The Republican Party nationally and in New Jersey continues its assault on women, from promoting national legislation to restrict reproductive freedom to, in New Jersey, quashing a bill that would have guaranteed women workers equal pay. And Sussex County’s GOP has an explanation for why that’s okay, and it came from a woman.
Back in April, Jill Space, who had already by that time declared as a Trump delegate, told the New Jersey Herald that women weren’t supporting Trump in large numbers because “women are just not interested in politics.”
Even if Space considers herself an exception, seeing as she was a delegate to the Republican convention and currently serves as vice chair of the county’s Republican Party, her statement would have seemed clueless considering her chosen candidate would run against a –gasp!- woman who had been a U.S. senator and secretary of state.
Admittedly Space, the wife of Assemblyman Parker Space, who had a tough job explaining her support of, and a majority of women’s nonsupport of, a candidate who has referred to women as fat pigs, bragged about his ability to grab strange women by their genitals, agreed with a shock jock that his own daughter was a fine “piece of ass,” dismissed a woman reporter because she was probably “bleeding from wherever,” and referred to pregnancy termination as ripping that baby out of a womb. How can a woman heavily involved in politics justify her support for such a candidate, and the fact that so many women didn’t support him: What else can you say but “women are just not interested in politics.”
So no worries.
That an estimated 2 million people worldwide demonstrated on Jan. 21 in support of women’s rights would seem to indicate that, despite what Jill Space has averred, she, in her role as a county GOP chair and Trump-supporting delegate to the GOP, is not the only woman who is interested in politics.