Democrats Can’t Get Their Marthas Straight
by Don on Oct. 15, 2012, under UncategorizedStereotype much, Democrats?
Apparently the national Democratic Party campaign machine thinks that the Republican candidate for Congress in CD 2 is Martha…STEWART?
The first female combat pilot in U.S. military history would seem an unlikely target for a kitchen-themed attack ad, and yet that’s exactly what Nancy Pelosi’s House Majority PAC and Rep. Ron Barber have cooked up for Martha McSally, a retired Air Force colonel and pioneering A-10 pilot.
“Wall St. and Martha McSally—here’s what they’ve got cooking,” a female voiceover says as well-worn recipe cards pop out of a recipe box against a backdrop of fresh groceries. The ad features a photo of McSally on a recipe card alongside scribbled accusations like, “raise retirement age” and “essentially end Medicare.” The ad concludes, “McSally and Wall St.— a recipe for disaster.”
Wait a minute—I thought that Democrats were the Party of Women? (Women who expect the government to give them thousands of dollars to pay for their birth control.)
Did you know that there are five sitting women governors in the US—and FOUR of them are Republicans? (Brewer of Arizona, Hailey of South Carolina, Martinez of New Mexico, Fallin of Oklahoma.)
Did you know that one major political party is running women for BOTH Congressional seats in southern Arizona? (Hint: it ISN’T the party who sponsored the Mc-Sally-in-the-kitchen ad).
McSally thought the whole thing was a hoot:
McSally, for her part, calls the accusations false and the ad’s theme “laughable.”
“The fact that they use this theme of Martha McSally in a kitchen cooking up recipes is…overtly sexist and insulting to any woman, but it certainly doesn’t fit specifically with me,” she said in a phone interview. “For crying out loud, I served 26 years in the military. I was too busy shooting 30 mm out of my A-10 at the Taliban and al Qaeda to spend any time in a kitchen.”
I must admit—I have a soft spot for A10 pilots. In DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM I was a targeting officer for an Army division. I shared a work space with the Air Liaison Officers who coordinated Close Air Support, mostly from Air Force A10s. Our “ALO”s befriended me. They took me to training events in the desert, where they showed me how to signal an aircraft by flashing a mirror.
More important, they let me tag along with them one weekend when they went to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for some weekend training. While they trained, I got to relax in air-conditioned buildings and eat at a REAL chow hall.
My sleeping quarters was an A10 squadron ready room. I slept on a cot, surrounded by racks of flight gear. When I woke up one morning, I noticed that a lot of the gear was missing. Turns out the squadron had flown a training mission that morning. The Warthog pilots had tiptoed in and retrieved their gear while I slept. They felt sorry for the Army guy who had to live out in the Saudi desert, and they didn’t want to disturb his sleep.
The chow hall was the best…as far as I was concerned. We Army pogues had been surviving mostly on MREs and local Saudi meals for the first few months of DESERT SHIELD. At this chow hall, though, I not only got hot food, I got ALL I could eat of it.
The only problem was—it was an Air Force only chow hall. Army personnel weren’t allowed inside.
How did my A10 ALO buddies get around that? They loaned me a pilot’s desert camouflage BDU top, complete with pilot’s wings.
Now, most of you have seen my Fort Buckley picture. I wear coke-bottle glasses, and always have. Pilot’s DON’T normally wear glasses like that. Nevertheless, I was able to walk around—and eat—at that air base all weekend. Nobody said a word.
A10 pilots are, indeed, a resourceful bunch. So, when the national Democrats look at the CD2 Congressional race, why is it that they instinctively think of Martha the TV homemaker, instead of Martha the fighter pilot colonel?
McSally has flown some 300 combat hours over Iraq and Afghanistan, earning the Bronze Star during her time commanding a combat squadron in Operation Enduring Freedom during 2005 and 2006.
McSally also sued her bosses at the Department of Defense in the early 2000s to change Pentagon policy forcing women service members to wear the abaya— Muslim body covering— when they went off base in Saudi Arabia. The policy changed. She uses that powerful example when constituents wonder if she’ll simply toe the party line once she gets to Washington, she said.
“I’m a conservative and I’m an independent thinker.”
But sure, McSally in a kitchen is the first thing that springs to mind.
Apparently, for some people, it IS the first thing that springs to mind.
