Patty Murray is open in her stereotyping.
Sen. Patty Murray says that if Congress had more women, there might be a plan in place to deal with the nation's $15 trillion debt.
While the supercommittee that she helped lead failed last month in its bid to offer a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction plan, Murray says, "It may have come out very differently" if she hadn't been the only woman on the 12-member panel.
Women, she says, understand compromises, and Murray wants to bring more of them on board.
It would be easy to condemn Murray for her bigotry, easy to show how this would be treated if a male senator had said something similar, had said, for instance, that the growing number of women in the Congress had made it harder to get compromises because many of the women lacked courage.
And it would be equally easy to show that Murray's (and junior Senator Cantwell's) sexism has negatively affected men — and the women who love and depend on them. Policies backed by senators Murray and Cantwell made the recession worse for men, so much worse that it was often dubbed a "mancession".
But all that's been done before, and in this post I'd like to consider a different question: Is Senator Murray right?
To discuss that question, I am going to have to ask you to put aside political correctness, or your fear of it. I am going to assume that men and women are — on the average — different. For example, I believe that — on the average — men are better at moving heavy furniture, and that — on the average — women are better at harmonizing colors.
Those heterodox beliefs might get me tossed out of some local college classes, but I think the scientific evidence supports them.
Now that the politically correct have been warned, we can turn back to the main question: Would more women in the Congress result in more compromises?
Recent decades suggest that the answer is no. The number of women in the House and Senate has been rising, but in the same decades, our elected leaders have found it harder to reach grand compromises.
The most prominent example of women in Congress, former Speaker and current Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, also suggests that the answer is no. Pelosi helped block compromise on Social Security, even when the Bush administration floated the idea of higher taxes on high earners to pay for a transition to a more open system. She backed extremists for top committee positions. Her attacks on Republicans often lack the civility that helps make compromises possible.
But those points are both just suggestive. The increase in women and the decrease in compromise might be coincidental. A single example, however prominent, is not enough to prove a general case.
We can get a better understanding of the problem if we look at it from a different angle. If you were to ask serious students of Congress why compromises have become more difficult to reach, most would say the main reason is that the two parties have lost their moderates, have lost those people in the middle who could bargain with both sides. The Democrats who elected Tip O'Neill speaker were far less unified, ideologically, than the Democrats who chose Nancy Pelosi. And we have seen similar, though less drastic, changes on the Republican side.
So we have fewer compromises in Congress because we have fewer centrists and more extremists, or, if you prefer, fewer moderates and more pure conservatives and leftists.
As it happens, we have a local example of that change. The senator who was farthest to the left in 2008 by the National Journal's composite ranking was our own senior senator, Patty Murray. She is far more extreme than Democratic predecessors like Warren Magnuson and "Scoop" Jackson.
If she had been replaced by someone less extreme in her last election, we might have had a grand budget compromise, although that's unlikely given President Obama's unwillingness to even join in the negotiations. Sadly, Senator Murray is part of the problem, a big part of the problem.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(The attentive may have noticed that I have still not answered the main question: Would a Congress with more women be more likely to compromise, everything else being equal? I don't know the answer to that question; I don't think that the social psychologists have answered it in their studies, even when they haven't been handicapped by political correctness. And we have to be careful about generalizing too much from those studies, done so often on American college students who just happen to be in psychology classes.
But it is enough to know, in this case, that we would be more likely to get compromises if Senator Murray were replaced by someone less extreme.)
Posted by Jim Miller at December 12, 2011 08:50 AM | Email ThisNever ceases to amaze how Leftists wear glasses and contacts with special filters that allow them to see only the racism that benefits their agenda.
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 12, 2011 09:11 AMOne of these days when the truth emerges and political correctness is pierced, people will be able to look back and see how mind-numbed and ethically bankrupt these progressivist clowns posing as writers in the media were - not holding my breath for anytime soon.
Posted by: KDS on December 12, 2011 10:14 AMI'd argue that it's not only sexist, but ass backwards for one simple reason: women are more likely than men to be Democrats, and Democrats love to spend other people's money.
Posted by: jvon on December 12, 2011 11:30 AMReading between the lines Murray just wants more people who think like she does and can therefore steamroll over the opposition. The main reason she was such a failure on the super committee is her unwillingness to compromise. She never did offer up alternative plans to the GOP suggestions. She is just annoyed that the opposition pointed out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes.
Posted by: Burdabee on December 12, 2011 01:18 PMSame thing as Jim asks. Would women in charge all over help the country?
In history, you've seen matriarchal societies. They do as good as, better or worse than males?
I don't know. Women in business have different attributes than men. Better or worse? I just don't know.
Posted by: swatter on December 12, 2011 01:26 PMPerhaps, but to replace Murray either the Democratic party has to put forward a candidate to do so (and that seems not likely) or the Republican party has to put forward a candidate who can beat her in an election.
Democrats have not tried since her first election in 1992, and Republicans have tried and failed each and every time since 1992.
Regarding Senator Murray's extremism, she was one of only 21 US Senators who voted correctly against the Iraq War.
Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day as in the case above. Nearly everything else she has supported has been either statist or sexist.
Posted by: KDS on December 12, 2011 08:21 PM3. I don't necessarily agree with the point Patty Murray was trying to make. In fact, as a female I am frankly rather embarrassed by her ill-considered remarks and admit I do not think she is making my gender look too good right about now because of them.
4. Sadly, I believe she was grasping for excuses, since she was supposed to be helping lead this committee--which failed. I recall the Seattle Times reporting that Murray simply "made stuff up" about her opponents during her last senate race, in order to try to make herself look good by comparison. I think this is one of those times where she is again desperately trying to do something similar.
