Who said that? Groper? Sexual misconduct? These terms have a vaguely familiar ring to them. But these aren't Republican women clamoring to condemn an aggressive intern-handler. These are feminists, those same staunch defenders of women's delicate sensibilities who averted their eyes when Bill Clinton was groping and sexually misconduct-ing in the little room off the Oval Office.
Republican women, meanwhile, are mimicking the feminist sisterhood in the face of Schwarzenegger's alleged transgressions, winking at rumors and changing the subject. Sunday, the Republican Women's Caucus endorsed Schwarzenegger.
"He supports family, he supports schools, and I think that's the most important thing," Sherry Johanson, public-relations chair of the California Federation of Republican Women, was quoted as saying in The Washington Post. Unlike, say, all those other candidates out there who do not support family and schools.
The important thing is that, when it comes to politics, women's principles apparently are fungible. Either male hostility (enjoying dunking a woman's head in the toilet, for instance) is unacceptable or it isn't. Either sexual harassment in the workplace is unacceptable or it isn't.
Bill Clinton did have sex with that woman while holding the highest office in the land. He clearly was enjoying one of the perks of power while helping to advance policies that punished lesser mortals for inferior infractions. As a matter of principle, the feminists might have condemned the behavior. (They were mum.)
As for Schwarzenegger, he does have a reputation at least as titillating as Bill Clinton once had, based not on made-up media reports but on the claims of real women from his past. Yet the same crowd that rallied for Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broaddrick and others can't find anything believable among the women who claim that Schwarzenegger groped them.
The phenomenon of principles selectively applied is nothing new, but women's groups both left and right have surrendered any moral high ground they might have once claimed. They're just one of the boys now. What woman wants, she may alas deserve.