The year of the “Mama Grizzlies”
Sarah Palin is out with a very savvy video capturing the spirit of the grass-roots conservative women’s movement — a phenomenon I’ve traced here since the mom-bloggers and young women bloggers and other Founding Sisters of the Tea Party movement first came onto the scene.
Watch:
Yes, there’s always a risk in overreaching and slipping into identity politics. Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi both played the gender card to argue that they had the unique ability as women to “clean house” and change Washington’s ways. It’s not working out as advertised, to put it mildly.
Moreover, conservatives need to be honest: Not all Republican women are created equal. An establishment Big Government GOP candidate in a skirt is no better than an establishment Big Government GOP candidate in a suit and tie.
That said, there is something happenin’ out there — on college campuses, at Tea Party and 9/12 meetings, in school board and city council races, inside and outside the political arena. Everywhere I go, right-thinking moms who had never been involved in politics before have come up to me to let me know that their increasing concern for their kids’ future — their safety, their education, their debt — has driven them to get involved.
I’m reminded of a column I wrote in 2004 for USA Today on “national security moms” who preceded the new genre of economic security moms.
A flashback:
Posted 7/20/2004 9:47 PM
Candidates ignore ‘security moms,’ at their peril
By Michelle Malkin
I am what this year’s election pollsters call a “security mom.” I’m married with two young children. I own a gun. And I vote.
Nothing matters more to me right now than the safety of my home and the survival of my homeland. I believe in the right to defend myself, and in America’s right to defend itself against its enemies. I am a citizen of the United States, not the United Nations.
I want a president who is of one mind, not two, about what must be done to protect our freedom and our borders. I don’t care about the hair on his head or the wrinkles in his forehead. I am not awed by his ability to ride a snowboard or fly a plane. Nor does it matter much to me whether his wife speaks four languages or bakes good cookies.
What I want is a commander in chief who will stop pandering to political correctness and People magazine editors, and start pandering to me.
The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks shook me out of my Generation X stupor. Unlike Hollywood and The New York Times and the ivory tower, I have not settled back casually into a Sept. 10 way of life. I have studied the faces on the FBI’s most-wanted-terrorists list. When I ride the train, I watch for suspicious packages in empty seats. When I am on the highways, I pay attention to large trucks and tankers. I make my husband take his cell phone with him everywhere — even on a quick milk run or on a walk to the community pool.
We have educated our 4-year-old daughter about Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. She knows that there are bad men in the world trying to kill Americans everywhere.
She has helped us decorate packages of books and bubblegum for our brave soldiers. And at night, we ask God to bless our troops as they risk their lives trying to kill the bad men before they kill us.
This isn’t living in fear. This is living with reality. We drive defensively. Now, we must live defensively, too.
I am not alone. Professors and political analysts have observed the remarkable conversion of “soccer moms” to “security moms” since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. According to GOP pollster David Winston, “security moms” now make up between 11% and 14% of the electorate. The trend has manifested itself in increased concealed-weapons-permit applications among women; the rise of national-security-focused Web logs published by hard-hitting female “war bloggers”; and an upsurge in political activism by women on core homeland-defense issues, such as immigration enforcement.
Security moms are women such as Grace Godshalk, who lost her 35-year-old son, Bill, when the World Trade Center’s south tower collapsed on Sept. 11. Godshalk is on the board of the 9/11 Families for a Secure America, which lobbies for secure borders. She has made it her “lifetime job to put an end to terrorism so no one else ever has to live this nightmare.”
Security moms are women such as Bonnie Eggle, a Michigan schoolteacher who lost her 28-year-old son, Kris, a National Park Service ranger who was gunned down by a drug smuggler at the U.S.-Mexico border in August 2002.
“I approach this whole situation as a mother,” Eggle said during a Washington, D.C., news conference after her son was murdered. “I want other parents to know that these are things that can happen to your children. Our son took a bullet that he did not have to if we had secure borders.”
And conservative activist Kay R. Daly, a security mom of two in Northern Virginia, warns that “A candidate who underestimates the security mom and her vote this fall may do so at his own peril. Hell hath no fury like a momma protecting her babies.”
Spoken like true “Mama Grizzlies.”
Let’s hope a strong alliance of economic security moms and national security moms will have lasting bite.
***
The post-9/11 poster that hangs on my home office wall:
***
Related: Jim Hoft and Andrew Marcus have launched a Draft Sarah for RNC Chair campaign. More info here.
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I heard Nikki Haley on Bill Bennett this morning.
GOP: recruit more like her!
I love all the ‘mama grizzlies’! We do have a great number of ladies who want to see to it our Republic gets back on track. Just keep up the good work ladies. We vote and we are mad.
L
Michelle Malkin = “Mama Grizzlie In Chief”!
Keep inspiring them Michelle.
Any hunter, or any person who spends time in the woods, knows that probably the worst place they can ever be is between a mama bear and her cub.
I’m a papa grizzly. And, well, I’m not so concerned about my future. But, I’m VERY worried about the future of my 7 year old son and 3 year old daughter.
