Welcome to 2012 – The Year of the Women.
And women are furious.
And while Romney may have won last night’s debate, he’s losing women. Take a look at this chart from TPM:
Look what happened to Romney’s favorability among women once the contraception debate entered the discussion. And make no mistake, this is a debate about contraception. Oh, Republicans are trying to make this about religion, but that’s not going to fly. Why? Because it’s a lie.
During last night’s Republican debate the candidates were appalled by a question on contraception. Never mind that contraception is one of their frontrunner’s pet topics. Never mind, that given the chance, this frontrunner will wax lyrical on women being too emotional for combat, should be married, shouldn’t receive prenatal testing, and how birth control is immoral. And let’s not forget his sugar daddy’s advice of women holding aspirin between their knees. And anyone who didn’t see the “women should just keep their legs shut” line coming hasn’t been paying attention. This was never an if. It was a when.
So they were appalled, were they? Let’s look at how they handled their outrage.
Gingrich and Romney practically fell over themselves to condemn moderator John King for daring to even bring it up, insisting that it was an irrelevant distraction from the important issues of the day and their only concerns with contraception were really about religious freedom.
Nice attempt, but no one, other than conservatives, is buying the religious freedom argument.
Then came Rick Santorum, who completely deflated their case. He enthusiastically responded to a question about contraception with a lengthy (and seemingly unrelated) sermon about the over-sexualization of teenagers.
“What we’re seeing is a problem in our culture with respect the children being raised by children, children being raised out of wedlock, and the impact on society economically, the impact on society with respect to drug use and a host of other things, when children have children,” he said. “And so, yes, I was talking about these very serious issues.”
Hey, Rick! Know what stops teen pregnancy? Yep, contraception.
But take a look at where the appalled, I won’t dignify that question with an answer crowd went after Santorum’s greatest hits:
Pretty soon the entire podium was following his lead, joining in with their own denunciations of teenage pregnancy and calling for more abstinence programs.
What a bunch of sheep. You could almost see the wheels turning in Romney’s head. I don’t want to touch this issue; just stated that I wouldn’t, but that conservative guy is getting applause from voters I need… so I have to say something. I know! I’ll say teen pregnancy is bad and abstinence is good! Who cares if contraception helps reduce teen pregnancy and “abstinence only” programs don’t work. Gotta love those leadership skills.
And I understand why the GOP wants the contraception debate to go away. It won’t. This topic has caught women’s attention – and women were paying attention due in large part to the Komen fiasco with Planned Parenthood. Santorum may be saying what he’s always said, and if he was the only one saying this stuff then the GOP would have a right to be appalled. But he isn’t.
The GOP went all out in the Komen fight. Their goal was to destroy Planned Parenthood. This debate then flowed into contraception. I believe they thought that Obama wouldn’t compromise on his initial contraception exception. I think they counted on having that specific fight, and when that fight was resolved they were left with nothing. Honestly, they should have stopped there, but they didn’t – which led to the visual of an all male panel discussing birth control. Go ahead and connect the dots. It isn’t difficult.
Komen to Planned Parenthood to Religious institutions wanting more exceptions in contraception coverage to Religious institutions getting what they asked for to argument morphs into wanting all employers having the moral right to deny contraception to employees
There. I connected the dots for you. In between these dots toss in transvaginal ultrasounds and Personhood amendments and you get the Republican platform.
Make no mistake, the GOP is to blame for this topic rising to the forefront. And all the whining against the press won’t lessen the fact that the GOP created this issue. They own it. In fact, they went out of their way to own it.
In closing… I predict Obama will get at least 70% of the women’s vote.