Maybe you are someone who used to say that things would be different if more women were in Washington. Maybe then politicians would stop playing games over women’s bodies and be clued in to the need for safe and legal abortions.

Maybe with women in charge there would be a greater commitment to end sexual violence. Maybe women at the top would put a priority on taking care of everybody’s families. All kids would get health care. Grammy need not worry about becoming a bag lady.

At least, that was my thinking. But the more I hear from this crop of women Tea Party candidates I’m terrified. Whose side are these women on?

It reminds me of a young female colleague who was so happy to work for her first woman boss and then later sighed, “She was the worst man I ever worked for.”

There’s a part of any feminist who is cheered when women boldly and passionately declare themselves for public office. It takes guts and we need more women at the top.

In general, I want to say “Go, girl.” But in the case of some of these GOP women candidates, I’m more often sputtering, “She thinks WHAT?”

Sharron Angle, the Nevada Republican running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is so fiercely against abortion that she thinks a young girl impregnated by her father should have the baby. Two wrongs don’t make a right, she said. Lemons, she said, “can be made into lemonade.”

Same with Christine O’Donnell, the Delaware Republican Senate nominee, backed by Sarah Palin – some call her a Sarah Doll. O’Donnell says no exception for abortions even if the woman was raped.

Here’s another who is no friend to women, especially older women.

Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann, who loves the Tea Cozies, calls Social Security and Medicare a form of welfare. She’s said if her crowd were in control they could get rid of Social Security over one long weekend. And then on Monday throw how many older women out in the street? More women than men rely solely on Social Security to live. Perhaps Bachmann never expects to get old. Or poor.

These sisters are not looking out for the health and welfare of girls and women. They are the kind of sisters who put on their fancy dresses and made Cinderella stay home and clean toilets.

Anne Coulter, the uber conservative commentator and Tea Party cheerleader,once said that the United States would be a better place if women had never won the right to vote. (Meaning too many women vote for Democrats.) You might remember Coulter as the nasty one who mocked the widows of 9/11 who pushed for a government investigation into the attacks. Coulter called the widows self-obsessed and said they were taking advantage of their husbands’ deaths to gain notoriety.

These are scary women and they don’t make sense to me. They go on about what they would take away but not what they would provide.

Like most Tea Party types, they say they want government out of their lives. O’Donnell makes fun of laws restricting soda pop from school vending machines. Are there no obese pre-diabetic kids in Delaware?

So, would they get rid of regulations on car seats for babies? Mandatory school attendance? Who would fix their roads, put out their house fires were there no government? Or do they think government’s greatest role should be to order women to have babies?

But now I have another question and it’s for the Democrats. Got any more ready-to-run sisters?

Quit chasing after Sarah Palin. Let the woman go. I say this as part of the pack that resented her, ridiculed her and obsessed over her for two months.

For many of us there was much not to like about Sarah Palin. She shrugged off global warming and considered the Iraq war an act of God. She thought Alaska women should pay for their own rape kits. She hunted animals from a helicopter and leaned on a city librarian to test her loyalty.

On top of that the Republican Party tried to package her as a new style feminist and offer her as their default Hillary Clinton. Oh, no. Sarah Palin didn’t speak for Hillary Clinton. She didn’t speak for me. I didn’t want her making history on my behalf.

I was in Denver during the Democratic convention, staying with a friend, who like me had started off a Clinton supporter. We’d been saying that it would be smart if the Republicans named a woman as John McCain’s running mate. Maybe Olympia Snow, Kay Bailey Hutchison or Susan Collins. Someone with a name and credentials who could be a serious challenge.

That Friday morning my friend turned on the TV and called out, “He did it. It’s the one from Alaska with the pony tail.” No threat there, we laughed.

Seemingly overnight she became a rock star with her face on every magazine. Rush Limbaugh called her a babe. Even intelligent male pundits made dreamy comments about her. She didn’t snooker everybody. “She’s the girl in high school who got by with a short skirt and a wink to the fat old history professor,” said one of my friends.

