On Television: Alleged Misogynist Responds To Critics

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I was on Chris Berg’s 6:30 Point of View program last night, and the SAB post he wanted to talk about was this one from over the weekend in which I was pretty tough on new ND Democrat party chair Kylie Oversen.

Apparently, some people think I’m a misogynist because I suggested that Oversen might have gotten the job because of identity politics, but I stand by that analysis and would point out that being critical of a woman does not in and of itself make one a misogynist.

Treating said woman like a poor defenseless princess who can’t take a few zingers in the political arena is kind of insulting to women, I think, but whatever.

I don’t think Democrats picked as chairwoman a first-term law school student who has one exactly one election win (by a narrow margin) to her credit, zero real-world career experience, and a bad reputation among her fellow lawmakers of being an immature, hidebound, ideologue because they thought she’d be the best at fundraising and organizing the party. I think they picked her because of her gender and age.

[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#000000″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]Smart politics? Maybe. But I have a distaste for people who get advantages or disadvantages because of things like age or gender. Call me old fashioned.[/mks_pullquote]

Democrats have been trying to backfill Oversen’s resume with a “Woman of the Year” award from a two-year-old left-wing woman’s group (which was on par with Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace prize just because), and gender equity legislation that’s so bland and meaningless that the state’s largest business group hasn’t even bothered to take a position on it.

But all that’s happening because of Oversen’s demographics. She’s young and female and photogenic, and that’s the image North Dakota Democrats want to brand themselves with for the next cycle.

Smart politics? Maybe. But I have a distaste for people who get advantages or disadvantages because of things like age or gender. Call me old fashioned.

Chris and I also discussed the debate over voter ID. I think it’s much ado about nothing. The current laws represent common sense protections against fraud. Democrats claim they’re unnecessary because there’s no evidence that we had a problem with voter fraud. But a) I’d point out that we’ve never really spent a lot of time trying to detect voter fraud and b) why should we wait around until there are real problems with voter fraud before we protect ourselves from it?

To the extent there was problems with people being unable to vote in the last election because of confusion over the ID laws (and I think those problems were pretty few and far inbetween), most of that was probably due to the 2014 cycle being our first time through with the new requirements.

Now that the public has a better handle on how to vote, and now that election administrators have gone through one cycle with the new requirements in place, the 2016 cycle looks to be a lot better.