Ugh. GOP's Yob Won't Resign Over Comments Tue Mar 26, 6:13 PM ET By AMY FRANKLIN, Associated Press Writer LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Republican national committeeman Chuck Yob said he will not resign after saying women running for statewide elective office are best suited for secretary of state because "they like that kind of work." Two Republican candidates for Michigan governor, Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus and state Sen. John Schwarz of Battle Creek, called for Yob to step down. "Unfortunately, because of his role as national committeeman, his comments will serve only to distract from what is an otherwise compelling record by the GOP on behalf of women," Posthumus said Monday in a statement. "It is best for the party that we make this change and move on," Schwarz said. On Tuesday, GOP Gov. John Engler said he supports the call for Yob's resignation. Yob, 65, rejected their suggestions. "Under no circumstances will I resign my position as national committeeman. I was elected by our party's grass roots, not its elected officials," he said Monday. On Tuesday, Yob said he still backs Posthumus' gubernatorial bid. "I'm still a strong supporter of the lieutenant governor," Yob said. "But we probably won't be as chummy as we've been." During a taping of the Michigan public affairs program "Off the Record" earlier this month, Yob said secretary of state is a good job for a woman. "That's a real nice place on the ticket for a woman. They like that kind of work," he said. "Most county clerks across the state, which is a jump to (secretary of state), are women and they have the experience." He had been asked about gender balance on the GOP's November ballot in Michigan, and said the GOP had a very good female candidate for secretary of state in former Kent County Clerk Terri Land. He later said he did not intend to imply that women were qualified or interested in only certain types of elected offices. The comment caused a furor among women. Moderate Republican state Rep. Judith Scranton said it set back women's efforts to expand their role in the GOP. "I am so offended that a national committeeman is so prejudiced today," she said. "Shame on him." Another Republican gubernatorial candidate, businessman Ed Hamilton, said Schwarz and Posthumus were caving in to pressure from liberal Democrats. "The fact that he made a poor choice of words should not condemn him," Hamilton said Tuesday. "I think 80 percent of men slip into that kind of talk, but that doesn't mean we don't support women's issues."
He has done the unforgivable! If only he had committed perjury or some other minor offense we could overlook it. But this...
Or if only he had ignored the concerns of every environmental and consumer group when formulating his energy policy then attempted to hide the notes from the meetings to avoid embarrassment. But this...
I agree that resigning is stupid but it was the women in his own party that called for it. The only argument you could make would be to say that the image of the GOP as an open-minded, non-chauvanistic party of the people took a blow with his comments. The world of politics is entirely about perception. If the perception that women are second class citizens in the GOP grows as the result of this guy's comment, it could be argued that resigning would be a good way for the GOP to show they are sensitive to women's issues. I would think that is just good business.
Isn't Colin Powell the secretary of state nationally. Is the a poor office to hold? I think that at this time women have little chance of becoming top executives (president and governer, probably VP as well), so secretary of state is probably as high as women are likely to get, especially in states that are electing conservatives. I thught the remark was funny because I thought of executive assistant imagery, but then again, I am a pig.
What does this have to do with him being a Republican? Looks to me, based on that article, like the overwhelming majority of Republicans don't share the opinion expressed in that remark. It's interesting that equally offensive remarks by Democrat Al Sharpton are not typically seen as a Democratic Party issue.
Perhaps his comments could have been phrased better, but the honest truth is that women are very good at juggling multiple tasks. Men tend to struggle and focus on one task at a time. Clericals positions and Secretary's are forced to juggle mutiple tasks. Women tend to be good at that and fill those roles. That's not a bad thing. It's a good trait to have. And it certainly does not eliminate women from other roles such as leaders. However, women are good secretaries. Ignoring that is a failure to recognize the truth. All you have to do is read Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. It's just a reality even if you don't want to believe it. Not all women or men fall into these categories, but in general, I'd say it's true. If you've ever explored the theory of two women and two men on a raft you have discussed it. The men tend to lead in troubled waters. However, if you put two women and two children on the raft. The women tend to demonstrate much more leadership in that role. We may be of the same race, but each sex is very different as a whole. I just think that sometimes we take a sound bite and make much more of it than we should. There is nothing wrong with his logic in my opinion. I'm a democrat, but I'm smart enough to realize his comments make some sense. There is no reason to bake this guy.
