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With his new book The Right Path to promote, there was Joe Scarborough acting as guest co-host on The View Tuesday morning. And the MSNBC host had plenty to say about the current state of his Republican Party, including the belief that the GOP is “too obsessed” with “hating on” President Barack Obama. Scarborough began by laying out the premise of his book, in which he says the GOP needs a new Ronald Reagan-esque figure to lead the party into the future. He said the real problem is that “we’ve been conducting ideological witch hunts in our party. If...

The evening of Jan. 16, 1920, hours before Prohibition descended on America, while the young assistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt, drank champagne in Washington with other members of Harvard's Class of 1904, evangelist Billy Sunday preached to 10,000 celebrants in Norfolk, Va., : "The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. . . ." Not exactly. Daniel Okrent's darkly hilarious "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" recounts how Americans abolished a widely exercised private right -- and condemned the nation's fifth-largest industry -- in order to make the nation more...

Continuing a pattern established in the 2000 elections, married women supported the conservative, pro-life candidate for President (Senator McCain) while unmarried women supported the liberal, pro-abortion candidate (Senator Obama). According to Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research’s (GQR) analysis of the Edison/Mitofsky National Election Pool numbers, there was a 44-point difference in the voting patterns of married women and unmarried women. GQR concludes that the overwhelming support of unmarried women made Barack Obama the president-elect rather than John McCain. Unmarried women supported Barack Obama by a 70-to-29 percent margin, and they voted for Democratic House candidates by a similar margin — 64-to-29...

Since picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has obliterated what had been a 34-percentage-point deficit in a poll of likely women voters on the question of which candidate has a “better understanding of women and what is important” to them. The two are now effectively tied, with McCain's 44 to 42 percentage lead within the margin of error of the most recent poll conducted by pollsters Kellyanne Conway and Celinda Lake for Lifetime Television. In Lifetime's July poll, women preferred Barack Obama on the same question by nearly three-to-one— 52 to 18 percent. In this latest poll,...

Nearly a quarter of a century later, Sarah Palin is also being grilled about her capacity to negotiate with the Soviets (well, the Russians, but they are acting like Soviets at the moment), asked if she will still cook for her family if elected vice president and praised for her chic glasses and copper highlights. But this time, women are flocking to her, cheering her can-do attitude and her unabashed embrace of the hockey-mom label.

Zogby: Catholics Swing To McCain by Double Digits According to Zogby, The McCain/Palin ticket wins 49.7% support, compared to 45.9% backing for the Obama/Biden ticket. That's big news. But I found something even more interesting in the swing of the Catholic vote in this survey towards McCain and away from Obama, a former community organizer. Pollster John Zogby writes: “Clearly, Palin is helping the McCain ticket. She has high favorability numbers, and has unified the Republican Party. The striking thing here in this poll is that McCain has pulled ahead among Catholics by double-digits. On the other hand, Palin is...

The selection of Sarah Palin works, on many levels and in many ways.  McCain knew what he was doing when he picked her. Consider all the ways in which Palin helps the Republican ticket. Women voters know not only that the election of McCain likely will lead to the nomination of Sarah Palin as the Republican nominee in 2012 or 2016, but the election of McCain-Palin may well mean that the nominee of both major political parties in 2012 will be a woman:  Palin, if McCain decides not to seek another term, and Hillary, who would be the presumptive favorite for...

WASHINGTON -- By the time Election Day arrives, you might be forgiven for thinking that Barack Obama's running mate is named Lilly Ledbetter. OK, I'm exaggerating, but, really, the Obama campaign wouldn't mind. Ledbetter was on the losing end of a Supreme Court case last year on equal pay. A manager at a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama, she consistently received smaller raises than her male counterparts. The Supreme Court threw out her suit because, the five-justice majority said, she waited too long to complain, even though she didn't know about the pay difference earlier. Now, a bill to fix...

The consistent lead that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has maintained over Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and others in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination is due largely to one factor: her support from women. In the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, Clinton led Obama by a 2 to 1 margin among female voters. Her 15-point lead in the poll is entirely attributable to that margin. Clinton drew support from 51 percent of the women surveyed, compared with 24 percent who said they supported Obama and 11 percent who said they backed former senator...

Women no sure bet for Clinton Despite her appeals for sisterhood, female loyalties split Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer Sunday, March 11, 2007 In a historic campaign for the presidency, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to ensure that as the Democratic woman in the contest she's the first choice of the Democratic women voting in the contest. The issue was starkly evident last week, as the former first lady formally kicked off her campaign for women's votes -- while two titans of the women's movement dramatized their differing loyalties in the already bruising bout for the Democratic presidential nomination....

