Michael Walsh, conservative columnist, believes that a repeal of a number of Constitutional Amendments needs to take place in order to save the republic. The 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote is one of the amendments Walsh would like to repeal. In Walsh’s mind, the republic has fallen apart since women received the franchise. Walsh is, or at least I hope, is trolling his audience but it is difficult to discern if this is true because he goes all in for repeal. He wants to limit voters along the lines of ancient Greece and Rome which boils down to two groups — men who have served in the military and male property owners. This, of course, deprives a lot of people the franchise – all women and men who don’t own property — well over fifty percent of the present voting population.

Why Walsh would propose such a repeal is a bit mystifying. Most importantly, it is hugely unpopular. Since women presently have the vote and make up more than 50% of the population, how would this even be enacted in the present system? His very vague plan is that women will willingly surrender the vote when they all have a strong man to care for them. He also dredges up the old canards that women are too fickle and too emotional to be given such an important privilege. For proof of these weaknesses, he goes, again, back to ancient Rome. The Sabine women who were carried off by the Romans interceded to stop the war between their new husbands and their old families. Why women don’t have the sense to leave their kidnappers and rapist to return to their families. Men would never do that.

There are many problems with Walsh’s argument but I will stick to two. He provides no evidence that women are too emotional and too fickle to vote. Or that men only vote based on cold hard data and never let their emotions guide them. He bases is case on old stereotypes about women rather than, how shall I put this delicately, cold hard data. Given his supposition is based on the rational thinking man deserves the vote, he might have, at the very least, thrown is some data that proves his point. He doesn’t. In fact, his is an emotional response to how women vote instead of an exercise in rational thinking. Women vote Democratic and he doesn’t like it. Not liking something without data is just a tantrum but certainly not a demonstration of a reasonable being.

Then Walsh assumes that men took their role as husband and father seriously in the good old days. They didn’t. Women had husbands who drank their wages away, husbands who disappeared when they couldn’t fulfill their responsibilities, husbands who didn’t work and expected their wives to fulfill both roles as the provider and the family caretaker, and husbands who stiffed their wives on alimony and child support. Since some men failed in their obligations, women were left at the mercy of the men who ran the country. Given the male’s unemotional and rational approach to government, this meant very little help for any woman unfortunate enough to marry a loser. They should have made a wiser decision before walking up the aisle. At this point, many women reasonably, I dare say, decided to seek political power as a way of offsetting the feckless behavior of their husbands.

What Walsh really wants is to limit the franchise to people who vote Republican and eliminate potential Democratic voters. This can be clearly seen in the comments section of Instapundit where I initially found Walsh’s article. Again, probably more trolling done here, but the commenters want to limit the vote even further than Walsh. One person wants to eliminate all unmarried voters since they have no children and thus have no stake in the future. Another person shows in color coordinated blue and red maps that if voters were limited to white males that the Republicans would win every election.

What is missing here is how conservatives and Republicans might make their case to the wider franchise. Walsh and his commenters are admitting that they only appeal to white male voters and given up on persuading women to vote Republican. Instead Walsh proposes limiting the franchise to voters who already vote Republican. Given that women are so emotional and fickle, I find it difficult to understand why these superior male minds can’t come up with a scare tactic that will push these thoughtless creatures into voting Republican. What is more baffling is that they aren’t even trying very hard to persuade women to vote differently. Really, if you can’t outsmart people who you believe to have a weak and irrational mind, what good is your superior intelligence in the first place?