Like PTA, City Council, Mayor, Petroleum Advisory Board, Governor…
I am also a ‘Mama Grizzly’ and my ‘cub’ turns 18 in 2012. He can’t wait to take back the great nation in 2012 from the thug that currently occupies the Oval Office.
As more me-I’m doing MY part to see that we don’t have to wait until 2012 for ‘Hope & Change’!
Momma Grizzly Motto
“Yea though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil…… For I am the most dangerous thing in the Valley.”
No problem, as long as Sarah picks conservative quality like her current ones.
Mrs. Ragman is already onboard as a mama grizzly. Just don’t tell her I have to buy her a fur coat.
Flyoverman
May I swipe that line-with attribution of course?
How is this for a ticket in 2012: Palin and Malkin? (I’d take Malkin and Palin too). Talk about Mama Grizzlies!
**just sayin’**
You don’t have to be a ‘Mama’ to have conservative, independent values and care for the future of this great nation.
**just sayin’**
Out here in CA, Carly Fiorina is ALL identity politics. Right out of the gate it was about “girl power”. And don’t ask her about her disastrous stint at HP or you’ll suffer a serious cat scratching.
Need more papa grizzlies too. Society has turned too many men into Pooh Bears.
Good to see mama and poppa grizzlies out there. Last year we moved from a neighborhood of grizzlies but they were all being fed at the trough.
Their belief: don’t separate me & the kid from the free stuff.
Alas it is not mine….I actually “borrowed” it from an Army Infantry NCO in served with. The only change was the word “thing” was actually a more colorful description of the type person in the valley.
Colorful = the illegitimate male offspring of an unmarried woman.
I think the world of Sarah Palin, and of Jan Brewer also. But I hate that they have endorsed Mary Falllin for governor here in Oklahoma. I feel it is because she is a woman. She is not the best candidate. She has just invited all the lobbiests for a meeting with her. She is looking to get funds form lobbiests, and Oklahoma doesn’t need that.
The most conservative, that has promised to fight Obama’s health care reform and many other things is Randy Brogdon, and I feel Sarah and Jan should check things better before they back someone.
Michelle, your 7/20/2004 article outlines very nicely what upstanding women of all ages need to do. Instead of depending on ‘big brother’ or big government to take care of you, take some responsibility for yourself and those you protect and nurture. It may not be a young family but ageing parents, it can also be your community and neighborhoods. It’s open to all women regardless of where they need to focus their talents.
I’ve seen very few strong women whose partners are weak. Strength attracts strength. I’m not saying my husband doesn’t open doors and take my arm going up stairs. It’s inner strength that will give us, and those strong men beside us, the courage when it’s needed.
Flyoverman
I could use ‘female dog’ in place of ‘illegitimate child’.
When my son was born friend joked that though I now a had a baby I wasn’t a new mother…because I was a ‘muther’ long before the pregnancy.
When it comes to my family, friends, and country-I’m still a mutha!
Sorry, but this hasn’t really appealed to me and actually makes me uncertain about Sarah Palin. It is too much like identity politics… particularly when it came to her endorsing Carly Fiorina in the primary over Chuck DeVore.
I’d rather have the primary concern of the 2010 movement about being conservative, not being female.
Nevertheless, we do have Nikki Haley, who I do support, and Sharron Angle may not be bad in NV, though I preferred Tarkanian.
If Palin goes out of her way to endorse Jane Norton over Ken Buck though, I’ll be very disappointed…
To repeat myself from another thread, show me a high profile conservative woman who isn’t physically attractive, and I will take this “mama grizzlie” schtick seriously.
Margaret Thatcher.
I like female grizzlies with no cubs even more so! Less baggage. That way the focus is all on me and not the litter.
And who can forget the babelicious Jean Kirkpatrick?
I read and hear everyday how Michelle and Sarah are C’s, stupid and racist.But everywhere they have a forum they sure “pack em” in.Makes you wonder,don’t it?
Janeane Garafalo’s sister! I again reject your flawed premise!
And Barbara Bush (in her later years).
Oh, I love Margaret Thatcher. Imagine, she, Reagan and Pope John Paul II, these 3 players coming together like the Perfect Storm to bring about the fall of Communism and the USSR. Wow. And Churchill during WWII. Where are today’s leaders?
My Mom, and my wife, are women.
Mom doesn’t vote anymore, lifelong Dem, still thinks Republicans are rich bankers lighting cigars with $100 bills. Stopped voting altogether when Clinton vetoed the partial birth abortion ban. My Dad, now dead, lifelong FDR Republican, never seemed to notice the party of liberal but patriotic people like Truman, Scoop Jackson and Hubert Humphrey had become the party of liberal and anti-patriotic people like George McGovern and John Kerry.
On the other hand, my wife, former Democrat, daughter of a man in a union, most of her family in the crooked union at the Port of Houston, well, TurboTax, back the first year of the Bush tax cut showed us the difference in what we owed and what we would have owed pre-tax cut, and it was a couple of thousand dollars.
She has successfully been lured from the Dark Side.
I have read that Sarah will be going to England soon and will have a sit down with Marget Thatcher for a chat. I sure hope this comes about. I love both of them!
