Meghan McCain and the Future of Progressive Politics

My new theory is that Meghan McCain is one sociology course away from becoming a raging liberal.

Seriously. This woman continues to amaze me. In her most recent blog post at The Daily Beast, McCain derides the Republican Party’s continued attempts to legislate sexuality. She writes:

“Daughters of Republican politicians aren’t expected to have sex, let alone enjoy it—as if there were some strange chastity belt automatically attached to us female offspring. God forbid anyone talk realistically about life experiences and natural, sexual instincts. Nope, the answer is always abstinence.”

Moreover,

“Here’s what I’ve never understood about the party: its resistance to discussing better access to birth control. As a Republican, I am pro-life. But using birth control and having an abortion are not the same at all. Actually, the best way to prevent abortions is to educate people about birth control and make it widely and easily accessible. True, abstinence is the only way to fully prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Still, the problem with abstinence-only education is that it does not make teenagers and young adults more knowledgeable about all the issues they face if or when they have sex—physically and emotionally.”

As I wrote before, I’m not down with the whole pro-life bit. But her honest discussion of sexuality, sexual desire, and birth control is largely on point. I think most Americans can agree that we’d like to keep the number of abortions in this country as low as possible. And as McCain points out, the solution lies in healthy sex education and access to birth control, not abstinence and the control of (mostly women’s) sexuality.

I’m tempted to email her the following message: “Dear Meghan, Race is a social construct. Let’s discuss.”—and just see what she says. Or maybe something about patriarchy. Or racial inequality in the criminal justice system. Or the reproduction of gender norms in the classroom. Or federal policy and the creation of inner city ghettoes. You know, like basic tenets of sociology that ring true empirically. It might spark conversations—and questions—that she never had before.

McCain’s comments point to the inherent fragility of the Republican Party’s big business-religious zealot coalition. They also point to the growing subset of self-identifying Republicans that sit on the fence between conservatism and liberalism—a subset that progressives can actively engage with, and (gasp) even learn from. Maybe we can build new coalitions. Maybe this is a positive step for the future of progressive politics.