24.02.05 Kuwait's Parliament could next month consider a bill granting women the right to vote, a Government minister said yesterday. Washington has been pressing its allies in the Middle East to bring in political reforms, saying lack of freedom and democracy have fostered violent Islamic militancy inspired by the al Qaeda terrorist network led by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden. Asked when the female suffrage bill would be debated in the Gulf Arab state, Deputy Premier and Minister of State for Cabinet and Parliament Affairs Mohammad Sharar told reporters: "I think in March, God willing." "We think it will be approved...

A new report recently highlighted in Ruy Teixeira's valuable Public Opinion Watch shows that one of the bright spots for the Democrats in the 2004 election was their performance among single women. The study, done by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Womens' Voices/Women Vote, showed that the "marriage gap is a defining dynamic in today's politics, eclipsing the gender gap, with marital status a significant predictor of the vote, independent of the effects of age, race, income, education or gender." As Teixeira writes, the new research shows that unmarried women, who voted overwhelmingly for Kerry, "are social and economic progressives advancing...

JEDDAH, 4 January 2005 — Former Saudi female candidates for the upcoming municipal elections had varied responses after a senior election official yesterday said that women would be allowed to vote in 2009. Prince Mansour ibn Miteb, chairman of the General Committee for Municipal Elections, explained that the only reason women were not allowed to vote in this round was because municipal elections are a new experience and the short time given to prepare for them made it impossible to allow women’s participation this time. Faten Bunduggi, the director of women’s empowerment and research at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce...

October 27, 2004 --Since July, 40-49 yr. old (Generation Jones) women have vacillated more than other generations of women between John Kerry and George W. Bush. In October they are also the most evenly divided, favoring Bush by a slight margin of 47% to 46%. This segment also has the highest percentage of undecideds in October, with 5.4% not sure who they'll vote for on Nov. 2. Three of the five generations of women have favored Kerry each month, with only 30-39 yr. olds (Generation X) and 40-49 yr. olds swinging toward Bush in August and September. However, the much-discussed...

RIYADH (AFP) - Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz ruled out the participation of women in landmark municipal elections in the conservative Muslim kingdom next year. "I don't think the participation of women is on the cards," the official SPA news agency quoted him as telling reporters during a visit to Kuwait for a meeting of Gulf Arab interior ministers. Three Saudi women have said they intend to run in the first-ever nationwide ballot to elect half the members of 178 municipal councils despite the uncertainty about whether they would be allowed to take part. The text of...

There's no point in doing a little political punditry in the October of an election year without going way out on a limb, so here goes: As I smelled it, the most important thing that happened in the second presidential debate is that George W. Bush lost a good chunk of the women's vote. He's been ahead, you know, among large blocs of women. If you take away black women, who appear to vote more based on their race than their sex (and thus vote heavily Democratic), Bush leads John Kerry among women. The media have made great hoo-ha lately...

Met any security moms lately? Every time that term is employed – the latest, favorite stereotype conjured by pollsters, pols and pundits – I try, based on media representations, to imagine just what a security mom looks like. Try this: Arnold Schwarzenegger in drag, white-knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel of an armored Hummer plastered with Bush-Cheney stickers, careening across suburban lawns, divots, diapers and car seats flying. The current conventional wisdom is that security moms – defined by some pollsters as the 22 percent of women who are white, suburban, blue-collar and college educated, with children – are going...

WASHINGTON - Cynthia Moore — single mother, moderate Democrat — is the living embodiment of one of Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites)'s biggest challenges in the presidential race. There are things she doesn't like about President Bush (news - web sites), she says, but the president will get her vote on Nov. 2 because she thinks he'll do a better job of protecting her two daughters. "Terrorism is something that scares me," says Moore, 34, of Watkins Glen, N.Y. "I like the security of knowing that if I was to get on a plane with my little girls,...

Women tend to vote Democrat. So why do polls show them supporting Bush? GERARD BAKER, on the campaign trail, says they feel Bush has the guts to fight terrorism. GRANDE dame of a Republican I know, a veteran of a couple of administrations and still active in the Washington political scene, doesn’t think much of the choice on offer for women in the US presidential election. She told me neither George Bush nor John Kerry comes close to floating her boat. Bush is too self-consciously male, too Texan, too cocksure of his own convictions. Kerry, by contrast, is just too...

AT FIRST GLANCE, the women and their children at the community center in Morris Plains seemed to be a play group or mothers' club. But in between nursing babies and soothing toddlers, the conversation was about paid parental leave, affordable child care, and Social Security credits for at-home moms. A meeting of Morris County Mothering NOW was under way. Yes, that's right, NOW, as in the National Organization for Women, the nation's leading feminist group. "We want to bring mothers' issues to the front burner. We're going to have discussions that might not seem appropriate at a play group," said...