Where are they?

I've become a news junkie. I listen to the news on the radio, watch it on TV, and surf the net reading the paper, blogs, and anything I can find to reassure myself that Obama has a chance of winning this election. In the process, I've noticed a lack of conservative voices who are female -- Republican women who have stated their opinion on the fate of their Republican candidates.

Conservative thinkers David Brooks, William Kristol, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Buckley, Matthew Dowd -- they're all saying something negative about the McCain campaign though they are in disagreement as to the choice of Palin as the VP candidate. While conservative columnist Kathleen Parker (on the Colbert Report) spoke out, she is the only conservative woman I've heard say what I think needs to be said: Conservative men are blinded by the hard-on they have for Palin.

Parker's observation that conservative men find nothing sexier than a hot woman gutting a moose hit that erect nail right on its head. But why is she the lone female voice? Where's the wisdom of Kay Bailey Hutchinson? Where's the refined commentary of Olympia Snow or Susan Collins? We haven't even heard a word from Elizabeth Dole or Barbara Bush for that matter. Has anyone interviewed Condie Rice or Gale Norton? Surely they have some opinion and even if their opinion is counter to mine, at least they'd be saying something. As it is, they are silent and silence does not become them.

Sure, the conservative female pundits on TV are talking, but they're paid to stir things up not go out and seek the voices of conservative female politicians who think Palin was the wrong choice or eventhe right choice. And even those conservative female talking heads have been rather absent and quiet.

For that matter, Hillary Clinton has been relatively mute on the choice of Palin and you know she has an opinion -- she always does.

I applaud Kathleen Parker for speaking out, for putting a name to the ga-ga reactions of David Brooks and William Kristol. I applaud her for critizing one of her own. I applaud her for criticizing a "sister." I applaud her for calling out the stereotypical male view of a woman, of calling a sex kitten a sex kitten even when she receives vile criticism from male conservatives (one email she received bemoaned the fact that she had not been aborted).

But I'm disappointed that other women haven't done so. Deeply disappointed. And all of this feeds my junkie habits -- I surf the net, I surf the channels, I thumb through the newspapers trying to find someone other than Rachel Maddow and Campbell Brown who have risked giving voice to the step backwards Palin represents. The many steps backward.

It's become a Stepford election and I'm longing for someone brash and brave to step forward and break the trance. Someone female and Republican that is. Where are they?