On Fox News, Sabato equated Democrats to "mommy," Republicans to "daddy"
Recycling a standard gender cliché frequently used by the media to discuss Republicans and Democrats, Larry Sabato said: "Look, when you analyze parties, you need to think of them this way: The Democratic Party is the mommy party, and the Republican Party is the daddy party."
During the March 25 edition of Fox News' Your World With Neil Cavuto, Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, asserted: "Look, when you analyze parties, you need to think of them this way: The Democratic Party is the mommy party, and the Republican Party is the daddy party" -- recycling a standard gender cliché frequently used by the media to discuss Republicans and Democrats. Sabato went on to claim, "The mother is loving and caring and takes us back in and provides the safety net. The father is the disciplinarian -- tough love. He makes us face up to hard realities, at least in many families. Well, the mommy party is the Democratic Party. The daddy party is the Republican Party. And I think if you look at the economy, you look at the housing, the mortgage crisis, a whole wide range of things, you will find that the parties fulfill these images."
From the March 25 edition of Fox News' Your World With Neil Cavuto:
NEIL CAVUTO (host): To John McCain today -- he was talking about housing, but concerned more with all the pricey government programs aimed at fixing housing. Historian Larry Sabato says it is a decidedly different tact: Democrats proposing a government solution for people in pain; the presumptive Republican nominee risking no such solution for the vast majority who are not. So, Larry, how does this fall out? I mean, one of the things in that Hillary Clinton press conference a few moments ago was this notion that maybe John McCain was pulling a Herbert Hoover. Will that register?
SABATO: Well, Neil, without insulting the American public, I'd have to say a fair proportion of the public doesn't know who Herbert Hoover was. So I don't think that will necessarily sell. Look, when you analyze parties, you need to think of them this way: The Democratic Party is the mommy party, and the Republican Party is the daddy party. Now, you and I both love both our mothers and fathers, right? But they play different roles in many families. The mother is loving and caring and takes us back in and provides the safety net. The father is the disciplinarian -- tough love. He makes us face up to hard realities, at least in many families. Well, the mommy party is the Democratic Party. The daddy party is the Republican Party. And I think if you look at the economy, you look at the housing, the mortgage crisis, a whole wide range of things, you'll find that the parties fulfill these images.
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Sometimes daddy meets a new mommy and has to "off" the old one. I'm gonna start calling the GOP the Peterson party.
Or daddy divorces mommy to marry a richer, younger mommy - right, Cindy McCain????
...and Fox News Channel is the strange deranged uncle, who prattles on worthlessly to the children, trying to explain National Policy to them, in terms of "mommy" and "daddy".
Let's not underestimate the idiocy of the televised "pundit media"... while this moron's "mommy and daddy" view of National Politics gets him cited here, at MMFA, it'll probably get him a call from the producers of the chris matthews show, to be a guest, if not a substitute host.
Except for the fiddling about.
What do you expect? This idiot is from the UNIVERISTY OF VIRGINIA!
Know what I say? GO HOKIES!!!
If I use the republican as a standard, the daddy is a lying, cheating bastard who pays for sex with hookers and then says it's mommies fault he cheated. He brings home syphillis and says take a pill, he picks up men in restroom stalls and then blames gays for him wanting to take a ride on the hershey highway, calls blacks lazy t-i-double guh-ers who are low life welfare cheats, thinks they should end all welfare and wonders why blacks won't get down on their knees and kiss his fat white @ss for it, and makes all sort of hay about illegal immigrants who are brown before he puts on the shirt Consuella ironed, walks on the grass Carlos mowed, and eats an apple that Diego picked, all under his employ.
So keep talking daddy, cause mommy says you ain't getting no pussy tonight!
I have a similar (but slightly different take on this.) If we [hold our noses and] accept his analogy that R's are "Daddy" and D's anre "Mommy" and all that he claims fit this analogy (saftey net vs. dsisciplinarian) it's interesting that if you look at how the two parties relate to CORPORATIONS as opposed to INDIVIDUALS, Democrats [not named 'Clinton'] are very much "Daddy" - and one of the old school, corporal punnishment, men never cry model. And Republicans are not only "Mommy" but also "Grandma," "Aunt Gerturde" and that cool "Uncle" who was your Dad's youngest sibling and only a few years older than you and let you smoke pot with him.
Funny how so many of the truths we cling depend so greatly on our own point of view.
Who's uncle Fester? Thats the kind of relative I'm in favor of.
There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes.
These comments are so good, it almost makes me hope for more inane conservative misinformation, just to provide more fodder for them.
By the way, I met someone who was a former colleague of Sabato and said he was one of the biggest a***les ever. I know this will come as a shock.
If you couple this notion with the "masculine" Republican image of being pro-defense, pro-WAR, anti-women in the military, it brings up a strange image.
In this light, it's the DADDY's job to go fight the war, with the real possibility he'll be killed, and that leaves MOMMY alone to raise the next generation.
