You have to give credit where credit is due. In Saturday's Washington Post, columnist Melinda Henneberger did readers a favor by relaying the nastiness and misogyny that some liberal male voters in Virginia have exhibited towards female campaign volunteers for Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli.
"[A]s Greater McLean Republican Women's Club President Anne Gruner was setting up her table Friday, laying out her 'Women for Ken' stickers and fact sheets, a man walking by suddenly swooped close to her face and started screaming, cursing and calling her a 'terrorist,'" Henneberger noted in the fourth paragraph of her Metro section front-pager. Later in the same story, Henneberger noted that:
Later in the morning, a guy staffing the Democratic table ventured that the very idea of being a "pro-Cuccinelli woman" is oxymoronic. That kind of attitude, said 22-year-old Rachel Green, only deepens her commitment: "I get a lot of assumptions from the party that's supposed to be open-minded," she said, adding that she supports Cuccinelli not in spite of his record on women, but because of it.
The story itself focused on how the Women for Ken campaigners and a contingent of female Democratic campaigners "were behaving a lot more agreeably in Lewinsville Park than their candidates are just about anywhere." Henneberger noted that Democratic volunteer Patricia Scott, for example, came to Gruner's defense, rebuking the nameless jerk who called Gruner a terrorist.
"These Democratic ladies ran to my defense! We have different views, but we get along maybe better than the people on Capitol Hill," Henneberger quoted Gruner as saying.
Yes, comity and mutual respect are the rule, not the exception, on the campaign trail, at least when it comes to volunteers. Democrats nationally, aided by the liberal media, would love to continue flogging the "war on women" meme, but when it comes down to it, folks on the ground know it's complete bunk, especially Democratic women who don't want the PR headache of hot-headed men verbally berating women Republican campaigners are traitors to their gender.
