<p>UPDATE: In 2016, I faced my first hurricane. ; Based on the alarming reports we sealed up the house, took in everything outside that was not nailed down. ; Inside, I packed up valuables for protective storage. ; All the reports said that a monster hurricane would soon be bearing down on the house. ; We tracked it on television &ndash; minute by nervous minute. ; The eye was just a few miles away in the Atlantic Ocean. ; At the height of scheduled impact, we ventured outside. The breeze had picked up to a kite flying level. ; There was a short shower. ; It was over. ; All the scary talk amounted to nothing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, what is the point? ; The just-concluded government shutdown reminded me of that hurricane. ; So much political hysteria &ndash; constant news reports covering the clashing and teeth gnashing of our nation&rsquo;s leaders. ; So many predictions of imminent catastrophe. ; It is now over. ; The government is back in the business of spending and wasting our taxpayer money. ; The impact on the leeward side of the shutdown is imperceptible.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, what was achieved? Nothing other than the embarrassment of the Chuck Schumer-led Democratic Party for creating this Kabuki Theater melodrama. ; Why a senator as supposedly savvy as Schumer would have led his party into this dead-end swamp without an exit strategy is inexplicable.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While Schumer and the Democrats criticized Trump for not hosting a meeting of Senate leaders during the shutdown, the President totally outfoxed them. ; When Trump announced that he would not talk to the Democrats about anything until they voted to re-open the government, Schumer had only one option left &ndash; cave in. ; Trump had held his tough negotiating position.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While Schumer and Democrats spun their best face-saving arguments, they revealed a simple truth.  ;A face saver means you totally lost. ; They claimed to have extracted an agreement to deal with the Dreamers in the next three weeks. ; That was hardly a concession by the Republicans since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced in December that he would bring up the Dreamer issue in late January or early February. ; That was already baked in when Schumer led his caucus off the political cliff.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Many Democrats said they were happy to vote to save the CHIPS program that provides insurance coverage for children. ; That program expired last Friday. ; It was the Republicans who included it in their funding bill and they extended coverage for six years &ndash; longer than the Democrats had proposed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Schumer miscalculated public reaction. ; He assumed that the GOP would get the blame for the shutdown, and that appeared to be the case on day one. ; But, Trump and the Republicans were correct in believing that the tide would turn as soon as the implications of the shutdown sunk in with the voters. ; By day two, more than 50 percent of Americans wanted the government funded without the DACA demand. ; Many of these people were telegraphing that demand to many of the Democrat senators.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Schumer&rsquo;s action fractured the solidarity of his members. ; By Monday, a number of Democrat senators were ready to abandon Schumer&rsquo;s inept strategy. ; He had no choice but to lead his forces in full retreat.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He also alienated the hard-left core of the Democrat base. Once he made DACA the keystone of the resistance, he created a no-win position for himself. ; This resulted in unusual rebukes from key members of his own party.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Schumer may have also undermined the giddy confidence that his party and the media expressed in predicting the outcome of the 2018 congressional elections. ; Republicans now have a persuasive argument that they funded CHIPS and that they will have provided permanent status for the Dreamers &ndash; something that is as certain as anything in the political world today.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Now on to the subject of today&rsquo;s commentary.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><em>There are women, and there are feminists</em></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a name="_Hlk504421281"></a>The women&rsquo;s role in politics has again resurfaced much like the fictional Brigadoon. ; We have had previous &ldquo;years of the woman.&rdquo; ; There was the hardcore feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s led by such personalities as Bella Abzug, Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem &ndash; who amazingly is still around.  ;Those for whom college life is a distant memory may recall the later years of the &ldquo;soccer moms.&rdquo; ; In all these manifestations, Republicans were said to have a &ldquo;woman problem.&rdquo;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In 1984, the left-wing feminists were suffering collective vapors over the thought of electing Geraldine Ferraro as the first female Vice President of the United States. ; At the time, I joined the local head of the National Organization of Women (NOW) on a television program to discuss the impact Ferraro might have on the ticket. ; My political adversary waxed eloquently on how a woman on the ticket would energize the distaff half of America and would provide the winning margin for Democrat presidential candidate Walter Mondale. ; Knowing that left-wing feminists do not represent most women, I boldly predicted that Ronald Reagan would not only win the election, but he would carry the majority of the women&rsquo;s vote. ; As you can imagine, I would not have mentioned my prediction had it not been correct.