Tina Brown: Republican women candidates could be 'a blow to feminism'

Women candidates fared so well in Tuesday's primaries that the Associated Press declared 2010 to be the "year of the political woman," but for some, the ascendancy of anti-feminist Republican women looks more like bad news than good.

For Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast, Tuesday's primaries could well prove to be a "blow to feminism."

Tuesday's races were "a representation that people are looking for otherness," Brown recently told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "They're so disgusted with incumbents that they're looking for something completely different. ... It almost feels as if all these women winning are kind of a blow to feminism, because each one of them really [is] against so many of the things women have fought for for a long time."

In California, two wealthy women triumphed in the Republican primaries. Former online auction site eBay chief Meg Whitman will face Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown, a former governor, in the battle to succeed Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina will challenge incumbent Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, a staunch Obama ally, for her seat in the November contest for who will control the US Congress and 37 governorships.

In Nevada, the arch-conservative Tea Party insurgency's champion, Sharron Angle, trounced the establishment Republican candidate and now faces off against embattled Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

In South Carolina, Indian-American state lawmaker Nikki Haley harnessed former Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin's endorsement and beat back charges of marital infidelity but faced a run-off in her bid for governor.

-- With AFP

This video is from ABC's Good Morning America, broadcast June 10, 2010.