L
Jeane Kirkpatrick, another former Democrat who left the party when it became the pro-Soviet party. For that matter, Ronald Reagan was a Dem before the communist infiltration got to be too much.
My understanding is that Thatcher has had several small strokes, and sometimes is as lucid and clever as ever, and sometimes is confused.
I would hope Palin meets her fairly early in the day, when she is most lilely to be as sharp as she was when she was the PM.
I had thought ‘security moms’ included (but not limited to) women who would encourage their children to become part of the military, knowing that their children would someday be defending the Country.
Or any Democrat, in a suit or a skirt. There are no Zell Millers left in the National Democrat party.
My Mom and Myself are both Grizzlies.
If Momma ain’t happy ain’t no one gonna be happy
When you have to go back decades to produce a counterexample, I feel that I have proven my point. Seriously, give me a reason the conservative movement is packed with women, just not ones who are hard on the eyes.
Red State Skeptic#37,
Because the r guys are not doing their jobs the voters want them to do!
L
And no doubt you’re euphoric over the first Cub road sweep in how long? I’m glad, because after the Reds series, I placed my mother on suicide watch.
Because you have cooties.
I remember once working as a wrangler I saw a bear cub in the treeline to my left. I immediately led a string of horses and dudes downhill to my right … knowing that most of the dude horses would play follow the leader and knowing that my horse would find the safest path.
What struck me as odd was that of more than twenty people on horseback, none had seen the baby bear and I had only noticed it because of the actions of my horse. Knowing the woods and hunting as I do, I know that brown bears, black bears, grizz and even kodiaks protect their young and thus, I knew I had to get off the beaten path. When people asked me where we were going, I explained that we were cutting a new trail and should they return the following year, they would find a new path here.
(Bears cannot run downhill very well so heading that way was the best solution without getting into a gunfight with easily spooked horses and tourists on board)
Lessons known: Do not come between a mama bear and boo boo (a baby griz)
Lessons learned: (and later substantiated working as a hunting guide)
People see only what they want to see and are often oblivious to danger staring them in the face.
People can be hunting for Pheasant and miss the Elk entirely because they are busy looking for the pretty little birds.
Even the most well-intentioned of people can get the wrong outlook if they are not open-minded and paying attention to what others (my horse in this instance) around them are saying.
No matter whether or not you may believe a mother will protect her young, she is going to … as noted by my horse’s fretting as the mama Griz came out of the woods as the last of the Dudes began their (oblivious) downhill climb on horseback … even the horses that had been “broken” rather than trained failed to notice the obvious danger …
If people are not aware of the danger, nobody will know it ever existed in the first place and if you are brazen enough to come between a mama Griz and Boo-Boo … be prepared to pay the piper because you are going to have to dance the dance no matter what your “intentions” may have been!
“Seriously, give me a reason (fill in the blanks) is packed with women, just not ones who are hard on the eyes?”
A man asking any question structured like that is the same as a man sticking his head into hive of very angy African bees!
Good luck……
What exactly IS your point? Conservatives will only agree with attractive women? It’s a philosophy not a beauty contest. We can’t help it if female leftists (outside Hollywood) could scare a pack of dogs away from a meat truck!
So attractive women are not intelligent, nor able to take care of their own?
Because women don’t live in mommy’s basement playing video games all day – they actually understand how life works?
It’s really both. If it weren’t, there would obviously be some ugly (or plain) conservative stars. But there are none.
I’m not a Mama, but can I add a hearty “grrrrrr” to their chorus?
That’s an interesting poster. However, I thought the most dangerous place to be was between Michael Moore and a Twinkie.
Al Gore and a toilet seat.
Wait, you only own one gun? You’ll have to get down to Whistling Pines!
Rosie O’Donnell & a handful of corn.
You sound jealous.
I wish we had more Daddy Grizzlies in Congress, instead of the current set of Grizzled Bores.
Chuckie Schumer and a microphone.
#21 I have to agree with your observations re. Palin endorsing Fiorina. That was a colossal disappointment to me. Come November, I will pinch my nose and vote for Fiorina, because Babs Boxer has got to go. I’ve having a hard time getting enthused about Whitman, also. As bad as Brown would be in the governor’s seat, I’m not really all that certain that Whitman would be much of an improvement. We really need a clone of Christie in Kaleefornia.
As usual, I find myself in awe of your wit.
Safest place, Michael Moore and a bar of soap…
Michelle, do you know the name of the artist who drew that poster? I got a t-shirt from Cafe Press with that picture on it, just after 9/11, and I’ve nearly worn the thing threadbare. I want to replace it and can’t remember the artist’s name or how to find it again. I know she was (then) 17, and living north of Seattle somewhere (Bellingham?)
Red State Skeptic sounds a little worried that the conservative women are getting results for the rest of us.
No mention of the sickening swooning from liberal women over Obama, and even Clinton.
Double standards are so easy to shoot down.
The Chicago Machine tried to keep her off the ballot, but she has won that battle…
http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/good_day/cedra-crenshaw-tea-party-ballot-controversy-aj-wilhelmi-20100723
I’d love to see Michelle do a post about Cedra…