However, while I salute Laken Riley’s father -- he’s based – he is not the most interesting figure in all this. That title belongs to Laken Riley’s mother, Allyson Philips. As one wise Twitter user put it:
This is not only one hundred percent correct, but the point has never been more urgently needed. For too long now, those in the pundit class have been wringing their hands at the prospect of losing female voters, particularly suburban women. This was who Nikki Haley tried to turn into her core voter base. It’s why the establishment GOP has tried to rely on hamfisted identity politics in its choice of spokespeople, only to end up alienating the very women it was trying to reach. It’s also why the Democrats think abortion is their secret weapon this November.
The establishment GOP, and Nikki Haley, obviously are fools. The Democrats, on the other hand, are basically only correct by accident.
Let me explain: suburban women did not wake up bra-burning feminists just because of Dobbs v Jackson. The fact is, suburban women are one of America’s most conservative demographics, and by that I don’t mean “politically conservative,” I mean anti-change. More than anything, suburban women crave normalcy, and for better or worse, this is why they have disliked President Trump for so long. Trump is a disruptor, and everyone knows it. If suburban women dislike anything, it’s disruption, particularly when that disruption is attached to the kind of behavior that other women in their social circles find shameful. President Trump, with his brash persona and willingness to butcher sacred cows every time he speaks, is an uncomfortable fit with that mindset, even though the sacred cows he butchers (especially the woke ones) are only on the chopping block because their “sacredness” is a sham. That kind of nuance, however, won’t fly at a knitting circle or a homeowners’ association.
However, what will fly, and what every suburban woman will respect, is the necessity of defending one’s children. Which gets to why I say Alyson Philips is so important: Whether President Biden knows it or not (and I suspect he’d forget it in minutes if anyone told him), he has given permission to every white suburban mom in America to vote for Trump not as a matter of preference, but as a matter of survival for their daughters.
Consider for a moment what Biden’s reaction to Laken Riley’s death has shown those women: First, Biden refused to acknowledge her at all. Then, he acknowledged her, but butchered her name and tried to play whataboutism with her death (in this case, “what about all those women killed by non-illegals”). Then, he apologized not for getting the victim’s name wrong, but for calling her murderer an “illegal,” because it might be offensive. Then, his White House staff started frantically trying to gaslight America into thinking Biden didn’t apologize at all, when it became clear that this act of woke spinelessness wasn’t playing well.
If you want your government – and its head – to protect your children, what message does this send? That for Democrats, protecting the lives of your children, or seeking justice if their lives are taken, is subject entirely to whether poll numbers override the instincts of staffers educated in Ivy League American Studies Departments. In short, as I said at the start, the Democrats see white suburban girls as acceptable targets, unless their deaths are too unsightly, in which case they won’t even be able to decide whether to pretend to care.
This is the face of anarcho-tyranny when its mask is ripped off: a doddering old man using freshman debate tricks to explain why your daughter’s life didn’t really matter, and by the way, how dare you bring it up, Karen. This is what the Democrats are offering to America’s suburban women.
President Trump, on the other hand, offers something that the Left has falsely treated as beyond his capacity for years – that is, he offers empathy. He offers justice. He offers protection, safety, and yes, normalcy: a world where your daughter can go to nursing school and not fear that some filthy, psychotic intruder on American society will butcher her. Whereas under Biden, every suburban mom has to fear becoming the next Alyson Phillips, under President Trump, she can sleep easy, knowing that the authorities will not let the people into the country who might make her daughter become the next Laken Riley. And if, by some chance, those people sneak by under cover of darkness, she can at least know that justice will be served after the awful phone call where a stone-faced policeman tells her that her world has broken.
And so, the image of Laken Riley, and of her poor mother Alyson Phillips, must be put front and center for every suburban woman between now and November, along with a simple message: This is what they want for you. This is what they think you deserve. This is what you have to look forward to under four more years of Joe Biden. If America’s suburban women understand that, then there is no need for absurdly delivered, identity politics-driven speeches. There is no need to kowtow to the Nikki Haleys of the world, or their neocon boosters. The only thing that will matter, then, to them, and to the future of America, is the lives of their children. And to protect that, there is only one candidate in this race: Donald J. Trump.
