I've been speculating about why so many conservative women are current or former beauty pageant contestants. The question is starting to get a whole lot less mysterious:
One of the most popular articles at RWN last year was, The 15 Hottest Conservative Women In The New Media. So, when you have a big hit, what could make more sense than doing a sequel?
This time around, we had a new distinguished panel of judges. Besides myself, they included,
1) Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit.
2) Jonah Goldberg from National Review.
3) Andrew Malcolm from the LA Times' Top of the Ticket.
4) Dan Gainor from Newsbusters (Among other places).
5) Van Helsing from Moonbattery.
6) Alfonzo Rachel from PJTV.
7) James Joyner from Outside The Beltway.
and
8) Blackfive.
The judges voted on over 50 contestants. After dropping the low score for each woman, the highest remaining scores made the list.
This pretty much seems to be the conservative view on women in the movement. They are welcomed in and valued for their ideas, provided they are first deemed suitably attractive by a panel of men.
Certainly this would explain the apparently widespread conservative belief that liberal women hate Sarah Palin because they envy her looks and happiness. It's basically the gender analogue of the right-wing belief that progressive taxation is rooted in envy of the rich.