The Republican party isn’t fit for re-election, said a humorous Ann W. Richards in her Southern drawl Wednesday.

The former Democratic governor of Texas spoke to about 100 people in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union at a luncheon sponsored by the ISU Democrats.

“I’ll warn you right now. If you don’t want to hear Puritan rhetoric, go somewhere else,” she said in her opening statement.

Richards humored the crowd with her views of the Republican party.

The best candidate, Richards said, would be the one who can convince more women to vote.

“I thought Pat Buchanan was perfect. Just seeing the gender gap close would require a sex change for us,” she said as the crowd responded in laughter.

Richards said the Republicans’ urging for more women in the party has made her angry.

“We know you’re out there,” she said mimicking Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. “I have absolutely been ticked off, as if they sort of discovered us.”

She also criticized Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp for using football analogies to encourage women to vote Republican.

“We need you women,” Richards said, mimicking Kemp. “I know you’ll be there to put us over the goal line.”

She described the Republican party as “macho,” like a treehouse club with a sign that says ‘No Girls’ on it.

“The freshmen Congress are against women’s rights to not bear children. Across the platform, they say it’s a federal crime if you terminate a pregnancy,” Richards said. However, she said women’s issues are more than a debate about reproducing.

“Women are not stupid,” Richards said. “All issues are women’s issues.”

She also criticized the Republicans for proposing an unrealistic balanced budget proposal, which consists of a 15 percent tax cut that protects Social Security and Medicare and increases defense spending.

“You can’t do that. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out,” Richards said. “You want to say ‘been there, done that.'”

The Republican budget plan, she said, would cause Medicare to be cut $270 billion, which affects Richards’ ill mother.

“It makes me furious,” she said. “There is no answer for Medicare. Bob Dole says senior citizens are scared. Bob Dole’s tactics are scary.”

She accused the Republicans for telling poor women that America is in trouble because they don’t work, and telling middle-class women that the country is in trouble because they do work.

“All we’re getting is ideological bologna from Republicans,” Richards said. This is what turns her off in politics.

Despite her criticisms, she expressed her satisfaction of Bill Clinton’s job as president.

Currently the Democrats hold the comfortable lead in the polls. But she said it is still important to keep up with what happens in the near future after one votes, regardless of the election’s outcome.

“It is not always good things happen when good people vote,” Richards said. “But it is true that bad things happen when good people don’t vote.”

Richards, who was the elected as Texas’ governor in 1990, was speaking in support of Leonard Boswell, who is running for Iowa’s third district in the House of Representatives.

“Everything she’s done, she’s done well,” he said of Richards.

Richards is currently in the process of opening an Austin branch of a Washington, D.C. law firm, Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand. Her connections to Iowa stem from relatives who attended Grinnell College.