republican "war on women" charge.
"You may have heard that the 2012 election cycle is going to be about a war on women," Long said. "Well I'm here to say there is no war on women in the New York Conservative Party. Here they respect us for our ideas and our heart, and our commitment to America and to New York."
At the New York Republican Party Convention, Long won a near majority against the same two men whom she easily bested for the Conservative Party nomination — rookie Congressman Bob Turner and rookie Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos. while they split the rest of the vote nearly equally.
Instead of gracefully conceding and rallying behind Long, the men chose to play into Gillibrand's hands and challenge Long in a Republican primary.
It is apparent that Gillibrand would love a three-way race perhaps even more than avoiding one-on-one debate with Long, who obviously provides the sharpest contrast to Gillibrand as a wife and mother of two who graduated from Dartmouth College and went on to law school, law clerkship and lucrative private law practice, but embraces the traditional American values about the possibilities of freedom and the limits of government and preaches constitutional fidelity and judicial impartiality instead of liberal judicial activism.
In either Turner or Maragos joins Long in the race against Gillibrand, count on Gillibrand to regurgitate this kind of stuff:
"You can die a slow death by just not doing something and I feel that's what's happened to the women's movement in the last decade. We're not doing enough. Now there are great advocacy groups that are working hard night and day to try to protect women's reproductive freedoms, to protect women's reproductive health. The Republican Party is focused entirely on undermining women's rights and reproductive health. They have put forward various bills, one to defund Planned Parenthood, which means defund prenatal care, defund basic health care for at-risk women, cancer screenings, and access to reproductive health care. So it's not just addressing abortion — they're addressing every safety net that women have for their health and well-being of their children. If you look at their budget, they have slashed programs that are safety nets for women and children, whether it's nutrition programs, whether it's early-childhood education, WIC — women and infants — whether it's just getting basic food, they've slashed those programs. So in my view there is a war on women that is not being sufficiently fought against and I'm going to do the best I can with the women and men who are in the Senate who feel as passionately as I do. And we've been fighting for the last three years — we fought very hard. Senator Mikulski was at the forefront of demanding that when we did health are reform, that women's preventive care was covered. And that was at risk of being slashed. That one of the compromises on the table was let's just not fund women's health care at the same level as we'll fund men's health care with regard to preventive health — but she drew a line in the sand and she got all the women senators to support her ... I guess the untold story is: Why does it take such enormous effort to get a basic right that shouldn't have to be fought over time and time again?"
Gillibrand is the disease, Long is the cure and Maragos and Turner are Gillibrand's best hopes.
© Michael Gaynor
June 23, 2012
Instead of gracefully conceding and rallying behind Long, the men chose to play into Gillibrand's hands and challenge Long in a Republican primary.
When it came to nominating women to run for United States senator in New York, it was the New York Conservative Party that led the way, by nominating Barbara Keating more than a quarter of a century before then First Lady Hillary Clinton decided to move to New York and push New York Democrats to nominate her.
When Hillary resigned to become President Obama's Secretary of State in 2009, former Governor David Patterson nominated another women — Kirsten Gillibrand — and this year Gillibrand is running for reelection to a full term as the most liberal United States Senator according to independent National Journal and trying to deflect attention from her sudden transformation from a blue dog Democrat and abysmal record, including her critical vote for the enactment of unconstitutional Obamacare, by charging that there on the first ballot and there's a Republican War on women.
The New York Conservative Party is not at war with women. At its convention last March, the highly qualified Wendy Long, a former Justice Thomas law clerk with experience in all three braches of the federal government, won its nomination with 91% of the vote on the first ballot and her nomination then was made unanimous. In accepting the Conservative nomination, Long challenged sounded the Democrats' — and particularly Gillibrand's — Republican "war on women" charge.
"You may have heard that the 2012 election cycle is going to be about a war on women," Long said. "Well I'm here to say there is no war on women in the New York Conservative Party. Here they respect us for our ideas and our heart, and our commitment to America and to New York."
At the New York Republican Party Convention, Long won a near majority against the same two men whom she easily bested for the Conservative Party nomination — rookie Congressman Bob Turner and rookie Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos. while they split the rest of the vote nearly equally.
Instead of gracefully conceding and rallying behind Long, the men chose to play into Gillibrand's hands and challenge Long in a Republican primary.
It is apparent that Gillibrand would love a three-way race perhaps even more than avoiding one-on-one debate with Long, who obviously provides the sharpest contrast to Gillibrand as a wife and mother of two who graduated from Dartmouth College and went on to law school, law clerkship and lucrative private law practice, but embraces the traditional American values about the possibilities of freedom and the limits of government and preaches constitutional fidelity and judicial impartiality instead of liberal judicial activism.
In either Turner or Maragos joins Long in the race against Gillibrand, count on Gillibrand to regurgitate this kind of stuff:
"You can die a slow death by just not doing something and I feel that's what's happened to the women's movement in the last decade. We're not doing enough. Now there are great advocacy groups that are working hard night and day to try to protect women's reproductive freedoms, to protect women's reproductive health. The Republican Party is focused entirely on undermining women's rights and reproductive health. They have put forward various bills, one to defund Planned Parenthood, which means defund prenatal care, defund basic health care for at-risk women, cancer screenings, and access to reproductive health care. So it's not just addressing abortion — they're addressing every safety net that women have for their health and well-being of their children. If you look at their budget, they have slashed programs that are safety nets for women and children, whether it's nutrition programs, whether it's early-childhood education, WIC — women and infants — whether it's just getting basic food, they've slashed those programs. So in my view there is a war on women that is not being sufficiently fought against and I'm going to do the best I can with the women and men who are in the Senate who feel as passionately as I do. And we've been fighting for the last three years — we fought very hard. Senator Mikulski was at the forefront of demanding that when we did health are reform, that women's preventive care was covered. And that was at risk of being slashed. That one of the compromises on the table was let's just not fund women's health care at the same level as we'll fund men's health care with regard to preventive health — but she drew a line in the sand and she got all the women senators to support her ... I guess the untold story is: Why does it take such enormous effort to get a basic right that shouldn't have to be fought over time and time again?"
Gillibrand is the disease, Long is the cure and Maragos and Turner are Gillibrand's best hopes.
© Michael Gaynor
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