From the great Gloria Steinem, an op-ed in the LA Times today and also posted at the Women’s Media Center on Sarah Palin’s vice-president candidacy. She makes an interesting point about what this says about women’s political power:

Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing—the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party—are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president.

But of course, Sarah Palin is a decidedly anti-feminist candidate. As Steinem writes, if McCain hoped bringing a female vice president onto his campaign was going to bring the women to him in droves, it’s not going to work:

Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence–only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high–school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but she supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

For one of the most powerful denunciations of McCain’s pick, go here.

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