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Friday, Dec 14, 2012 4:59 PM UTC

Pundit: GOP should buy women’s magazines

Instapundit says Republicans should sway voters through the media

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Topics: Conservatism, Propaganda, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Charles Krauthammer, Magazines, Media, , , ,

Pundit: GOP should buy women's magazinesThe letter from the editor page from the August 2012 issue of the popular teen magazine Seventeen. (AP/Seventeen)

In a New York Post editorial, Instapundit’s Glenn Harlan Reynolds has a simple reason for why Republicans performed poorly with “low-information” female voters: The party didn’t make nice in the media. Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson threw $150 million at the campaign but Reynolds would like to see the money spent on a friendlier brand of propaganda than attack ads:

My suggestion: Buy some women’s magazines. No, really. Or at least some women’s Web sites…

For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.

For the pro-Republican stuff, well, just visit the “Real Mitt Romney” page at snopes.com, or look up the time Mitt Romney rescued a 14-year-old kidnap victim, to see the kind of feel-good stories that could have been running. For the others, well, it would run articles on whether Bill Clinton should get a pass on his affairs, whether it’s right that the Obama White House pays women less than men, and reports on how the tax system punishes women.

In his first Washington Post column after November’s drubbing, the influential conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer also said the party’s way forward is to change the wallpaper. Sen. Marco Rubio, R.-Fla., who is Hispanic, could advocating hard-line immigration policies.

Reynolds is agitating for something similar. Sarah Palin was an attempt to woo women to the GOP without changing the party’s agenda. It didn’t work. It’s as if they think voters can’t differentiate the message from the messenger.

Alex Halperin is news editor at Salon. You can follow him on Twitter @alexhalperin. More Alex Halperin.

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