Fox News host Jesse Watters directed men to “put a ring on it,” suggesting that if more of them got married, more women would vote Republican.
Watters was responding to exit polling data from Tuesday’s midterm elections that indicated a hefty majority of single women broke for the Democratic candidates while married women and married men overwhelmingly voted for their Republican opponents.
WATCH:
Fox's Jesse Watters: "… But single women and voters under 40 have been captured by Democrats. So we need these ladies to get married. And it's time to fall in love and just settle down. Guys, go put a ring on it." pic.twitter.com/cv70BxM47S
— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
“Single women are breaking for Democrats by thirty points,” Watters observed, adding, “And this makes sense, when you think about how Democrat policies are designed to keep women single.”
“But once women get married, they vote Republican,” the “Jesse Watters Primetime” host continued. “Married women, married men, go for Republicans by double digits. But single women and voters under 40 have been captured by Democrats — so we need these ladies to get married.”
“It’s time to fall in love and just settle down,” Watters concluded, saying, “Guys, go put a ring on it.”
According to a CNN exit poll — which surveyed over 18,000 voters — nearly 70% of single women voted Democrat on Tuesday. The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, like Watters, noted that this disparity gave Democrats a rather large incentive to promote policies that kept women single.
“One of the fascinating things about our ongoing political realignment is the massive political incentive Democrats have to keep women unmarried,” she said.
One of the fascinating things about our ongoing political realignment is the massive political incentive Democrats have to keep women unmarried. https://t.co/M4xrcKLOhV
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 9, 2022
Both Watters and Hemingway were right to direct the focus to Democrat-backed policies. Many welfare programs — and tax incentives that disproportionately benefit single parents over married couples, abortion-on-demand, and subsidized child care and health care programs — offer a number of financial benefits that not only cater to single parents, but diminish greatly or disappear entirely if those single parents ever marry.
Critics attacked Watters for his comments, however, claiming that he only wanted women to get married so that they would fall in line and vote the way their husbands directed them to.
“Good Lord. They are losing single female voters who are too intelligent to become Stepford wives to MAGA men, so their solution is to force them into the kitchen, barefoot, married, & pregnant. This is the Christofascist playbook,” one woman claimed in a tweet.
Lindsey Boylan, the former aide who accused disgraced New York Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment, added, “Clown behavior. These people are a joke. They hate women.”