Another strange Mrs. America review

The TV series Mrs. America has brought some strange commentary, such as this review:

Fundamentalist Christianity in America is, by default, misogynist, cisheteronormative, and white supremacist, and its rise as a political force in the United States began in the 1970s, with Phyllis Schlafly as one of its most famous faces.

No, Phyllis Schlafly was a Catholic, and not a Fundamentalist Christian.

I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to see this person humanized or excused or forgiven. These fears were quickly put to rest. This is no sympathetic portrait, ...

There’s a scene in the first episode in which she goes to his office to get his signature on *checks notes* a credit-card application. By law, she cannot apply for a credit card without the permission of her husband.

No, there was no such law. The scene is fiction.

Low Energy Joe's Dark Winter

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

It would be a dark winter for our country as Joe Biden predicts if “low energy” Joe were to be elected president next week, and not just because of his lack of personal vitality. His supporters’ war on our energy industry would throw our economy into a downward tailspin.

Having a president who hides in his basement, and whose mind has declined to the point that he referred to his opponent as “George,” would be bad enough. Our economy would languish under Biden’s demented leadership, and our foreign enemies would exploit the vacuum in the White House.

It is even worse than that. Biden and his California running mate, Kamala Harris, want to cut off affordable energy for all Americans, and force us to live with frequent energy interruptions and rationing as California already has today.

Californians living under the control of Democrats already suffer from frequent power blackouts. In August and again this week, crippling blackouts rattled the state which has intentionally decreased its own access to traditional energy.

Biden and Harris are beholden to the radical California environmentalists who are enemies of traditional energy: coal, oil, and natural gas. They want to regulate away the heart of our economy on which millions of jobs and our productivity depend.

This assault on traditional energy is led by coastal California, which enjoys revenue from smartphones and internet censorship, against the “Rust Belt” manufacturing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. As President Trump points out at his rallies, manufacturing needs traditional energy to fuel the factories, as does our overall economy.

Liberals pretend that their opposition to traditional energy is based on what they call the “existential crisis” of climate change, but that is a lie because they also oppose nuclear power, which does not contribute to global warming. The Biden-Harris ticket is really at war with efficient energy.

Their hidden agenda slipped into the open at the final presidential debate, when President Trump asked Biden a question that none of the liberal moderators would ask. “Would you close down the oil industry?” Biden responded, “I would transition from the oil industry. Yes.”

A gasp by viewers was immediately felt. The Biden-supporting moderator, Kristen Welker of NBC, also seemed dismayed.

“Why would you do that?” she asked Biden. He responded that he would impose net zero emissions in energy production by 2025, which would shut down the entire industry because its carbon emissions are impossible to eliminate or entirely offset.

Flashbacks resulted for older voters to the long, tortuous gas lines of the 1970s amid an energy shortage then. No one wants a return of that crisis.

The moderator tried to pivot away, but this was a bombshell of a revelation by Biden that should cost him millions of votes. As Trump immediately said, “Will you remember that Texas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Ohio?”

On Monday, Trump held three rallies in Pennsylvania and coal-miners turned out to see him in Martinsburg. Pennsylvania is one of the largest coal producers in the country, and Democrats have already lost neighboring West Virginia over this issue.

But Pennsylvania also has Philadelphia, which is governed by a Democrat political machine. More race riots erupted there on Monday night, giving Americans yet another warning of the failure of law-and-order that would occur under a Biden-Harris administration.

Manufacturing and energy production in Pennsylvania have long propped up the liberals in Philadelphia with subsidies and handouts. The economic backbone of the state in coal-mining, fracking, and manufacturing would suffer enormously if low-energy Joe is elected.

As President, Biden could bankrupt the energy industry by strangling it with regulations through the Environmental Protection Agency and other arms of the administrative state. West Virginia voters have “woken” up to that, and Pennsylvania voters should, too.

