| No Images? Click here   By Nick BaumannRepublicans are worried they're not electing enough women — and they have a plan to do something about it. But it's not the first time they've tried, HuffPost's Molly Redden reported this week. We asked her about the story.How did this story come about?I was thinking about how to dig deeper into Republicans' promises to recruit and elect more women candidates. And another reporter made a joke about how the party tries to launch a GOP rival to EMILY's List [the massive group that recruits and raises money for Democratic women candidates] every two to four years. Turns out that's pretty spot on! I thought it could be illuminating to ask people — almost all of them are women — what happened to all these old efforts to get more women involved? Why do they all seem to evaporate? And if Republicans keep starting from scratch every two years, how can they ever hope to find a permanent solution?What did you find that most surprised you? Is there anything that you were surprised your sources didn't say?The way Republicans sneer at progressive "identity politics" — most of them see Democrats' diversity efforts as pure pandering — is causing real problems on this front. The party line has primed a lot of the party's donors and stakeholders to be very suspicious of efforts to recruit more women. I wasn't surprised those were the facts, but I was surprised at how readily some people admitted that.That's not the only reason the GOP struggles with gender, and also racial diversity. Their biggest issue, really, is that they're periodically willing to talk about electing more women but rarely willing to spend the money that would require.What was the biggest challenge in reporting, writing or editing the piece?If your attempts to recruit more women are constantly flaming out, one consequence is that you build very little institutional memory about those efforts. It was difficult to track all those old attempts, and what they actually consisted of, when every two years there's a new committee with a new name and new leadership. And it was tough to track down some of the women who helmed those projects. A lot of them no longer work in party politics, they've retired or gone off to private ventures.What do you want readers to take away?This isn't going to be news to a lot of people. But in politics, a party's diversity is a sign of how serious the old boys' club is about sharing power. If Republicans are actually working on gender diversity — instead of just repeating, loudly, that they're notionally open to it — they should be able to point to some real results in 2020.🔥 More Must Reads 🔥
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