Well, he is the chief elected representative for the National Republican Party. If the President wasn't a republican, this guy would speak for the party. The GOP elected him to do that very thing. As for Sharpton, he's not an elected offical of the DNC. He is just a talking head with mostly idiotic ideas. If Terry McAuliffe, the chair of the DNC, had said something of this nature, that would be the equivalent, not Sharpton. Phi: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? That's how you came to your conclusions? John Gray is popular but not well-respected even in the self-help community and it's pretty hard to not be accepted there. Sounds like you need better source material.
Bush-Rice 2004? The rise and rise of Condi By Andrew Sullivan March 24, 2002, The Sunday Times of London Her presence is not obtrusive but it is constant. President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is rarely that far away from the president. Her office is a few doors down the corridor from the Oval Office, she's a weekend guest at Camp David almost all the time, she's central to Russia policy, a fixture at war counsels, and reliable crisis-avoider and manager in all types of emergencies. When Bush, for example, realized that he would face embarrassment at this weekend's Monterrey summit on foreign aid, it was a "Get me Condi" moment. The negotiations that significantly increased Washington's foreign aid budget last week were conducted with the World Bank president, James D. Wolfensohn, by Condoleezza Rice. This was too critical a matter to be left to the usual point-man, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. Rice isn't the first National Security Adviser to exercise enormous influence on a president. Kissinger was Nixon's, after all. But Rice's widely acknowledged role as closest confidant to Bush is particularly striking given the stature of her colleagues. Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell, are not exactly foreign policy light-weights. They are of course critical members of the inner circle, but it's Condi who tends to get the last, confidential word. As Bob Woodward has reported, Bush would often ask Rice, during the tensest moments of the post-September 11 crisis, to attend meetings but not to speak. This wasn't because he didn't want her advice. It was because he wanted her to be a second, silent arbiter of the discussion. He wanted her not to advance a position, but to act as an alternate set of eyes and ears, to check her gut against his in weighing the options. And quite regularly, the last conference Bush has about many foreign policy decisions is with Condi. The relationship started with the campaign, when Rice was essentially appointed as Bush's foreign policy guru. She has all the Establishment credentials. Educated at the University of Denver and Notre Dame, Rice became a professor of political science at Stanford, then special assistant to the first president Bush, then senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institute, before becoming provost of Stanford. This impeccable conservative pedigree comes with what are clearly formidable schmoozing skills. Her name gives it away. It's from the Italian musical notation con 'dolcezza' - to play "with sweetness" - and Rice deploys that low-key, unruffled timbre throughout her work. It's partly what Bush likes about her. Not just the expertise and collegiality - but the ordered precision and politesse that helps him keep private order amid public mayhem. And of course she's a black woman. I've kept this till last, since it's not the most important thing about her. But it's still, it seems to me, an amazing fact that one of the most important members of Washington's inner circle, currently among the most powerful inner circles the world has ever seen, is a member of a classically marginalized group. If this were a Democratic administration, you could be sure that the press would have hailed her as a breakthrough in civil rights, and touted her gender and ethnicity as a central part of her appeal. The Bush style eschews that kind of identity-mongering. But her presence sends an unmistakable signal about what conservatism should mean now: completely comfortable with minorities, eager to incorporate them into the heart of culture and government, but never crudely exploitative or racially obsessed, like parts of the left. Her presence in the administration is also, I think, medicine for the abuse of women that occurred under Clinton. Don't get me wrong. Many Clinton policies were friendlier to the agenda of various feminist groups than Bush's. Clinton deserves credit for greatly increasing the number of women in government, and for appointing many minorities and women to cabinet rank. Clinton appointed the first female secretary of state and the first female attorney-general, for example. But the role of those two women, Madeleine