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Sen. Rand Paul seems unable to attract women voters, a recent CNN Poll discovered. In fact, he has a sizable group of dudes following him, but that’s the issue — why is Paul’s brand only attracting men?
And it’s not just liberal women who say they wouldn’t vote for him. Even among Republican women, Paul seems to be out of luck.His numbers are especially low for a libertarian-leaning candidate, considering that it was women who formed much of the modern movement — Ayn Rand, Rose Wilder Lane, and Isabel Paterson.
Much has been written about the current libertarian movement’s struggle to attract women, though the reasons for why this is vary widely.
From The New Republic:
“But Paul hasn’t made a comparable effort to tailor the libertarian message to appeal to women, which, given his dismal poll numbers among Republican women, he’ll need to do if he wants to compete in 2016.”
From The Federalist:
“But if it’s a problem with certain media presentations, it’s undoubtedly true that libertarians themselves — perhaps due to reasons mentioned in the research discussed above — present issues of concern a bit too analytically at the expense of emotional engagement and a hearty focus on community and other institutions. A bit more focus on how the message is conveyed could help Paul improve with GOP women to match gains he’s made with GOP men.”
From Reason:
“First things first: Libertarians are indeed pretty darn male. Last I checked, about 9 out of 10 Reason magazine readers are men. Even after obligatory nods to grand-dames Rand, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson (not to mention former Reason editors Virginia Postrel and Marty Zupan), and the growing number of young libertarian ladies, libertarianism is still an XY-dominated zone.”
“If women think of dudes in tricorn hats waving pocket Constitutions and longing for a past golden age when they think of libertarianism, then libertarians aren’t doing a good job selling themselves. But bad marketing isn’t the same thing as bad philosophy. ”
From Bleeding Heart Libertarians:
“What libertarians know, and what we need to do a better job communicating, is that the general narrative that markets are bad for women and government is good, or that free markets allow men to dominate women is more than a little problematic.”
For Paul, or any libertarian, the goal has to be communicating not that he wants freedom back, but that he wants it for everyone.
There’s also the idea out there that libertarianism only empowers white men, making Paul’s work even harder.
From The New Republic:
“To a significant degree, libertarianism is a philosophy that exalts a world where white men enjoyed enormous freedom, but other groups were even more marginalized than they are now. How surprising is it, then, that politicians like Paul who voice libertarian ideas have a fan base that is overwhelming made up of white men?”
For women and minorities, the notion that America has become less free over the years makes little sense. For many — except, it would seem, white men — going back in time would amount to the loss of freedom.
Except that isn’t what libertarians mean when they talk about a return to freedom. Reason points out the difference by saying, “The dramatic issue of slavery reminds us that the level of taxes or the number of federal agencies is by no means the only measure of freedom.”
Reason continues, “yearning for the America of the Robber Barons has little to offer most women (who might not want to return to a world where they couldn’t vote and had severely restricted social lives) or for that matter most non-whites (who might recall Jim Crow segregation).”
In a separate Reason article:
“No doubt one of the reasons that libertarians haven’t persuaded as many people as we’d like is that a lot of Americans don’t think we’re on the road to serfdom, don’t feel that we’ve lost all our freedoms. And in particular, if we want to attract people who are not straight white men to the libertarian cause, we’d better stop talking as if we think the straight white male perspective is the only one that matters. For the past 70 years or so conservatives have opposed the demands for equal respect and equal rights by Jews, blacks, women, and gay people. Libertarians have not opposed those appeals for freedom, but too often we (or our forebears) paid too little attention to them. And one of the ways we do that is by saying “Americans used to be free, but now we’re not”—which is a historical argument that doesn’t ring true to an awful lot of Jewish, black, female, and gay Americans.”
If libertarians or libertarian-leaning candidates like Paul want support from women and minorities, they need need to actively pay them more attention.
