Jennifer Carnahan: In 2020, Republican Women Have a Strong Tradition to Uphold

by Jennifer Carnahan

Ninety-nine years ago, Republican women advanced a movement begun in the West to a national audience, using the new 19th Amendment to register women to vote all over the country.

Their efforts proved crucial to Republican electoral dominance throughout the 1920s.

What better way to celebrate the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women’s suffrage than to learn the skills you’ll need to carry on that proud tradition? That will be the goal of Women for Trump, and you can join the effort this Thursday at the Greenhaven Golf Course in Anoka, MN, where we’ll be training women to recruit new members to a movement that is as important as women’s suffrage was a century ago.

It’s not simply because next year’s presidential election marks the 100th anniversary of American women’s participation in electoral politics that it’s so fitting to get involved now. It’s also because helping this administration secure another four years is the greatest political opportunity to help women that has come along in many years.

The circus of radical Democratic candidates wants to make this election about overblown smears, conspiracy theories, and exaggerated social wedge issues. It’s not going to work. In the end, what matters to ordinary Americans — especially pragmatic women who have to balance a career and running a household — is dollars and cents for their families, not the latest made-up “scandal” on cable news.

That’s a good strategy for these Democrats, because when they do talk substance, it’s clear how much harm they’d do to the finances of working families. The party of “if you like your doctor can keep your doctor,” is now asking you to hand them even more control of health care.

The average household here in Minnesota saved around $1,400 from the President Trump’s tax cuts. Even giving that up wouldn’t come close to covering the expense of creating a “public option” government-run health care system. Even Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren are starting to admit that you’ll have to pay even more to support it. Best of all, if the “medicare for all” bill were to be passed as it stands now, that “public option” won’t be an option at all. The employer-based health care you probably depend on would become illegal.

President Trump, meanwhile, is committed to preserving protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions, and at the same time he’s making it even easier for Americans with employer-provided health coverage to shop around for the plan that best suits their individual needs.

This President has also led American to the longest sustained period of economic growth in American history going after he turned the anemic recovery of the Obama years into an economic boom of historic proportions.

Good jobs are now being created at a dizzying pace and wages are growing rapidly, in contrast to the Obama era, when economic gains were concentrated among wealthy Wall Street investors. Three percent GDP growth is nice, but it’s even more significant that wage growth is topping 3 percent for the first time since before the Great Recession. In fact, the Trump administration just celebrated 12 straight months with wage growth of at least 3 percent.

Women are right at the forefront of this economic boom. Last year, American women achieved their lowest unemployment rate in the modern era: 3.6 percent. That hasn’t happened since 1954, when the role of women in the workforce was … different, to say the least.

With only a year and five months left in President Trump’s first term, we can’t afford to be complicit or take our recent progress for granted. There’s so much left to do. President Trump has been trying to get an infrastructure bill passed to address our rapidly deteriorating roads, bridges, railyards, and airports. Despite its overwhelming popularity, Democrats have obstructed any serious effort to fix the problem. We need four more years and a healthy mandate to get it done.

It’s our job to make sure that every one of the women benefiting from this administration’s policies is registered to vote so they can help turn Minnesota red next year and defend the gains we’ve made under President Trump. So please join Women for Trump at the at the Greenhaven Golf Course on tonight, Aug. 22 at 6:30 p.m. and learn how to join this movement!

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Jennifer Carnahan is the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Minnesota.