"Because of the cultural dominance of feminism, however, one seldom sees a politician make an appeal specifically to men."

Excerpt from Best of the Web Today, WSJ 8/29/12 below:

Later Mrs. Romney noted that she is "the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner." The life of a coal miner's wife may not be easy, but does Mrs. Romney really believe it's harder than the life of a coal miner?

For the most part it is men who do the dangerous and dirty jobs: soldier, fireman, garbageman, construction worker. Traditionally it has been men who toiled in dull office jobs as well, in order to support their families. True, in recent decades women have done far more work outside the home, enduring their share of drudgery if not danger, sometimes because they lack a man and sometimes because modern men expect them to pull their economic weight.

That is known as "women's liberation," and for now at least it is impolitic to suggest that it is actually anything but. Hence efforts to appeal to female voters necessarily end up at least implicitly disparaging men.

When these appeals come from Republicans, they are efforts to "overcome" the "gender gap." For a few decades women have been more inclined to vote Democratic than men. Recent polls show the two candidates virtually tied, but Romney has a sizable lead among men and Obama among women. If Romney doesn't close the latter gap, the thinking goes, he can't win.

Such logic is obviously flawed. "One man, one vote" applies regardless of sex, so that either candidate under such circumstances could win by improving his relative performance among either sex--that is, while either narrowing or widening the "gender gap." Because of the cultural dominance of feminism, however, one seldom sees a politician make an appeal specifically to men.

In a nice example of Saul Alinsky's "key of converses," feminism thereby ends up constraining the party that is more extreme in its feminism. Republicans are spending their convention on offense, trying to persuade women to switch and vote for them. Democrats next week will defensively do the same thing. Ann Romney might have persuaded some women to vote for her husband. We doubt Sandra Fluke will attract any man to Obama's cause.