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For as long as I can remember, the national media has always equated liberal Democrat feminists as the voice of all women and all women-related issues. ; That has never been true. ; In fact, for more than 20 years the more radical feminist movement has been mostly on the back burner of American political life. ; I measure its decline to the 1990s when the Democrat ladies of the left prostrated themselves in front of President Bill Clinton &ndash; mounting a purely partisan defense for one of the most outrageous male chauvinists to ever occupy the Oval Office. ; Their hypocrisy was palpable and suffocated the movement&rsquo;s credibility.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Since the election of Donald Trump, the feminist branch of the Democratic Party has overcome their credibility problem with an ironic dose of hypocrisy. ; It is now obvious that their position on presidents (no double entendre intended) is purely partisan. ; The old Clinton era mantra that a president&rsquo;s private life does not matter has morphed into a belief that a president&rsquo;s private life is all that matters.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Democratic Party is not only creating modern false narratives to suit a governing philosophy based on mythical beliefs and outright falsehoods, they continue to fraudulently misrepresent the Party&rsquo;s sad history. ; In this year of women&rsquo;s issues, it is noteworthy to check out their past claims.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In its claim of historical beneficence to women, the actual record of the Democratic Party is far removed from the proffered narrative. ; In the history published on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) website, they make this boast.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><em>&ldquo;</em><em>Under the leadership of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. Constitution was amended to grant women the right to vote. In August of 1920, Tennessee&#8217;s became the 36th state to ratify women&#8217;s suffrage, and it became our nation&#8217;s 19th amendment.&rdquo;</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What is wrong with this statement? ; Everything.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Woodrow Wilson was a white supremacist and male chauvinist who saw the role of women as subordinate to men. ; His views of women would have been more suited to today&rsquo;s Iran than the current United States.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Many of the activist women of the Wilsonian era were both abolitionist and suffragettes. ; For both reasons, they were all Republicans, including Susan B. Anthony. ; The GOP was anti-slavery and fully in support of women&rsquo;s equality and the right to vote</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">During most of Wilson&rsquo;s term of office, a voting rights amendment was supported and even passed by Republicans in the House only to be blocked by the Democrat-controlled Senate, with Wilson in tacit agreement. ; ; ; On the eve of the 1918 election, President Wilson reluctantly endorsed the amendment as a pragmatic necessity. ; He believed that Democrat opposition against growing public support for the women&rsquo;s vote could cost Democrats control of the Senate. ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Wilson calculated that if the GOP took the Senate, the amendment would be passed and enacted, and his endorsement would be credited &ndash; at least it would obfuscate the issue. ; If the Democrats retained control, Wilson could walk away from his endorsement and let his partisan colleagues again kill the measure. ; ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the election of 1918, the GOP took control of the Senate with the support for a woman&rsquo;s right to vote being a major factor. ; The passage of what was known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment was assured. ; After quick passage by the new Congress in 1919, with predictable Democrat opposition, the amendment was ratified by the predominantly Republican state legislatures in just 441 days.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Wilson&rsquo;s pragmatic endorsement was meaningless. ; It did not stop congressional Democrats from opposing it and the Republicans already had the votes to pass the resolution. ; Furthermore, constitutional amendments go directly from the Congress to the state legislatures. ; The President does not need to sign them, nor can he veto them. ; In other words, the DNC claim that it was under &ldquo;the leadership of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson&rdquo; is totally false. ; It may have happened on his watch, but not because of his leadership.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a symbolic show of defiance, most of the Democrat-controlled states, which were once the backbone of the Confederacy, did not vote for ratification for many years &ndash; Maryland (1941), Virginia (1952), Alabama (1953), Florida (1969), South Carolina (1969), Georgia (1970), Louisiana (1970), North Carolina (1971) and Mississippi (1984).</p>
<p> ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> ;</p>