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Women's Suffrage, Republicans Suffer
By Kay R. Daly
October 18, 2004

On the Tennessee Women for Kerry website, there is a photo of a gentleman named Harry Burn with the question captioned below, "Why is this Tennessee man so important?"

Tennessee State legislator Harry Burn cast the deciding vote for the 19th Amendment on August 18, 1920, which made Tennessee the 36th state to ratify the amendment, creating the two-thirds majority of state ratifications necessary to give women the vote.

What is not mentioned by the Tennessee Women for Kerry, or pretty much any other feminist website hailing this landmark vote, is that Harry Burn was a Republican.

Ratification of the 19th amendment had been repeatedly defeated in the United States Senate, held up by Southern Democrats determined not to give women the right to vote. It was not until 1919, when Republicans had a majority that the Senate finally passed what would become the 19th Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. One member of Congress left his wife's deathbed to vote for ratification. When he returned home following passage of the amendment, she had died.

It was then in the hands of the States, three-quarters of them required for passage. Nine states rejected it out of hand. Four more negative votes by States would kill it. Tennessee was one of the last four. Vermont and Connecticut had, like Tennessee, already recessed, and the Governors of those states refused to call special legislative sessions. A third state, Delaware, abstained from voting. So it was Tennessee alone that held the fate of the proposed amendment in its hands.

Going into the vote in Tennessee, it appeared that the amendment would suffer the same defeat as it had in other southern states. In the first roll call vote, Representative Banks Turner switched his vote to deadlock it at 48-48. The second roll call vote was taken and it remained 48-48.

At 24, Burns was a bachelor and the youngest legislator in the Tennessee House of Representatives, so because of seniority, Harry Burns was called on last to vote. His widowed mother had written him a telegram from her home in East Tennessee expressing her preference that he "be a good boy" and "vote for suffrage." He did.

After his "yea" vote, opponents to the amendment chased him around the room. To escape the outraged mob, Burn climbed out of the third-floor window of the state Capitol and hid in the Capitol attic until the melee subsided.

For all the trouble that Burn went through, as well as the Republican majority in the Senate that started the ratification ball rolling, even a dedicated student of history would be hard pressed to discover the critical role Republicans played in the women's suffrage movement.

Women have been sold a bill of goods by feminists for years. To hear of the feminist devotion to the Democratic party, one would believe that it was Democrats who gave women the right to vote. These Tennessee Women for Kerry may not have the slightest idea, nor care even if told, that it was the Republican party, not the Democrats, who gave women the right to vote. It is the height of irony that women have been given the right to vote by Republicans only to consistently beat them up with it.

Shockingly, it is a woman's right to abort one's child that trumps a woman's right to vote. Republicans handed the vote to women and they have been using it to defeat Republicans ever since.

The feminist movement now revolves entirely around its top profit center, the abortion mills. What was once a noble cause - enabling women to cast a vote - has now ground down to the dregs of the barrel - enabling women to cast aside inconvenient children.

It is that knock-down, drag out fight for abortion that caused an entire movement, supposedly based on the equality of women to turn their collective heads while President Bill Clinton set new records in the serial adultery category. Silence deafened the nation from this normally chatty corner of the leftist movement after the charges of rape emerged from a very credible Juanita Broaddrick.

In direct contrast, the women's movement literally went apoplectic over nonsensical charges of comments about pubic hairs on Coke cans, never words proven to have been uttered by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Why was Clarence Thomas publicly burned at the stake while Bill Clinton hailed as a hero despite his admitted abuse of women? Because the feminist movement has literally become tragically enslaved by one single issue.

Republicans share a portion of the blame here, however, for bird-brained ideas on how to market to women. This may come as a real shock to some, but many of us would rather be publicly flayed than watch Oprah, the Lifetime Channel or The View. We don't all accept the same marketing messages across the board, so treating us as a monolithic group is a waste of time.

For Bush to beat Kerry in the women's vote, issues of national security will have to trump the drumbeat of feminists on their one-note harangue on abortion. Hell hath no fury like a momma protecting her babies, and those are the women who need to be constantly reminded that President Bush will provide the first line of defense and won't need a permission slip from France to do it.

This campaign is going down to the wire and the women's vote could be a deciding factor. Moms who care about whether the War on Terror is fought in Baghdad or Boise need to step up to the voting booth and pull the lever for President Bush. Our security literally depends upon it.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.