The radical environmentalists who control Biden are determined to end fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, which produces oil and natural gas from deposits that were not affordably accessible by traditional drilling. This technology has brought jobs and prosperity to rural communities across the Keystone State.

Neighboring New York bans fracking statewide and there is a stark disparity in prosperity along the Pennsylvania-New York border. On the Pennsylvania side the towns are refurbished with wealth produced by fracking, while on the New York side there is decline and despair.

No environmental harm has ever been found to result from fracking. In contrast, windmills supported by Biden and Harris cause devastation to birds, and the clanking noise of the turbines has caused headaches and worse to those unfortunate enough to live nearby.

President Trump has said that reducing regulations is as important as reducing taxes, and from his first moments in office he has cut the regulatory impediments to our economy. Every regulation is a tax, and Biden would regulate traditional energy to death.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Honey, It’s Time to Vote for Trump

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Liberals count on “suburban women” to carry Biden to a victory denied to Hillary Clinton four years ago. The theory is that many of the suburban women who voted for Trump last time have changed their minds and are pulling the lever against him this time.

That false prediction is a stepchild of the gender gap theory of politics which was all the rage in the media in the 1980s as they tried, unsuccessfully, to oust Ronald Reagan from the White House. Reagan was supported by men even more than by women, and supposedly that gap in support was going to be his downfall.

It was not. Reagan rode to a landslide reelection victory of historic proportions in 1984, carrying even the liberal backyards of Massachusetts, New York, and California. The experts crawled back under their rocks after the crash of their predictions about the impact of a gender gap.

Polling married couples about what color home they would like to buy would result in many differences in opinion between husband and wife. But, as with voting, when it comes time to buy a home they agree and make the decision with one voice.

Polls tighten, as they did in 2016 around this time, because married couples decide not to cancel out each other’s vote. This is not because of new information, or because millions of people are independently changing their minds, or because of how the candidates performed at a presidential debate. This is because married couples begin deciding in earnest about the election and what it means for the future of their children and grandchildren. This is because families seriously reflect on the freedom and prosperity they have enjoyed until now, and start really deciding which candidate will continue that for their next generation.

Married couples typically vote for the same candidate in elections, and it would be silly for them to go to the trouble of voting just to cancel each other out. The strong support for Trump by men has the effect of pulling married women to his side despite all the media bias.

Studies show that women, as a group, are more influenced by the media and thus have been pulled away from supporting Trump by the slanted reporting against him. That has artificially depressed Trump’s approval rating throughout his presidency, particularly among women.

But when it finally comes time to vote, serious conversations begin between husband and wife. It becomes more like their joint decisions to buy a home, raise a child, and plan for the long-term future. A response to a pollster is a decision that people make willy-nilly in reply to a surprise phone call. It can embody an unhappiness at that time, or an opportunity merely to complain.

Earlier this month CNN gloated that, in its polling, women supported Biden over Trump by a 34-point margin. An average of many such polls showed a 25-point gender gap.

But those polling responses are not family decisions, as actual votes by married couples are. When married women actually cast their votes, they take into consideration how their husband is voting more than what CNN says.

Suburban women are unlikely to vote against their own husbands, and hence to predict an election outcome it is essential to focus on how suburban men will vote. They went big for Reagan in 1984, and then so did their wives.

A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll announced that although suburban women support Biden by 62% to 34%, suburban men support Trump by a landslide margin of 54% to 43%.

Suburban men and women are predominantly married, or else they would be living in cities. The tightening of the race occurs when the married couples realize that by voting for the same person they have an impact of 2 votes, but voting opposite each other is a waste of their time.

Feminists may hope that the suburban wives persuade their husbands how to vote, but that is not what happened in 2016 or prior elections. Instead, often husbands are more persuasive than the media in influencing their wives for whom to vote, leaving only the unmarried women with a gender gap voting against the Republican.

