ustxtxb_obs_1996_09_27_50_00013-00000_000.pdf

REV’ t YOUR SPIRITS fiT iNE \\RD UUST011 -01119 111LIfill fIT IISTROUJORLD 1001 9.E gplus tax Package includes: commodalions, Double Occupancy * Two tickets to Astroworld or $166.00 phis 15% tax Two nights Accommodations Two tickets to Astroworld Additional discounted Astroworld tkkets are available for purchase at the hotel. The newly renovated Hobby Airport Hilton allows you easy access to many popular Texas attractions, including the Astrodome 10 minutes, NASA 20 minutes, Galveston Island 45 minutes, Galleria shopping 20 minutes, Gulf Greyhound Park 30 minutes, and Downtown 20 minutes. During your stay, enjoy free HBO, new 25′ TV’s, fine dining, and our Sundance Lounge. Cool off in our beautiful pool nestled in a beautiful Mediterranean style setting. Package available through September 1996 and valid Thursday Sunday, based on availability. Limited availability, advanced reservations required. Offer can not be combined with other promotional offers, award stays, or group stays. For reservations, call your professional travel agent or contact 1-800-HILTONS. Houston Hobby Airport 8181 Airport Road, Houston, TX 77061 713-645-3000 Fax 713-645-1409 SHE’S RUNNING FOR OFFICE, NOT HOSTING A CHARITY BALL, AND FOR HER AS FOR OTHER REPUBLICAN WOMEN,THE “TOLERANCE” QUESTION GOES BEYOND ABORTION, AND SPEAKS TO WOMEN’S VERY ABILITY TO EXIST WITHIN THE PARTY. sary. Instead of World War II icon Rosie the Riveter’s “We Can Do It!,” these women cryas if fending off an accusation”I can do it myself!” “People have come to depend on rules rather than depend on themselves,” states McKenna disapprovingly. It’s rugged individualism with a twist: McKenna is both the boardroom pioneer and the mother who’s come home to find the kitchen a mess and the kids watching television. Much of her message boils down to “Get off your butts”; Republican moderates need to organize and voters need to go to the polls. “As Nancy Kassebaum said, ‘Politics is not a spectator sport,'” McKenna says, “and that’s what it’s become. People don’t feel they have to go out there and do anything anymore.” While urging moderates to get involved, McKenna makes her case against the Christian right indirectly, arguing for instance that the country needs to improve its public education system rather than introduce the vouchers favored by religious conservatives. More generally, she emphasizes the “economic” \(as opposed to Congress, she says, was the difficult time she and her husband had trying to run a small consulting company from 1989 to 1993too many government regulations, too many hassles in securing health care for employees. “That’s what got me repoliticized,” says McKenna, who worked in Washington after college but stayed out of politics for almost twenty years. Like many pro-choice conservatives, she argues that respecting a woman’s right to choose is solid Republican thinking: “The Republican party has been strong recently in national voting because it has promised to get government out of your business life. The social side of the party is making a mistake to think adding regulation on the personal side will be what society’s really looking for.” But these remarks point to the schism that lies beneath the GOP’s fragile anti-government consensus. Both the “social conservatives” and the “economic conservatives” argue that government must be rolled back, but what the word “government” means differs from one side to the other. For religious conservatives, government is the menacing organ of corrupt cultural conformity, the liberal-dominated conspiracy to spread harmful doctrines like Darwinism and homosexuality across the land, while for moderates like McKenna, goverriment is the tangle of unnecessary regulations that hampers reasonable professionals in running their own businesses. The “center” McKenna describes seems a creature less of the Republican party than of a certain bipartisan class of suburbanbred baby boomers, who envision a country of hardworking, homeowning families, where God and government lie in the background, and good common sense prevails. Hillary Clinton is as much a spokesperson for this center as Dolly McKenna is, both of them women with unassailable credentialsprofessional success, children, church membershipsready to claim credit for all they’ve achieved, and to promote education and hard work as the means to achievement. They are members of a generation of women on the cusp, who came from comfortable circumstances, who belonged to sororities they didn’t quite want to be in, who succeeded in male-dominated offices but not without swallowing their share of harassment and solitary lunches. Now they ascend to the podium–only to be shouted down by Bible-beating doctors with fistfuls of cash, or the women who stayed home with the children, or William Safire. Whether you agree with these women or not, it’s impressive the way they stay up there. In a last-minute campaign against eight opponents, it will be difficult for McKenna even to make the runoff, if there is onedoes she expect to win, or is making her statement as a big-tent, pro-choice Republican what counts? “I do believe in social tolerance, but that’s not why I’m running,” she says. “I’m out to win an election.” Observer intern Karen Olsson has written for Civilization, Washington’s City Paper, and other publications. Th Hilton lop ond4crype aro ragistesed trasiontalits of Hilton Hotels Corporation. 01996 /Talton Rath. SEPTEMBER 27, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 13