Albright and Janet Reno, shows something less admirable about Clinton's personal relations with female colleagues. They were never really part of the loop. Reno was an attorney-general more estranged from her president than any in recent history. Albright was a cipher. When real foreign policy work needed to be accomplished, Clinton turned to men with whom he was more comfortable - Sandy Berger, for example, or Richard Holbrooke. No American president has ever had such a key, close political relationship with a female equal than Bush with Rice. It's very striking, very modern and barely noticed by a press that prefers the archetype of Bush as a macho cowboy than a yuppie, multicultural businessman of the 21st Century. What's more this woman is black. And by black, I mean much more like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas than Colin Powell. Powell is from a family of Caribbean immigrants. His lineage doesn't fuse him with the scar of slavery, segregation and Southern unrest that attaches itself to most African-Americans. Rice was born in 1954, the year that racial segregation in America's high-schools was finally ruled unconstitutional. But Rice, like many others, saw little change at first, and was in segregated schools in the South until a teenager. A nursery school class-mate of hers was one of four girls killed when white extremists bombed a church in Alabama in 1963. But she had a classic middle-class success story. The grand-daughter of a devout share-cropper, she lived to see her own father become vice-chancellor of the University of Denver and graduate from the college herself at the tender age of 19. Driven by hard-working parents, Rice could play concert piano, speak four languages, and earn a doctorate in her early twenties. She is perhaps an almost painful example of what opportunities do actually exist for black Americans with stable families and middle-class values in America today. That's surely part of why Bush picked her. She's not just an advisor; she's an emblem. All of which has led some in Washington to wonder what's next for her. It can surely only be more. Most believe that Dick Cheney may well decide to bow out of running for vice-president again for health or family reasons. Could Bush-Rice be the potential Republican ticket in 2004? The attractions are obvious. Rice does several things for Bush. She helps eradicate the gender gap, the biggest liability for Republican candidates. She could also help Bush to achieve his dream of winning more than the paltry ten percent of black votes he did in 2000, a demographic group Democrats desperately need to keep locked up to keep an edge in presidential politics. Rice - coming from the South and Mountain West, but also provost of one of California's greatest universities - makes geographic sense as well. And, best of all, she's a trusted conservative. Her instincts are Bush's: realist, uncompromising but flexible in a pinch. And he trusts her deeply. When you think about it, it's hard to think of any rival in the cabinet with the same credentials for a future vice-presidential nomination. And what it would do for the image of the Republican party as a whole would be momentous. There's a catch. Rice is single. There hasn't been an unmarried candidate for president or vice-president in modern times. This shouldn't matter, but it might. In the hideously invasive world of today's press, Rice's private life might be scrutinized in ways she would rightly find intolerable. But knowing Bush, this wouldn't stop him. He picks the people he wants - against conventional wisdom. Everyone forgets how controversial a choice Dick Cheney was. In 2004, the shock could be exponentially larger. I think she'd make a fantastic VP, and maybe eventually President; kinda makes you rethink the importance of Halle's little award.
So, if Rice wins the Vice-Presidency, should any mention be made of her being the first woman or first African-American elected to that position. Kagy, I woke up too early, Jeff responded perfectly. This guy is supposed to be representative of the Republican national party, Al Sharpton (which I don't know what he's said like this, maybe you can enlighten me...seriously) isn't a representative of the Democratic party. My point was simply if you're a Republican that wants people to get over this, you can't really get upset when people look at Republicans like one of their main representatives.
If this guy is the national chair, why don't they refer to him as such in the article? They just call him "committeeman". Doesn't that just mean he's on a committee?
What woman has time to even know about this, what with them barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen? I mean come on, a women's place is in the home. DaDakota PS. I will be sleeping on the couch for the next few weeks, as my wife does not like my humor as much as I do.
