Thanks in part to prominent female leadership in the Tea Party, the upcoming elections look to be “profound” for the conservative woman and their core issues.
“It’s exciting that conservative women have found their voice,” said Penny Nance, chief executive of Concerned Women for America. “We are hoping that this is the year of the conservative woman.”
Nance joined Steve Bannon, director of the The Tea Party Trilogy, at this week’s Bloggers Briefing, a meeting hosted by The Heritage Foundation. The second of Bannon’s three newest films — “Fire from the Heartland” — tells the story of America at a crossroads and the women who have awakened to the crisis. That is, it tells the story of “the conservative woman in her own words.”
“If you see what the left-wing blogs have said about the film, you know what an existential threat this movement and these women are,” Bannon said. “The left just went nuts when they saw the trailer.”
Even women who presumably work to promote a strong female presence on the national scene — leaders of the National Organization of Women, for example, and some liberal commentators and congresswomen — have resisted what the rise of conservative wives, mothers and businesswomen means for them.
“NOW is screaming bloody murder because the overall number of women, certainly in the House, is going to decrease and that’s true,” Nance said. “I think that’s just fine because if you can’t go to Congress and represent the conservative principles of your constituents you should be sent home.”
In other words, to Nance and the members of her organization, ideas matter more than gender. The nation’s largest public policy organization for women, CWA focuses on six core issues: the definition of family, the sanctity of human life, religious liberty, education, the dangers of pornography and national sovereignty.
Still, there’s no denying that women are more active than ever. The Tea Party movement is one of the leading factors. In fact, Bannon said many of the women who lead the Tea Party have moved seamlessly from family responsibilities to political activism.
“Three quarters of the women I’ve met in the Tea Party movement have heretofore been apolitical,” Bannon said. “I’ve known women who have barely gone to high school who know the Constitution I think as well as the guys who taught it at Harvard and they’re self-taught. That’s a tremendous cultural movement and they’re not going away.”
