Posted on 10/18/2012 6:39:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The “war on women” is back. No, not the Republican assault on the legal equality of women: That never happened in the first place. We mean the Democratic campaign to pretend that Republicans are a threat to women’s rights. Now that Obama no longer has a clear lead in the polls, his campaign and its allies are returning to the talking points of an earlier season.
Obama hit them hard in the town-hall debate at Hofstra University. He took credit for signing the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which is supposed to promote equal pay for women, and for forcing almost all employers to cover contraceptives in their insurance plans. He claimed, nonsensically, that Romney believes employers should have a say in whether their female employees have access to contraception — in truth, Romney merely believes employers should have a say in whether they finance that access, along with coverage for abortion drugs. There are Obama’s two great accomplishments for American womanhood: extending the statute of limitations for pay-discrimination cases and reducing the out-of-pocket cost of the Pill. The rhetoric is full of “respect for women”; the strategy holds their votes cheap.
It treats them as gullible as well. The president claimed at the debate that by defunding Planned Parenthood, Romney would reduce women’s access to mammograms. Actually, the organization does not perform mammograms. Michelle Obama is among many Democrats, meanwhile, who are making a selling point of her husband’s belief that “we and our daughters have the right to make decisions about our own bodies” — a tactic whose limits can be inferred, even for those who have not seen the polls that show that women are just as likely to be pro-life as men, from her unwillingness to specify the decisions she has in mind. (Starts with A, not an appendectomy.)
In the hours after the debate, Democrats began making fun of Romney for saying that as governor he had gotten “binders full of women” to find qualified appointees — a comment they would never have criticized, or even noticed, had it been said by one of their own. Almost nobody objects to making a special effort to find qualified women to apply for important positions, and Romney’s phrasing was not even especially awkward. The attempt to manufacture an example of Romney’s condescension or cluelessness is evidence of how much more deeply invested the Obama campaign is in its “war” than in America’s actual wars.
One way for Romney to respond to Obama’s strategy would be to emphasize that he is not anti-women, that Obama’s economy has hurt women, and so forth. He has tried this tack at various times in the campaign, and on some occasions it is appropriate: for example, when responding to a question specifically about women, women’s pay, and the like. Not for the first time, though, we would caution Romney against joining the media and Democrats in their obsession with the gender gap. Most women do not vote based on their sex, any more than most men do; and while women are more likely to vote for Democrats than men are, it is an error to assume they do so because of “women’s issues” (as opposed to because women tend to be a bit more liberal than men on economic, welfare, and military issues).
It is also a mistake to think that a large gender gap is a bad sign for Romney. Take a look at the Gallup tracking poll just released, the one that shows a six-point Romney lead. The gender gap in that poll is larger than the one Gallup found at a comparable point in 2008. Men are ten points more likely than women to back Romney now, where they were only seven points more likely to back McCain. Perhaps needless to say, Romney’s overall numbers are better than McCain’s.
Romney’s best moment in the campaign was the first debate, after which his poll numbers jumped among men and women alike. He made no gender-based appeal in that debate at all. Instead, he concentrated on making the case that he would be a better president than Obama, and in particular that his agenda would be better than Obama’s when it comes to wages, job creation, energy prices, and health care. He should learn from that success — and worry not about the Democrats’ binders full of talking points.
Manufactured controversy because the left is intellectually and facually bankrupt. Ignore is the operative word.
While paying women in his own White House less than men who perform similar jobs.
Fox News had a story quoted by the head of the Bureau of the Census that this is all B.S. I’m surprised that the Romney camp didn’t pick up on the story.
As stupid and contrived as this controversy is, Romney helped facilitate it in the first place by engaging in such over-the-top pandering.
Why didn’t Romney bring up the fact that Obama’s vaunted “Lily Ledbetter Act” hasn’t helped the women he employs in his own administration. They are being paid an average of $11000 less than their male counterparts. Every instance of Obama’s gross hypocrisy should have been mined like a vein of gold in these debates.
Georgie should have had Big Bird on with a binder to add to the moment.
Do you have a link to that story? I hate doing my own research.
Zackly. I can understand why he didn't say that at the debate. He probably wasn't even aware of that little tidbit.
But there's no excuse for not hammering him with it now.
Romney was able to beat Ubama about the head and shoulders with Big Bird, he should be able to do the same with this issue.
This story was on Fox just before and after the debate.I didn’t find the story,but typed in equal pay in the search box and ther was a story from Sept.12 on this subject.
John Sununu made a great point on Greta’s show last night when she asked him about the “women’s issues.” He said the top three women’s issues are, one, when they go to the gas station and have to pay $60 to fill up the family car, the second is when they go to the grocery store and pay 25% more for a cart full of groceries, and the third is when their recent college graduate son or daughter has to come home to live because they can’t find a job.
I thought that was brilliant and Greta nodded in agreement.
Yeah, well, that's not a link. That sounds a lot like you're aksin' me to do my own research.
The 2009 law was not to help women, it was to help predatory lawyers seeking to find paydirt (or to shake down a company) in cases where the evidence would be so old it would be hard to prove your innocence.
My question is this — If women are really paid 70 cents on the dollar, or whatever the current proportion is alleged to be, what has the Obama administration done about this?
It’s been illegal to pay men and women differently for the same job, going back to the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
So, if this issue is a problem, Obama and Eric Holder and the Justice Department have all the legal tools to deal with it.
It falls flat with me to hear the president say that women should get equal pay for equal work. It not only sounds like a ‘60s or ‘70s sound bite, but it begs the question of, if this president sees this as a major issue today, what have he and Eric Holder been doing for the last four years about this issue????
““we and our daughters have the right to make decisions about our own bodies””
You don’t have the right to make decisions about another persons body.
You don’t OWN that baby in your womb. They are not your SLAVE. They are a completely separate INDIVIUAL!
Can you move an arm, a leg? Can you prevent a smile? Can you control any single action of this PERSON that you say is part of your own body? Why not? I thought it was YOUR body.
I can understand an “UNWANTED” pregnancy, for whatever reason, BUT, just because you don’t WANT to be pregnant doesn’t give you the right to MURDER another human being.
MY BODY, MY BODY, MY BODY....... It is not YOUR body.
With nothing to run the only thing Obama&Co do is sling s**t.
About the access vs. financing, you must realize that to a socialist other people paying for it, at least in part, is access. The two are synonymous. If your budget based on the wealth you earned yourself leads you to voluntarily choose not to buy something, then in bizarro world you do not have access to that something.
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