Abstract
When Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock made controversial comments about rape and abortion, Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) cancelled a scheduled campaign event with him. This was just months after Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin also made similarly provocative comments, reigniting a national media frenzy regarding women’s issues. This chapter analyzes the public responses by Republican male and female officials to these comments in light of the theory of gendered partisanship, which suggests that congressional women’s representational styles are intersectional; influenced by gender, party and type of office. We analyze the extent to which Republican women responded differently to this controversy than their male partisan counterparts in the House and Senate. We argue that female Republican Senators used this as a platform to argue the absence of women in the GOP undermined its credibility and indicated the importance of better connecting with female voters. This lesson was in stark contrast to the voices of female congresswomen, which were comparatively silent because representatives have less leeway in the more partisan House than their counterparts in the more individualistic Senate. In sum, we discuss congressional reactions to the Akin/Mourdock comments and role of gender in the politics of presence/silence in the 2012 election.
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Notes
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© 2014 R. Ward Holder and Peter B. Josephson
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Lucas, J.C., Sisco, T.S. (2014). Unfriendly to Women? Female Politicians, Rape Comments, and the GOP in 2012. In: Holder, R.W., Josephson, P.B. (eds) The American Election 2012. Elections, Voting, Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137389220_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137389220_10
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