Imagine a general in ancient Rome going off to war and he equips all of his soldiers with a gladius. The gladius is a superb weapon that feels good in the hand. Very reliable in battle and capable of felling even armored opponents with a powerful enough thrust. 

But while the gladius is a great battle companion, the soldiers lack diverse weaponry that would achieve total victory with as few casualties as possible. There need to be spears, catapults, shields, cavalry, bows and arrows, and ballistas. The varied weaponry allows for a slew of tactical options that it wouldn't have with a gladius being the only option. 

But the general seems to believe that he doesn't need this additional weaponry. He says he will achieve a complete rout of the enemy using only the swords. For a hundred battles, the general's success is unpredictable. He does get victories but they're too often pyrrhic, only obtaining major victories when the conditions are in his favor. He gets far more losses than he should, but he doesn't seem to learn from them. He just sends his increasingly disgruntled troops in with their swords time after time. 

The conservative movement is a lot like this, in my honest opinion. 

Earlier this month, I wrote an article noting that there is a severe lack of messaging to women from the conservative movement. The article had mixed reactions, but a lot of the complaints I saw seemed to believe that I was suggesting we be more like "liberals" — I hate it when the right uses that word to describe the left due to its demonstrable inaccuracy – to appeal to women. 

(READ: The Right Hasn't Learned How to Speak the Language of Women, and It Should Start)

That's not what I said. My point was that conservatism uses a lot of head-based rhetoric and seems incredibly light on the heart-based rhetoric. Head-based rhetoric is very appealing to the masculine, but heart-based rhetoric appeals heavily to the feminine. 

I'm not suggesting we become more leftist to appeal to women. All for the glory of Rome, general. What I'm saying is that we need to add the weapon of heart-based rhetoric to our arsenal. We need to find ways to deliver these facts and logic in ways that appeal to femininity. 

Look at nearly any poll you come across right now and you can see how much conservatism lacks the ability to appeal to women. Women are consistently voting Democrat by majority. That's not to say there aren't women who are conservative. There are quite a few, in fact. I've traveled across the country and met a great deal of them. 

But it's pretty clear that when it comes to the left's messaging, they have a firm hold on the minds of many women. Feminism has consistently lied to women and misled them, and while conservatism has offered arguments as to why feminism is rotten to the core, feminism sold so well to women because it spoke to them on a personal level. 

Even talking to female conservative activists, you'll find that their reasons for being activists are close to the heart. Men will go on about protecting countries, what God wills, ideas, and philosophies far more often than women. Women will go on about their children, families, and communities far more often than men. 

Women feel their thoughts and understand something best when it affects their hearts. 

If we want to add more women to our ranks, we're going to have to learn how to make these heart-based arguments, and trust me, we need to attract more women. Democrats have benefited from having so many women pulling the lever for them for decades. 

So how do we begin appealing to women? Well, let's ask the women among us. Savannah Hernandez offers some direction here. 

PSA: If we want to stop driving women away from the right-wing, we need to stop talking to women like they’re men pic.twitter.com/Tn2prpmhnd

— Savanah Hernandez (@sav_says_) April 3, 2024

It's not like conservatives don't have a resource for better appealing to women, we just have to want to use it. Conservative men are largely not very good at delivering feminine arguments by nature. In this case, the best thing to do is let conservative women take the lead and let them start crafting messages, arguments, and more that appeal to women's hearts. 

Also, conservatives should definitely sink more time and effort into the arts which are emotionally based creations by their very nature. One reason women are so sold on feminism and leftism is because Hollywood has been selling it to them through stories for decades. Now that the corporate entertainment industry has largely started to become message-heavy and no one likes it, conservatives have a much hotter iron to strike. 

Imagine making a rom-com that pushes ideas like the nuclear family and the merging of feminity and masculinity in a way that doesn't show the woman being a completely selfish lunatic passed off as "quirky." Imagine more movies coming out like "Instant Family," which pushes the message that children make a house a home and bring warmth, love, and fulfillment despite the chaos and stress they bring. 

These things are going to speak to women far better than some tweets on X talking about facts and figures or someone up on a podium giving a speech. It's definitely going to make a better argument to women than telling them their biological clock is ticking down and birth control makes them crazy. There are ways to deliver these facts that would appeal to them better. 

The bottom line is that we want more women in our arsenal. We can't just keep going in with swords. 

This isn't something that will turn around immediately. Not only will we have to get better at speaking different languages to different groups, but it will take a little bit for those messages to start sinking in. The first step, however, is being willing to learn those languages while delivering the same overall message. 

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