So in this analogy, Republicans do not think Democrats should be allowed to govern, but that MOMMYs should reasonably be given SOLE responsibility for the nation's future, and should be prepared to make ALL family decisions on their own.
Does anyone else see this huge logical disconnect? Why does DADDY hate MOMMY?
Now that they're too old, they think nothing of sending others to die. But the top daddy suffers more than anyone else, including the families of the dead, because of the war he started.
And his second in command looks at the death and misery the two of them have caused and says, "So?" or "they volunteered".
"The father is the disciplinarian -- tough love. He makes us face up to hard realities, at least in many families."
So then, Mr, Sabato, please explain why our "daddy" is paying for this war of his out of his children's pocketbooks instead of throwing out a little of that "tough love" and maybe raising taxes? Maybe we could actually understand the costs of the war as opposed to having the "emergency expenditures" every few months? Maybe we're in need of seeing our dead brothers and sisters so we can feel more for their parents?
I'll take Uncle Ernie over this kind of prattling nonsense. And a good call Nerzog and great pickup WK! :)
TM, the problem is that while your argument may be right, the current Administration is anything but the "strict father" detailed in Dr. Lakoff's work. The current Administration is not providing "tough love" in the form of taxes to pay for the war, in the form of restrictions on fuel use to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil, in the form of any restriction at all in the way of penalties for those who do wrong. Quite the opposite...the Administration lowered taxes and then increased expenditures, they told us to go about our business - travel and buy, they bail out an institution that caused havoc amongst the financial markets.
A strict father is a consistent advocate of right behavior. The Administration may want to be viewed that way, but they fall short in that they allow criminals within their midst to escape punishment, they allow for wanton disregard of basic financial principles, and they allow the continued overuse of a limited natural resource.
I'd like to see some tough love...I'd like tougher CAFE standards and some sort of rational discussion of energy efficiency efforts we can all take. I'd like to see taxes increase to pay for the war - regardless of the nature of this "adventure" we're in I don't want my child paying the price 20 years from now. I'd like to see the people responsible for the mess in Iraq and other misdeeds of the Administration in jail, or at least barred from participating in any Federal contract again, ever.
That is "tough love" - the parent stating that while this may cause discomfort now it will serve us all for the best later.
The current conservative movement that is embodied by the Administration is anything but that. And I think that real conservatives are beginning to see that, too.
Right, DTF, the fact that Sabato's remarks were described as a recycled cliche should have been the tip off that only he (and our helpful poster above) were under the impression that the idea was new.
As you pointed out, out current Republican crop is quite the poopsite of the "tough love" daddy, except as used against those who have the least resources to fight back with.
Current items;
Obama's pastor makes some pretty raw remarks about subjects that very few in the media or politics like to address. Who wants him to stop saying those things, so we can just pretend that everythings OK? (answer:conservatives)
The media is (occasionally) reporting on the war in Iraq, and as is usual with war, there are some terrible things happening. Who is demanding that the media come up with more happy talk and positive spin on the war?(answer:conservatives)
Who wants to tell the American public that the economy is just great, never mind some very troubling indicators?Who tells their coddled ones that the environment is just fine, buy another SUV? Go shopping, make yourself happy, ignore the writing on the wall. That's a lousy father figure.
Is it really a "gender cliche" to suggest that there are differences between a mom and a dad?
That's not the cliche, the cliche is the simplistic assigning of the roles to the parties.Sorry you did all of that typing.
Yes, it's always insightful when talking heads perpetuate false stereotypes and restrictive roles (go beyond anecdotes and read the social science lit. to see how false these stereotypes are and how damaging the rigid roles imposed) and then, as Atheist pointed out, they use the stereotype they have created of women as an epithet or insult. What's next from Sabato and his ilk - pointing out that the one party is "white" (and therefore good) and the other is "colored" (and therefore bad)?
Funny how often that right wing "daddy" is a cross-dresser, submissive, or closeted homosexual. Not that I think this behavior is in any way wrong or immoral-- it's just very hypocritical, and turns the "mommy=weak, daddy=strong" frame on its head. When that weird Catholic guilt-driven thing goes to far, I suppose you create child molesters and rapists. It's a regrettable con job that hits us where we live.
Also, the right wing coddling of their corporate overlords certainly seems more mommy-like-- Fed bailout of Bear Sterns, for example. Safety net indeed. Perhaps someday the "hard reality" that there are more loving human beings than Cheneyesque lizard creatures will be visited on the skittering right wing supplicants.
Money is debt. Property is theft. Free your mind your ass will follow.
As a progressive, it seems impossible to be offended by this. Are we afraid to be called "mommy"? Is being the mommy worse than being the daddy?
If you're mad Sabato called us the "mommy" party instead of the daddy party, go find a new party. If you're mad he used a simplistic metaphor to explain an infinitely complex situation, then... I don't know how we can possibly communicate.