Feminists and Sarah Palin

Part of the idea behind picking Sarah Palin was to help broaden the GOP’s appeal to women. Instead, Palin is even less popular among women than John McCain. And if this exchange between Rick Davis and Bill Bennett is any guide, conservatives aren’t looking very seriously at addressing their problems (emphasis added):

BENNETT: I don’t know which drives them more crazy. Let me give you three things that I think drives them crazy, and you don’t have to comment. That’s she’s very attractive. That she’s very competent or that she’s very happy. You know, as a human being.

DAVIS: Yeah, all of the above.

Rachel Maddow did a segment on this last night:

That’s via Jessica Valenti. The idea that feminists, like politically conscious people of all genders and ideological inclinations, might have substantive views on the issues that contradict Palin’s doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. But in general, women are more liberal than men. And John McCain is more conservative than most politicians and Palin’s record is considerably more conservative than McCains. There’s no great mystery here. And yet Davis and Bennett can’t help but compound their problems by suggesting that women are somehow incapable of reaching conclusions about politicians for any kind of real reasons — instead feminists just hate attractive women.