Let the woman go.

As she whipped up her adoring crowds with dangerous, reckless accusations about Barack Obama, I declared her the new Queen of Mean and said she deserved every negative review. I played the game and lapped up every cutting remark made by Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow. Joined the Tina Fey fan club.

But then last Tuesday happened and she was no longer a worry. Had it turned out differently I would be sick to my stomach thinking of what might happen if John McCain slipped in his Jacuzzi. I feared Sarah Palin a whole lot more than I feared John McCain.

Now we discover that some anonymous McCain insiders did too, and the Republican brain trust has dropped her like a wet bath towel. Using her as scapegoat for losing the election, they began a turncoat attack that almost makes me feel sorry for her.

The Republicans anointed her, made her over, turned her into their hate-monger and forgot to give her a map of the world. When she didn’t deliver, they went after her with longer knives than the smug, eyebrow-cocking media that gloated every time she failed a trivia test. That same smirking media is back to rubbing their hands with glee.

Let her go. Get onto the important stuff. We’ve got our houses and jobs and two wars to deal with. And a president-elect setting a new model for behavior with his admonition on Tuesday night “to let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.”

In that spirit I’m willing to give up my hostility and forget the wink, the “say it ain’t so, Joe,” the “drill, baby, drill.” Give her one Valentino to wear with her Uggs and leave her to Alaska.

This commentary first appeared in the Santa Rosa (Ca.) Press Democrat in a “Close to Home” column.

Are you suffering from the October furies? Do you find yourself unable to eat, work, walk the dog without obsessing over the latest nasty thing you heard uttered about your candidate? Do you find yourself muttering epithets you never before permitted in your living room?

A newspaper headline asked “How Low Can They Go” and I was strangely relieved to realize it was referring to our economic nightmare. Because had it been about the latest viciousness on the campaign trail I would have been compelled to read every spiteful remark and then gotten more agitated than I did the night before when the only way I could block out the news was to read a bloody murder mystery, just to calm my nerves.

I have friends who blame a sudden scary boost in their blood pressure on the campaign’s low road. I’ve had a rotten cough for a week that is not helped by screaming at the television.

Of course, it helps when you do something positive, like write a letter, mail a check or knock on doors but then comes a contemptuous remark from a familiar curled lip and you know that what ails you is probably going to last until the first Tuesday in November.

If we truly are such a shining city on the hill, so great, proud and strong, resilient and hopeful, wink, wink, blah, blah.. how can we be so small-minded and hateful?

Okay, I don’t mean WE. I’ve been polite up to this point. I mean HER. Gossip Girl. McCain’s knee-capper. The one who’s gone from curious to embarrassing to vacuous and now is sounding downright dangerous. The new Queen of Mean.

You try to ignore her but she creeps in.

In my Feldenkrais class the instructor was talking about human skeletal development and then suddenly paused to make sure we were all on the same side, evolution-wise.

In an email to my friend Sara, I accidentally added an “H” to her name and had to apologize. She is and has always been a Sara without an H. That other person, the one with an H, insists on intruding. We’re all infected. My friend Miriam had to return her new glass frames to the optician because they gave her a definite SP look.

Rachel, up in Mendocino, said she gets so mad she eats. Because she’s a creative cook she hasn’t had to leave her TV to go to the store for supplies. When she can’t stand watching or eating anymore, she retreats to her art studio and tears up tiny pieces of paper for a new collage. Her latest is one of Alaska melting into the sea.

Barack Obama said he can endure four more weeks of insults. Michelle Obama said when people say things that aren’t true about you, you keep rolling.

I guess the rest of us will have to do the same and put up with a few more weeks of gerund-mauling ugly talk and hope the media gets tired of re-running the same lying sound bites.

I’ll tell you one thing that helps. Reading about smart people, like the Nobel Prize winners. Brilliant people, smarter than anyone you know. They’re a good reminder of how much the world, even regular Americans, appreciates the finer minds among us.

Listen to the October Furies Podcast at Another Voice on KRCB-FM