Never mind about Project 2025: A Republican congressman just wants to go back to the good old days of 1960, before “the angry feminist movement” ruined things for men.
In a speech on the House floor Thursday, Representative Glenn Grothman railed against government programs such as subsidized childcare, calling out President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” as taking “the purpose out of the man’s life, because now you have a basket of goodies for the mom.”
“They’ve taken the purpose of the man to be part of a family,” Grothman said. “And if we want to get America back to, say, 1960, where this was almost unheard of, we have to fundamentally change these programs.”
Grothman went further in his misogynist rant, blaming the “breakdown of the family” on “people like Angela Davis, well-known Communist, people like the feminists who were so important in the 1960s” and somehow coupling them with the U.S. government in the 1960s.
“So I hope the press corps picks up on this, and I hope Republican and Democrat leadership put together some sort of plan for January, in which we work our way back to where America was in the 1960s,” Grothman added.
At least part of the press will pick up on Grothman’s remarks, but not for the reason he wants. Not only is his recollection of history way off, but it’s highly doubtful that Republicans and Democrats would ever want to work together to bring back gender imbalances from 60 years ago. If Grothman thinks the purpose of men is diminished because of “a basket of goodies for the mom,” he is quite mistaken. Single mothers and other women still don’t earn salaries as high as men’s, and the “goodies” have been vastly reduced or in some cases eliminated by Grothman and his fellow conservatives.
And while more than a few Republicans have criticized the reforms of the Johnson administration, their hypocrisy does not allow them to mention how those reforms actually benefit Americans of all political stripes, including through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Civil Rights Act. Now, if Grothman wants to return to 1960s economics, where one adult salary could support a family of four, he would probably find plenty of support from Democrats, but probably none from Republicans.
