Is the GOP Becoming the Party of Women? Not So Fast.

The Tea Party is undoubtedly a co-ed institution. Not only are women out marching, they are Republican nominees for office thanks to Tea Party support. Their views on women's rights and policies which affect women's lives are positively 19th century (See Sharron Angle's views on abortion or Christine O'Donnell's anti-masturbation campaign), but some women, dare I say feminists, have thrown up their hands and said, well, at least Republicans are reaching out to women. Except that they aren't.

For decades, our few female politicians have been concentrated in the Democratic Party; today, there are 59 Democratic and just 17 Republican women in the U.S. House of Representatives. Since Sarah Palin's rise, a spate of female GOP candidates have won primaries this year, prompting the question: Is the Republican Party the new women's party? The answer is an obvious no. That conservative voters are rallying around women is a triumph of the feminist movement, pure and simple. As Dahlia Lithwick wrote, these women owe a lot of thanks to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the feminist push for women's equality under law: "You can draw a straight line between Ginsburg's fight against these seemingly harmless gender classifications that were rooted in seemingly harmless gender stereotypes and the Mama Grizzlies who roam our political landscape today." Now that we're clear on who is actually responsible for their success, let's skip to 2010.

Democrats have long recruited more female candidates than Republicans; however, this is where Washington Post writer Anne Kornblut and other commentators think Republicans have had a change of heart. "[Sarah Palin] has brought to the Republican Party what some members had once complained did not exist: a concerted effort to tap female candidates for promotion and lift them out of obscurity." Not so fast: Sarah Palin is not exactly GOP establishment. She went "rogue," remember? Palin tours the country on the Tea Party's dime and endorses extreme candidates, both male and female, though no top Republican has endorsed her since 2008.

The momentum behind the Tea Party has pushed certain female candidates to slim victories over the original party anointed. Like Palin, Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and Nikki Haley in South Carolina were not hand-picked by the Republican Party. They are outsiders who rode anti-establishment anger to their nomination. Granted, some women's campaigns were less disruptive to the establishment, like businesswomen Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina in California, although their enormous personal wealth -- the former a billionaire, the later a multimillionaire -- would aid someone of either gender. But both women come from business, built their own reputations, fortunes, and connections outside party politics, then launched their own campaigns.

So has the Republican Party decided to go after female candidates? Not really. They have been flooded by campaigns from women outside the Party. Of course, despite the extreme conservatism of many of these women (none of them support issues like maternity leave or early child education, much less "Obamacare"), if they manage to win, they will become a party presence and that may well open the Party to more female candidates in the future. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Democrats aren't saints, but by the numbers, Democrats are still the women's party. They are also the party of women's best interests.

Photo credit: Bruce Tuten