Trump nearly prevailed with married women in 2016, and there are more married women than the unmarried women who opposed him then and now. Today some explain Trump’s better polling among married women as being due to the issue of safety against crime, but that issue would matter as much to unmarried women.

Instead, it is the institution of marriage that enables Trump and other Republicans to continue winning despite the array of media and big money against them. Married men see through the liberal bias, and easily persuade their families to vote for Trump, too.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Trump Could Stun Experts with a Repeat of 1948

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Harry Truman pulled out a sweeping victory in the presidential election of 1948 that stunned the experts and the press, which even ran a famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline on election night. History may be repeating itself now.

Behind in the polls, Truman campaigned to large crowds at train stops as he traveled the country. Today Trump does likewise at airports.

“Give ’em hell, Harry” was the campaign slogan for Truman in 1948 that began when a supporter shouted it at one of his rallies. Truman responded extemporaneously, “I just tell the truth about them, and they think it’s hell.”

Trump shares the same first four letters as Truman, and Election Day this year is very early in November as it was in 1948. Both mocked their political rivals with nicknames, as Truman called the distinguished Senator Fulbright, “Senator Half-bright.”

America, unlike England, loves the scrappy underdog who does not give up. That was Harry Truman in 1948, and President Trump today.

Trump has always been at his best when he is striking back against the elite, the media, and even some in his own Republican Party. It was no different at this time in 2016, when Trump had to overcome a tidal wave of criticism from nearly all sides in order to prevail.

Truman liked to fire people, as Trump has appropriately done. Truman, like Trump, also had a healthy disdain for the Swamp.

Meanwhile, for months Joe Biden has been channeling Thomas Dewey, Truman’s heavily favored opponent. Both Dewey and now Biden campaigned little, and instead relied on polls and experts who said they were a shoo-in to win the election.

Truman, like Trump, had pollsters telling him his approval ratings were too low to win. Some in his own party were even dismayed that Truman ran for reelection.

Truman, like Trump, appealed most to those without a college education. Truman, like Trump, had to fight a Congress that was controlled by the opposite party.

Truman wrangled against the media much as Trump does. When a Washington Post music critic wrote a harsh review of an unimpressive recital by Truman’s only child Margaret, Truman responded furiously by threatening him in writing.

“Some day I hope to meet you,” Truman wrote to the journalist Paul Hume. “When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”

The media was aghast at this and other crass behavior by Truman, but it did not hurt him with voters out in the Midwest. Trump's tenacious standing up against the media is also endearing him to voters.

When the 1948 election night returns began to roll in from the Eastern states, Dewey won states that experts thought sewed up the victory for him. He prevailed in places which he had lost four years earlier against FDR.

But then the Midwest stunned the experts by breaking Truman’s way, just as the Midwest could put Trump over the top in this election. Trump’s repudiation of the elite resonates in middle America, as it did for Truman.

The turnout in 1948 was low, just as it might be this year in light of how the television audience for the first presidential debate was down by more than 10% from 2016. An anemic overall turnout would probably help Trump, as it would be a more informed electorate rather than low information voters.

Worse than Dewey’s failure to campaign much in 1948, Biden is refusing even to answer basic questions about what he would do as president. Biden repeatedly dodges questions, as he did at the debate, about whether he will unfairly pack the Supreme Court with additional new justices.

Biden declined to debate Trump in person this week, which did not work for Jimmy Carter in 1980. First Carter did not show up for a debate with Ronald Reagan, and only later as polling broke against him did Carter agree to debate in what was by then too little, too late for him.

Voters, particularly in the Midwest, did not feel they knew what the easterner Dewey really stood for, or did not like what they did know about him. Many voters feel the same way about Biden.

Few are willing to show up for a Biden campaign event, in contrast with how thousands show up for Trump rallies despite how he has had COVID-19. On Sunday a massive crowd of thousands of cars paraded in support of Trump in Miami, in anticipation of his visit to Florida Monday night.

