Dangerous, Hypocritical Girls' Games: The White House Project

Last Tuesday [8/26/08], a coalition of feminist groups, including the White House Project, held a forum on women in politics at the Performing Arts Center in Denver. By week’s end, their world was rocked. On Friday, John MCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate. The White House Project exists to get women elected to office — and ultimately, to the White House. But in much the same way that the NAACP doesn’t exist to herald Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell, feminists really only champion a certain type of woman — a type Sarah Palin doesn’t fit. Quote from Katheryn Lopez - "We're Not Sisters with Her, at National Review Online

The White House Project is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. It is considered a charity. The mission is to woo young women to their leadership programs, to be groomed to do the work of Liberal women. Is my statement biased or over stated? Maybe, but judging by the WHP's Board of Directors, this organization is decidely Liberal-leaning. To echo Katherine Lopez, the WHP will not be helping Sarah to the White House. When Palin was announced as McCain's VP choice, the stalwart leader and President of the WHP, Marie Wilson, wrote a piece for the Huffington Post. In her Hostage to Abortion Politics," she opines that Palin's pro-life posture puts American women in an impossible situation: choose a woman on the merit of being a woman, or choose a women who is pro-choice. Nevermind that Roe v Wade is "settled" law, and the Obama-Biden ticket is exceedingly unattractive on issues that many pro-choice women may be concerned about. Wilson sees pro-choice this way:

...the way our country should "choose life" -- by choosing policies that don't condone torture or chain immigrant women to their beds while their children are taken away (it happened in Tennessee recently; look it up) So yes, I "choose life," and I will choose only politicians who do the same. It has very little to do with abortion and everything to do with the lives that follow in the wake of birth.

In otherwords, by choosing to abort your child, you have chosen to choose life. It's the Bill Clinton maneuver of Monicagate: "...it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Wilson's rhetoric is dishonest. You cannot choose life, and abort a child...then say you've chosen life by championing the life of those you decided to give life to. Being pro-choice is one thing...being this baldly dishonest about the result of choosing abortion, is another. Here's a few more gems from Lopez:

...Feminists for Life and the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List are fully behind Palin.... If you’re voting because you’re into good girl role models, you’ll like “Sarah” (as everyone seems to be referring to her), who is very far away from the faux-feminism of the one-free-grope Clinton apologists — something most self-proclaimed feminists can say.... If women flock to McCain-Palin, it may not be because Palin has a uterus but because they vote Republican, know we’re at war, and aren’t into the silly girls’ games the Left likes to play.

The White House Project's Women Leaders page reveals the philosophy behind the Project, and there is nothing non-partisan about it. Of the twenty-one (21) WHP Board Members, including President Wilson, I found sixteen (16) of them listed as Democrat contributors at FundRace2008 at the Huffington Post. No information was available on the remaining four (4). Donations by White House Project President and Board of Directors: Links are provided to each donation. It is obvious that some of these donation were made a few years ago and are not pertinent to today's elections. Not all donations to Democrats found at FundRace 2008 are shown. My apologies if there is a typo or you find a transposition (a confirming link is provided). President (and founder MS Foundation): Marie Wilson: $2200 to Hillary Clinton, $1050 to John Kerry, $750 to DNC, $500 to Carol Mosely Braun, $1200 Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), Barbara Bridges (CO): $10,000.00 to Barack Obama, $10,000 to Dem. Congressional Campaign, $2300 to Hillary Clinton, $1800 to John Salazar, $389 to Barack Obama, $2000 to Joe Lieberman, $500 to Howard Dean Abigail E. Disney (NY): $25,000 to Obama, $28,500 to the Dem. Senatorial Committee, $33,500 to the Dem. Congressional Committee, $10,000 to Al Franken, $2,500.00 to John Kerry, and other Democrat Senatorial races. Barbara Dobkin: $4200 to Hillary Clinton, $1250 to Obama, $2300 to Bill Richardson, $1000 to Carl Levin, $250 to Al Franken, $2000 to John Kerry Wini Freund: $205 to Barack Obama, $350 to John Kerry Donna P. Hall: $2300 Mark Udall (D-CO), $1750 to John Kerry, $500 Dem. Congressional Campaign Committee Gara Lamarche: $1300 to Barack Obama Lucie Lapovsky: $2420 to Hillary Clinton Deborah Slaner Larkin: $4200 to Hillary Clinton, $500 to Al Franken, $250 to moveon.org, $2000 to John Kerry, $1000 to Howard Dean, $500 to Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) running for U.S. Senate Colleen May: $2000 to Hillary Clinton, $1500 to the DNC, $600 to John Kerry, $100 to Howard Dean Mary McCormick: $350 to Howard Dean Zina Pierre: $1000 to Hillary Clinton, $1000 John Kerry, $1000 Dem. Party of S.C. Wendy Puriefoy: $970 to Hillary Clinton, $500 to Barack Obama, $250 to the DNC The Reverend Dr. Katherine Ragsdale: $500 to NARAL Pro-Choice America Susan L. Taylor: $2300 to Barack Obama Davia Temin: $2300 to Hillary Clinton Within the WHP's Corporate Council Members, I did find some contributions to Republicans: Mellody Hobson from Ariel Capital Management: $2300 to Barack Obama, $15,000 to Dem. Congressional Campaign, $2500 to Dem Senatorial Campaign, $2300 to Charles Rangel, $2300 to Jesse Jackson, $900 to John Edwards Mayree Clark, Aetos Capital, LLC: $2300 to John McCain, $2300 to Hillary Clinton, $500 to Barack Obama, $275 to the RNC, $2000 to John Kerry Laura Bishop, Best Buy: $766 to Hillary Clinton Janice Reals Ellig, Chadick, Ellig Executive Search Advisors: $1000 to John McCain Carolyn Buck-Luce, Ernst & Young: $10,000 to the DNC, $1,000 to Wesley Clark JoAnn Heffernan Heisen, Johnson & Johnson: $1000 to John McCain Anne Erni, Lehman Brothers: $4600 to Barack Obama Rose Shabat, Lehman Brothers: $2300 to Hillary Clinton Toby Graff, Lifetime: $500 Hillary Clinton, $250 the DNC Linda Zecher, Microsoft: $6400 to Hillary Clinton, $2500 to the Dem. Party of Virginia Linda Riefler, Morgan Stanley: $2300 to Hillary Clinton, $1000 to Chris Dodd, $1000 to Barack Obama, $1,000 to George W. Bush Then there is the Advisory Board of approximately sixty-one (61) members; among them: Lilly Tomlin, Kathy Najimy, Walter Mondale, Dee Dee Myers, Arriana Huffington, Eleanor Clift, and Donna Brazile. As I began checking donations, I realized it was probably not going to result in finding even a lone Republican donor, and if there are Conservative donors, they are few. The White House Project may NEVER get a woman into the White House because they are out-of-step with traditional American values. As they help train young entrepreneurial women (a good thing), abortion is their issue, and to these women, abortion tops our Nation's security. With Sarah Palin's possible transition to the White House, organizations like the White House Project strive to plant the seeds of their pro-choice agenda as the only agenda that can give women control of their lives. At the same time, they abandon the pro-choice women who are more complex than one-issue voters.