Sunday, April 8, 2012

Mitt needs more than marketing to bring women back to the GOP

After months of waging political warfare against American women, the Tea Party / GOP are starting to realize that they have a huge problem if they want to prevent Barrack Obama from being elected to a second term.  Unfortunately for the conservative politicians, women were listening to them all along and as most married men know, women don't typically forget slights and insults tossed at them so easily.

After the nasty fights over women's access to birth control, Government forcing humiliating medical procedures as a prerequisite for terminating pregnancies, witnessing a female college student who testified before Congress repeatedly be called a slut on nationally syndicated radio, and watching GOP State legislatures around the country target public school teachers for budget cuts while leaving male dominated public unions alone, the GOP sees all the alarming polling data and concludes they apparently have some sort of marketing problem.  They think it will just take some tweaking of the message in order to bring more women into the GOP fold.  Call me a skeptic.

AP: Challenges facing Romney in wooing female voters


WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney is starting to hone his appeal to female voters, acutely aware as he turns to the general election that he has little choice but to narrow President Barack Obama's commanding lead among this critical constituency.
None too soon, say many Republican activists. They expect Romney, as well as his popular wife, Ann, to make an explicit pitch to female voters on the economy and jobs, their top issues.
The eventual nominee "needs to start recognizing the power that women voters have," said Rae Lynne Chornenky, president of the National Federation of Republican Women...
A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that gap lifts Obama to a lead across a dozen crucial states. The poll showed women favor Obama by 18 percentage points while men split about evenly between the two candidates. Taken together, that means women boost Obama to a 51-42 lead over Romney in those states.
Anyone who has been watching the Tea Party / GOP in action the last year or so has seen them double down on the war against women and then claim there is no concerted effort against women, and its just their imagination.  The GOP has never been the champion of women's rights, but the political primaries and televised debates have driven the candidates to prove their right-wing credentials and show the base just how conservative they can be in order to win support for the primary elections.

And while Mitt Romney's record may not be as radical as the others on the subject of women's issues, he was coerced by his advisers to join in the rhetoric in order to not lose support from the pundits, ideologues and primary voters.  He had to talk like a chauvinist to win the nomination, but now that he has won the nomination, his record will prevent him from winning the presidency.

So it is amusing to read how the GOP strategists think it will just take some tweaking of the message to woo the women back.  They seem to know that women, like men, are most concerned about the economy, jobs, and the price of gasoline.

But pointing put that will only drive the next line of questioning.  If you knew all along that economic issues were so important, why did you spend the last 4 years simply objecting every economic initiative the Democrats brought forth without presenting reasonable alternatives, why are you hell bent on killing "Obamacare" and why are you consumed with making sure women who have decided on having an abortion are punished and humiliated in the process.

And why were you so intimidated by Rush Limbaugh that you defended his disgusting behavior.  Had Mitt thrown Rush Limbaugh under the bus, he would still be the GOP nominee and his road would be easier.  He chose to side with Rush back then, he can't undo that now, even if Ann Romney tells everyone what a great guy her husband is.



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