I finally wised up and switched over to C-Span tonight.  The Democrats did something interesting–they had a segment in which members of the House of Representatives who are women read letters from voters.  As one congresswoman after another spoke, I wondered: do the Republicans even have enough women in the House to do something like this?

To answer my question, I went through each congressional delegation (counting senators as well), and counted the number of Republican women who are members of Congress.  There are more than 240 Republican members of Congress, and just 26 are women.  The Democrats can beat that if you just count the delegations in two states: California and New York.  (California, with 21 almost does it singlehandedly).  Women are equal partners in the Democratic party, evidenced by their role in leadership, including the fact that the Speaker of the House is Nancy Pelosi.

This ought to be a national embarrassment.  It is certainly very telling.  The Republican party is not a party for all Americans–it is a party for the privileged few–mainly white men.  88 years after women won the right to vote, the Republican party still hasn’t found a way to make women a real part of their power structure.

Why not?  They don’t care.  That’s not what the Republican party is about.   It is most certainly not what John McCain is about.

Media elites have breathlessly gossiped over their manufactured controversy, wondering whether Hillary supporters would object that the impressive senator from New York didn’t get her due.  They should be asking how many years it will take before the Republican party can even conceive of getting to this point.  They should point out, at the Republican convention next week, that women are barely recognized by the Republican party.

Democratic primary voters can put 18 million cracks in a glass ceiling.  Republican women are still trying to break into the ground floor.  Next week, perhaps Chris Matthews will tell us what place the Republican party offers to women.