Whoa. I'm not saying they're honest. I'm saying that what they say reflects the opinions of their constituencies/audiences. They're quite willing to say all kinds of ridiculous things because that's what their audience believes, or what they want their audience to believe, or what the audience wants to believe. That's why the fact that they DON'T go around saying that men are the leader of women is so telling. If that were a widespread attitude out there -- like, say, the idea that there's no such thing as evolution -- than you can bet they'd be saying it all the time. The fact is, they're not.
I'm sorry
crayons but I think you're just splitting hairs here. Colter has already said that women shouldn't vote because they elect democratic presidents. Rush coined a term to easily dismiss any woman who actually speaks about women's rights or who is determined about women's rights "feminazi". They are already dismissive of women. They don't have to be specific about who is head of the family. It is automatically implied from their rhetoric.
But see? This very quote just proves my point. Sure, Pat Robertson hates feminists. But note that he explicitly says that feminists are "NOT about equal rights for women" (emphasis added). In other words, equal rights for women is a GOOD thing, but feminism is not because (he says) it's about something else -- i.e., killing one's children, destroying capitalism and becoming lesbians. (Which of course is a much more plausible description of the feminist agenda. 
)
This is just the right-wing version of left-leaning women who say, I'm for equal rights but don't call me a feminist.
I guess if you R E A L L Y stretch you can get that interpretation from what he said. IMO, what he's saying is blatant, women who call themselves feminists are about murdering children and satanism. There is NO 'legitimate' feminism, IOW. Again, tarring and feathering a term that women use to further their cause. Making 'feminisim' an ugly word no one wants to associate with and therefore further splintering groups who work for women's rights.
It's an insidious control mechanism.
What does this have to do with what we're talking about?
What it relates to is that such people are extremely isolated. They live in a very homogeneous society and they don't have any other influences other than what they grew up with. And while they don't have to, they can be easily influenced by that society into thinking that their way is right and everyone else is the problem. I'm glad you grew up that way
crayons. My friends did not. And I meet more people like them, than I do people like you.
Again, yes, sure. But these aren't women necessarily brought up to believe they had to submit to men. In the first case, they were brought up to believe you don't get divorced. In the second case, they are lonely and desperate.
So why doesn't anyone dissuade them? Yes, you can get divorced. No, you don't need a man. Because the people around them believe what they do, too.
The Wilder Effect doesn't apply to cases like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. People who said they were going to vote for Wilder but secretly didn't do so were not also, at the same time, actively and passionately supporting Wilder. They were people giving face-saving information to a pollster just to be P.C. But the people who turn out in droves to see Palin and Bachmann, who defend them to the hilt in newspaper comment sections and so on ... these people don't go to those lengths just to appear P.C. They think those women are fantastic. And in Bachmann's case, anyway, they DO vote for her. That's why she's in office. She gets voted back in by her extremely conservative constituents, because they have no objections to a woman representative as long as she shares their conservative views.
But that doesn't explain Palin though, does it?
Right. It took them more or less by surprise also. But they had a very different system of government than we do. America is not run by a dictator now, and I don't see the clergy taking over the government through revolution anytime soon.
Does it have to be, though? You do recall how the Mormon Church involved itself in Prop 8 in California, right? You do recall Dubya courting the religious right and promptly started doing away with funding to Planned Parenthood, outlawing types of abortion, signing into law the religious initiatives, right? I'm in Texas, I don't have to tell you what the state school board did to the textbooks and history. I just read a story the other day of yet another school having to be ordered to take down the 10 commandments. There doesn't have to be a dictator in power.