Signs, some in Spanish, declared their enthusiastic support for Trump and called for freedom in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. “Say NO to socialismo/communismo,” one sign exclaimed, grateful that Trump took a strong stance at the first debate against Biden’s socialist policies.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Failure to Protect the President

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Last Friday, Americans received a sobering reminder of how important it is to protect our president. The news that he was admitted to a hospital for the Wuhan coronavirus rattled our entire country, including the stock market.

Only a month before Election Day, liberals initially thought Trump’s illness would be advantageous to them, and many of them cheered his misfortune. They want Americans to vote Trump out of office next month, and they were thrilled that he briefly left the White House even earlier.

But quickly Democrats were dismayed to see how important the health of the president is to nearly every American. Average people, including even those who had voted against him last time, waited anxiously for updates about how our president was doing.

Unrelenting critics of Trump in the media suddenly felt compelled to report sympathetically on the status of his recovery, and how long he would remain in the hospital. Joe Biden, who had just called Trump vile names during the nationally televised debate a few days earlier, had no choice but to tweet out a message of support for Trump against this disease.

Trump’s foray out of the hospital for a little joy ride on Sunday afternoon even sparked intense national coverage by the press. His uneventful circling of the hospital was more important to Americans than who was winning the NFL football games being played in empty or near-empty stadiums.

There is an American tradition of rallying around our flag, and around our president against illness or attack. In this case both appear to be happening, as the illness apparently results from a virus spread by our greatest potential enemy, Communist China.

Though downplayed in the media, suspicion grows that COVID-19 was produced in a lab in Wuhan, which makes it a weapon of mass destruction different from past pandemics. Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese virologist who was a researcher at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, has explained why she believes the virus was made in a military laboratory by combining two bat coronaviruses.

If you have not heard of Dr. Yan, then it is probably because Twitter has censored her, too. As reported by Newsweek, Twitter suspended her account in mid-September without public explanation, despite her nearly 60,000 followers.

The communist Chinese have recently arrested her mother as retaliation. But Joe Biden and Democrats are silent about this human rights abuse and remain unwilling to hold China accountable for causing so much harm.

The Deep State is allied with Democrats and has failed to protect our president against this Chinese viral invasion. Apparently tanks and planes are easier to repel than a virus, particularly if genetically designed to cause harm.

All of Fauci’s horses and all of Fauci’s men have been useless in protecting Trump and our country. The reliance on testing obviously failed to keep the virus out of the White House.

Rapid-response testing delivers a false sense of confidence because it cannot detect the potential spread of the virus by travelers recently exposed to it elsewhere.

Participants in the White House nomination ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett were tested as urged by Fauci acolytes, but that test could not screen out those in recent contact with the virus on an airplane or in a car. Roughly a dozen attendees at that event have since contracted COVID-19, including the president himself.

But the president did not test positive until six days later, so perhaps he and others did not contract the virus at the mostly outdoor event after all. The CDC sought to perform contact tracing on all the attendees in order to conduct surveillance of all their activities, but President Trump wisely blocked that Big Brother monitoring.

Many who attended that event are political activists or conservative senators whose daily movements should not be subjected to the prying eyes of the Deep State. Endless mischief would result from intrusive inquiries into whom certain conservatives met with in celebrating the nomination of Judge Barrett or helping on her confirmation.

Attempts to blame President Trump for the spread of the coronavirus at the White House suffered an additional setback when top officials at the Pentagon went into quarantine after the Coast Guard vice commandant tested positive. Notice that the media do not blame the top brass there.

Meanwhile, the leftist approach of forcing schoolchildren to wear masks all day is worse than the drills of the 1950s, when children practiced hiding under their desks in the event of a nuclear attack. At least those drills were merely fleeting inconveniences, while the masking of schoolchildren has unlimited disruptive duration.

Americans cheered when President Trump, perhaps acting against medical advice, exited the hospital on Monday evening. Imagine how much more they will cheer if he wins reelection in November.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.