Carrie and Sabrina have already mentioned it today, but I think yesterday’s primary results bear repeating – there were a lot of women who ran, and a lot of women who won!


To clarify: I’m not in favor of electing women candidates based on gender alone. I’m in favor of electing candidates whose policy proposals will help the greatest number of people in an efficient, sustainable manner that won’t jeopardize our children’s futures – and limited government, free market policies do that. It just so happens that in this election cycle, many of the candidates who espouse those values are women. I suspect that this is because they are the ones who manage their households and have to deal with the very real implications of policies that hurt families, although I welcome other theories, of course!


My favorite quote of the night came from RedState.com’s Erick Erickson, who said: “They called Nikki Haley a whore. They called her a raghead. Now they better start practicing calling her Governor.” Snap!


A number of factors played a role in getting us to this point – and in my opinion, no one narrative tells the whole story. Considerable anti-incumbent sentiment meant that challengers didn’t face many of the inherent hurdles usually found when running for a seat; Sarah Palin’s endorsement of her “mama grizzlies” helped raise name ID for a number of candidates. But at the end of the day, they were just good candidates, period.


Many of these strong female candidates ran on issues like the size and scope of government, the tax burden that American families face, health care reform, and educational choice (among others!) It seems like all too often, the media assumes that the only issue that women care about is reproduction, and we at IWF know that’s not true (as you can tell from our slogan, “all issues are women’s issues.”) 


Regardless of their reasons for running, and regardless of the outcome of the November elections, in my book the primary results have at least one absolutely terrific outcome. Women and girls have a great new set of role models to look up to who aren’t afraid to step up and speak out for what they believe in – and that kind of positive encouragement is good for the whole country. For too long, sitting officials have overlooked the wishes of their constituents in order to advance their own agendas – and the American people have had enough.