Sarah's America (two)

Here's another NIXONLAND parallel. In 1966 George Wallace, when he couldn't run for governor again because of Alabama law, decided to run his wife Lurleen instead. (He pledged, magnanimously, to work as her "adviser" for a dollar a year.) Liberals had high hopes for her primary opponent Richmond Flowers, the state's former attorney general, who they hoped would ride black registration under the new Voting Rights Act to the Statehouse. Then, as I write,

Richmond Flowers ran his campign into a ditch when he pointed out that Lurleen was a high school dropout. An attorney general's lapse in chivalry was apparently more disqualification for higher office than the lack of a twelfth-grade education. his support crumbled. Lurleen won in a landslide.

The right is spinning their "you're not allowed to criticize a lady" nonsense as "feminist." Actually, it's feudal.