GOP women sound alarm as Lindsay Clancy backlash revives calls to repeal 19th Amendment: ‘Definitely a threat’
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Calls to repeal women’s rights to vote are emerging from the online firestorm over the Lindsay Clancy trial, prompting Republican women to warn that the intraparty rhetoric could hurt the GOP.
"I think there’s definitely a threat in the Republican Party right now," political and legal strategist Mehek Cooke told Fox News Digital.
The online calls to repeal the 19th Amendment come after Clancy’s high-profile murder trial ended in a mistrial, with 11 of the 12 jurors favoring a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Clancy admitted to killing her three children, but her defense argued that she was not criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
LINDSAY CLANCY MISTRIAL DECLARED AFTER JURY DEADLOCKS IN KILLINGS OF HER THREE CHILDREN
"Convict Clancy. Also Repeal the 19th Amendment!" one user posted on X.
"The female jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial are speaking out about their deliberations and disagreements with the sole male holdout. The more they speak the better they make the case for repealing the 19th Amendment," posted another user.
Cooke warned that calls to strip women of the right to vote, largely coming from accounts identifying as conservative, risk alienating female voters from the Republican Party.
"When you have these fringe activists online talking about repealing the 19th Amendment or alienating women, it really doesn’t help," Cooke said.
The calls followed after the case made waves on social media, particularly after hundreds of mostly female Clancy supporters gathered outside a Massachusetts courthouse during the murder trial. The demonstrators rallying behind Clancy argued the case is an example of the lack of understanding of postpartum depression.
But the demonstrations quickly turned into ammunition for online critics who argued that the support for Clancy is an indication that women should be stripped of their right to vote.
"This Lindsay Clancy trial has shown us How spiteful women can be, the fact that women are willing to even defend a child killer just because they want to be ok with the "sisterhood" should alarm you," another user wrote on X.
The post continued, "They will gaslight you, they will use sign language against you and even try to call you all sort of names. But guess what, they are still wrong and they know it. Repeal the 19th."
Cooke pushed back on the idea that the calls to repeal the 19th Amendment reflect the reality of the mainstream Republican party.
"Social media isn’t real life," Cooke said. "I think a lot of people out there put these arbitrary crazy ideas, but it doesn’t really reflect what normal people think and what mainstream thinks."
She continued, "I think you're getting these calls because of where our culture is today. You looked at the Lindsay Clancy trial and all the women out there in pink that were continuing to support a woman who murdered three children. You're constantly seeing this cultural push in terms of where women stand today in politics."
Tiffany Losee, director of fundraising for The Conservative Caucus, told Fox News Digital that Democrats are to blame for pushing out this agenda and associating it with the broader Republican Party.
"You have to understand this is all a game to the Democrat Party," Losee said. "They’re going to push out anything that looks fringe on the right."
Losee also claimed that Democrats are using this rhetoric on the right to distract voters from the rise of socialism that has emerged within the Democratic Party, claiming if voters understood the ideals of the party they would "run faster than imaginable to get away from such government control."
"They're gonna push out crazy, Lindsay Clancy ideas, or ‘look over here at something shiny, or communism is cool, socialism is cool, everything's free,'" Losee said. "But then they will not take that extra step to educate the voter on what exactly they are pushing."
Cooke and Losee spoke to Fox News Digital on the issue as Republicans gathered in Dallas for the party’s first-ever midterm convention, where the GOP gathered to rally their base to vote as Republicans work to stay in control of Congress as November’s midterm elections approach.
"I think the left has constantly alienated women," Cooke said. "It's our responsibility to pull them in and show them common sense."