What do they all have in common, you ask?

A couple of weeks ago the Rhino’s John Hammer speculated that the mere presence of Guilford County’s quarter-cent sales tax hike on the Nov. 4 ballot will tip the Senate election toward Kay Hagan because “women voters who don’t normally vote in an off-year election will turn out to vote for school issues.”

Immediately N&R publisher Jeff “Grits” Gauger —I’m starting to think he doesn’t care much for his paper’s alt-weekly competition —- pounced, turning Hammer’s theory into an attack on women:

So, to sum up: Women are softies about schools and too stupid to see through tax proponents’ baloney, so they’ll turn out in great numbers to support the tax. That will give us a local tax increase, cost a Republican a seat on the county commission, send a Democrat to the U.S. House, and prevent Republicans from taking full control of Congress.

The evils of two X chromosomes, according to John Hammer. The consequences of extending the vote to women in 1920. The absurdity of permitting women to join men in voting on something as patently dumb as a local sales tax increase.

If only our county commission had thought, as Hammer’s reasoning suggests, to protect us from the silly women among us.

Yeah I can only hope there are many women out there who will see through tax proponents’ baloney. Now how many women will see through Hagan’s baloney is another matter, especially when you have the NYT (which I have no doubt that Gauger holds as the standard of journalism) probing —you guessed it—-the Senate race’s gender gap:

Ms. Hagan needs women to show up at the polls on Nov. 4, maybe more so than candidates in other races. She has been running even with or a few points ahead of Mr. Tillis in a swing state that is better educated and more urbanized than Louisiana, and some polls have given her an advantage of as much as 20 percentage points over Mr. Tillis among women, the biggest gender gap in any Senate race.

Under the circumstances, she couldn’t ask for a more perfect opponent, because Mr. Tillis — the speaker of the state House — has a long record of making life harder for women in North Carolina, particularly poor ones. He led Republicans in defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides preventive health services and birth control.

“Long record of making life harder for women in North Carolina.” No baloney there. But just to make sure, do your informal poll while you’re on you lunch hour today. Walk up to 10 women and ask them what they think about the quarter-cent sales tax going toward schools and note how many see through proponents’ baloney. I’ll be optimistic and say more than you might think, and that will show at the polls when the sales tax hike is shot down —- again.