But the growing schism between the Republican Party’s ascendant right wing and its shrinking moderate core has clear gender undertones — and Scozzafava’s departure raises fresh questions about the GOP’s ability to recruit, elect and even tolerate the sort of moderate women who used to be part of its ruling mainstream.

While Republicans scored a pair of impressive electoral victories in New Jersey and Virginia with solid support among female voters, the events of the last week offer harbingers of serious trouble ahead with the largest swing voter bloc in the country — women.

“Women tend to have a more practical, less ideological way of approaching life and, therefore, approaching politics, and our party doesn’t always take kindly to that,” said former Ohio Rep. Deborah Pryce, chairwoman of the House Republican Conference from 2003 to 2007.

Democrats have long maintained that the Republican Party is hostile to all but the most conservative women, and they cited last week’s rough-and-tumble House health care debate as proof that things are getting worse.

On Saturday, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) repeatedly cited parliamentary rules in an attempt to shout down Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), who was trying to deliver a speech defending abortion rights.

A day earlier, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) suggested that women who complained that their gender was designated a “pre-existing condition” by some insurers were on a par with smokers because both groups incur higher treatment costs.

“Why should a smoker pay more?” asked Sessions, who runs the National Republican Congressional Committee — which is tasked with recruiting new female candidates.

It wasn’t always this way. When Pryce was first elected in 1992, Republicans had recruited so many female candidates that then-Conference Chairman Jerry Lewis of California ordered up posters featuring their several dozen smiling faces.

But there are just 17 Republican women in the House today.

And with less than a year to go before the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans have enlisted just 13 more to challenge Democratic incumbents. Even if all of them won, Republicans would have at most 30 women in the House — about half the number Democrats now have.

“It’s unfortunate,” Pryce said. “Look at what’s happened in New England. We’ve lost virtually all of our seats there because the base of the party doesn’t take kindly to moderates.”

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