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“Mama Grizzlies”

Will Wilkinson is making things more complicated than they need to be. Trying to understand the marketing slogan “mama grizzlies,” he writes: Ms Fiorina’s education, executive experience, and vast wealth places her among the elite of the elite of America’s elite elite. But “the elite” are the bogey of salt-of-the-earth “real” Americans, and elitism is […]

Will Wilkinson is making things more complicated than they need to be. Trying to understand the marketing slogan “mama grizzlies,” he writes:

Ms Fiorina’s education, executive experience, and vast wealth places her among the elite of the elite of America’s elite elite. But “the elite” are the bogey of salt-of-the-earth “real” Americans, and elitism is the great sin against God-fearing, flag-bedecked authenticity. Ms Fiorina is so far from the prototype of red-state authenticity, she might as well be from Jupiter or France. So, in order to get a boost from the tea party movement’s populist wave, it seems the most must be made of any connection, however, tenuous, to populist conservative ideals of womanhood. Apparently marrying into a couple of daughters is enough to qualify the former HP chief a “mama”.

One thing that does unite Fiorina and Palin together is that they are both women who held significant executive positions and didn’t do their jobs very well. Fiorina was fired by the board of HP thanks to a record of mismanagement and presiding over the collapse of HP’s stock price, and Palin quit halfway through her term after having done little aside from antagonize energy interests with a massive tax increase. In other words, the things that are supposed to make them credible candidates show us why they are not credible, and so there has to be a diversion into biography politics to give them something to say.

One could say that the “mama grizzly” slogan is designed to distract attention from the glaring problem that at least some of said “grizzlies” are pursuing political positions for which they are not very well qualified. Palin cannot run on her record, and Fiorina shouldn’t be able to, either, since their records would prove that they shouldn’t be entrusted with important executive positions, and so some other way to make them appealing has to be found. The solution is even sillier than the usual politician’s claim that he is doing this or that “for the children.” As it turns out, Palin’s solution is simply to say that her preferred candidates love their own children and want to protect them, as if that were meritorious instead of instinctive.

In Fiorina’s case, the “mama grizzly” conceit was above all a way for Palin to justify supporting Fiorina as an “acceptable” alternative to Campbell when there was still a chance that Campbell might win the primary.

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