Barbara Boxer
Val Stevens
Michele Bachmann
Patty Murray
Sorry, Patty, but none of these ladies is known for compromising. You may be surprised to see yourself on that list, but no one else is. And the list is actually very very long.
I know many women who do compromise at the drop of a hat. I know far more women, especially in politics, who dig their heels in moreso than most men.
Like most bigots, Patty doesn't understand that stereotypes -- especially when they cross half the population -- don't hold up very well.
He didn't. He said that's how it appears to him, which just means he is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, and about as dumb as I always thought he was.
Bill Clinton is to Obama's right, and the Tea Party calls him a socialist etc. too. Is it ... about Clinton's race? Of course not. What about John Kerry? And Hillary Clinton? Do the Tea Party love them? This racism crap is just idiocy.
The real factors are not race, but party affiliation, confusion about actual records, and values issues that transcend everything else (for example: say what you want about Newt, but he has been consistent on abortion). There's also key differences in approach between Newt and Obama (and the rest of the Democrats) in foreign policy, crime, and so on.
At the end of the day, if the Tea Party people believed that Gingrich was as far to the left (as a big-government statist) as I and Beck think he is, they would not support him. And I think in the end he stands almost no chance of winning the nomination.
why not have Sound Politics call Patty Murray sexist.
The difference is she said, meant, and acted upon an idea that is undeniably sexist. But Beck provided zero evidence that the Tea Party is racist (again, if this was all about race as he surmised, then the Tea Party folks would have supported the Clintons and Kerry, so that hypothesis is obviously, simply, incorrect).
I believe that she was put in charge of the Super Committee because the Democrats needed it to fail so as to have the "do-nothing Congress" to run against in the next election.
As to the actual question that Jim posted, I would answer with a a resounding "It depends"!
Being a woman, I can see where more women, who are often very open to finding workable solutions, could be beneficial. It's the old spaghetti vs. waffle argument. Women's brains can generally handle a whole bunch of tangled up trains of thought at one time while men are better able to concentrate on whatever square they are in at a particular moment.
However, too many of the women currently serving in Congress (including Murray) are not bright or are not comfortable in their abilities. They are angry, they are resentful, they know that many of the men with whom they interact are smarter than they and they have sold their souls on the altar of "Women's Rights!", which has overall been a disaster for most women, but if there is one thing all these liberal women have in common it is their absolute refusal to accept responsibility for their own mistakes.
Sadly, the kind of women who would actually be good in politics are usually too busy raising families or running sucessful businesses or both!
Posted by: VikingMom on December 13, 2011 02:00 PMhttp://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/cardozas-corner/198861-the-professorial-president
Posted by: Michele on December 13, 2011 02:55 PMI thought the title said "sexiest". It's gonna take hours to get everything to dry out from the coffee spray.
Look...you've got the Senate's dimmest bulb, who also happens to be the farthest to the left, making assertions that are laughable. Think of it as extremely costly entertainment.
She is so consistent in what she reveals about herself and her views that in many ways her elections say more about the people that vote for her than any public exposure ever could. Reliable as a tuning fork.
You get what you pay for. And in this case, we pay for what we get.
I think that the thing that has annoyed me the most over the last few years...chosen from a wide variety of things...is the left complaining about "the economy" and blaming business/the affluent, when they should be looking in the mirror. They think they have the ability to solve the economic woes of the country by doing more of the same, while exhibiting a compulsive abhorance of the knowledge of economics.
It's like saying "lets go to the moon, and don't bother me with bringing up physics." Meaning "the rules of the universe don't apply to us, 'cause we know best."
Posted by: scott158 on December 13, 2011 03:28 PMOh c'mon scott, that snazzy photo of Patty Murray in the meat dress surely grabbed your attention....
Posted by: Michele on December 13, 2011 03:49 PMKKK Founded by 6 Dems on Dec 19th 1866
Every Jim Crow law passed was by DEM legislatures
DEM party refused to give up their slaves...caused civil war..they lost
DEMS blocked civil rights law
DEMS killed MLK
DEMS killed JFK and RFK
Posted by: hellpig on December 13, 2011 10:31 PMOr do you think she is just pandering to liberal women voters?
Posted by: pudge on December 14, 2011 07:46 AMBased on that observation, if compromise is the goal, perhaps its best to ask the women to leave congress. Lets start with Murray.
Sexist? No.
Qualified? ..."
That's just plain silly. She's consistently the farthest left senator there is, even to the left of the token Socialist senator.
Being extreme left is her defining characteristic.
It should also be a lesson to leftists (and anyone really) about politicizing such ideals (politicians are politicians...the best parts of life usually happen far away from politics).
Activists gonna activate. Don't expect any change soon, just fight the budget battles that need to be fought day by day in Leftyland.
Posted by: chrisn on December 14, 2011 05:01 PMTick Tock TIck Tock.......BOOM~!
Posted by: gs on December 14, 2011 07:28 PM"I need fewer Republican friends .... friendships are definitely being tested now. My stock comment has become, "wow, I liked you so much - I never realized you were a fascist!"
Posted by: MSFT on December 15, 2011 11:56 AMI am sure she won't look in any mirrors introspectively as narcissism is in vogue these days.
Posted by: KDS on December 15, 2011 12:28 PMyou mean whiny victimhood by those diminutive uncompromising liberal female Senators my fellow citizens keep re-electing...
Obfuscation, thy name is liberal-progressive.
Posted by: KDS on December 17, 2011 10:57 AM