Two Former Republican Congresswomen Blasts Modern GOP on Women's Issues [View all]

[SunsetDreams]

Former Rep. Claudine Schneider (R) was the first — and only — woman to represent Rhode Island in Congress. Over five terms in the House (from 1981 to 1991), she helped pass key environmental, health, and gender-equity laws, including the Economic Equity and the Pension Equity Acts. Like former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO) and former Rep. Connie Morella (R-MD), Schneider told ThinkProgress there is no longer a place for centrists like herself in the modern Republican Party:

THINKPROGRESS: Why do you think today’s Republican Congresswomen are so much less progressive on issues relating to women’s health and safety?

SCHNEIDER: Because they are afraid of losing in the primaries. The have drunk the Kool-Aid that makes them think it is more important to win, than to do what is right by ending discrimination. The conservatives have co-opted the primaries and in order to win, they appear to do whatever it will take. Clearly, based on [the voting records of the 24 current Republican Congresswomen], they are NOT voting in the best interest of all women and men, because when women lose (on fair pay, etc.) families lose!

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Schneider says that there is “obviously not” a room for centrist women in today’s Republican Party, noting that “moderates have been pushed out in every primary” or retired to avoid being bullied by leadership. President Ronald Reagan, she claims, “would be embarrassed” by what has happened to the party. She is “disappointed and sad that the Republican women have chosen to form the Women’s Policy Committee to divide and fracture the Congress further. It is only by working together that the Congress can be effective … This is merely posturing so that the Republican party might stop hemorrhaging the women’s vote.”

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/05/26/490861/former-gop-rep-says-womens-policy-committee-is-posturing-so-party-might-stop-hemorrhaging-votes/

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Over her eight terms as a Congresswoman from Maryland’s Eight District, Connie Morella earned a reputation one of the strongest voices for women’s rights and reproductive choice in the Republican Party. A bipartisan-minded moderate, she worked with members of both parties to shepherd the 2000 re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act through the House with a 415 to 3 majority. Like former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO), she hardly recognizes her party today.

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On the GOP’s move to the right:
I think the [Republican] Party has moved more towards the right and it has become more solidified in terms of not offering opportunities for other voices to be heard. Look at [Indiana Republican Senate Nominee Richard] Mourdock’s statement when he proclaimed victory: I’m not going to give into them, they’re going to come over to me. The word compromise is not even in the lexicon, let alone an understanding of what it means.

On moderates in Congress:
I went to Harvard in 2008. My program’s theme was “An Endangered Species: A Moderate in the House of Representatives.” If I were to go back now, I think I’d have to say “An Extinct Species,” not endangered, extinct.

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Morella says she’s disappointed with where the Republican Party has gone. “If I were there, I’d be one of the minorities voting against the party. There’s no big tent, not even a small tent. It collapsed.”

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/05/25/490266/connie-morella-modern-gop-not-even-small-tent/

Keep talking, it only helps reinforce the GOP War Against Women!