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Is It ‘Revenge of the Soccer Moms?’

This election will be decided by women.  That’s what the experts say, which is why the left-wing and the Obama campaign were so adamant in driving the wedge issues of abortion and contraception to consolidate their support.  During the Democratic National Convention, abortion was front and center.  As I’ve said ad nauseum, it was Abortion Fest 2012.  The only thing missing was an addendum to the party plank calling for birth control pills to be sold next to the Skittles in vending machines.  Regardless, as liberals continue their false narratives against Republicans, namely “the war on women” and “binders full of women,” they’ve seemed to forgotten that they’re not a monolithic voting bloc, as we’re seeing them flee the president.

Women are rising in the workplace and women already dominate many areas of the economy.   They are outperforming men and are increasingly becoming the breadwinners in the American household.  They also earn the majority of college and doctorate degrees.  For women, the world is their oyster.  It’s motivation.  Something that us guys seem to have problems channeling for ourselves (I blame video games!).  However, with women being more on the front lines of the economic decisions for themselves or their families, they no longer factor in the social issues that usually drew them into more liberal political organizations.

As Molly Ball of The Atlantic reported on October 20, “Obama’s edge with women began to melt away [a few weeks ago]. More than any other group, women have accounted for Romney’s surge in the polls, which has now given him a slim lead in the national popular vote and in some calculations of the electoral college. Women, it appeared, were not as firmly ensconced in Obama’s camp as they had seemed. Indeed, they were abandoning the president en masse.”

Her piece, titled Revenge of the Soccer Moms, detailed her travels in a suburb near Dulles Airport in Virginia. Here, Ball had:

…spoken to several…Christian-school moms and found them staunchly pro-life and staunchly Republican. But Eileen and Zebib both said they hadn’t decided who to vote for. Zebib didn’t think Romney’s plans were specific enough. Eileen found Romney’s manner in the debates shamefully disrespectful to the office of the presidency. Eileen was strongly antiwar; Zebib was intrigued by the ideas of Rep. Ron Paul.

Unlike their more conservative cohorts, these women agreed that abortion is not any of the federal government’s business. But they also didn’t believe abortion rights were on the line in the coming election. “It has never changed,” Zebib said. “We’ve had pro-life presidents many times, and it didn’t change. It’s a bumper sticker. They try to divert our attention.”

Eileen touched her friend’s arm. “Most women I know, whether they’re for Obama or Romney, they feel the same thing,” she said. “It’s a distraction. That whole Gloria Steinem thing is old.”

Lots of fluidity there.

Furthermore, “Romney’s ‘binders full of women’ line, an awkward phrasing that inspired reams of mockery on the Internet, wasn’t changing any minds among the women I spoke to,” according to Ball.  She noted how “Democratic partisans saw it as more evidence Romney was out of touch; Republican partisans saw it as of a piece with his business background. ‘Anyone who’s ever been a professional, ever, knows that’s how you get resumes: in a binder,’ 43-year-old Republican stay-at-home mother Michele Moss said, rolling her eyes. Only someone who’d never been in the business world — like Obama — would fail to understand that.”

Ronald Brownstein at the National Journal also reported on Romney’s surge with women voters on October 18.  In his column he noted the “slippage [that] has occurred not only among usually Republican-leaning blue-collar white women but also their white-collar counterparts. Largely because most college-educated white women hold liberal views on social issues, the Democratic nominee has carried them in four of the past five presidential elections; in 2008, 52 percent of such women backed Obama. Until Denver, national surveys consistently showed him winning a majority of these white-collar women.”

Furthermore, several polls conducted since the president’s disastrous showing in the first presidential debate in Denver indicate “that Obama had fallen behind Romney among college-educated white women and was attracting 45 percent of them or less, according to data provided to National Journal. Usually, Democrats run much more strongly among college-educated than non-college white women. After that decline, however, both surveys found only a small gap between them. Recent state polls in ColoradoNew Hampshire, and Ohio also found Obama losing ground with upscale white women since September” according to Brownstein.  If folks on the left truly feel that the first debate only had a temporary impact in this race, counseling is available.

For a second, I thought that was a donut.

 

While some other polls showed Romney’s impact on women voters as de minimis, it shows the Obama needs to energize his base on other issues, besides the economy, to blunt Romney’s boost in the polls.  A monumental feat since his record is terrible.

According to Tyler O’Neil at The Washington Free Beacon, a new poll suggests thatwomen favor GOP influenced economic policies.

Generation Opportunity revealed the extent of young women’s support for free-market policies. According to the report, 11.6 percent of women between 18 and 29 do not have a job—a statistic that suggests they may be more worried about economic than social issues. Of the 1,003 adults surveyed online between July 27 and July 31, 2012, 77 percent favor reductions in federal spending and 66 percent believe “if taxes on business were reduced, companies would be more likely to hire.” Sixty-six percent would support “reducing federal spending over raising taxes on individuals to balance the federal budget.”

[…]

A recent poll conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics showed depressed enthusiasm for Obama among under-30 voters.  Ninety percent of respondents said the difficult economy forced them to change their daily lives. Fifty-six percent reduced their food and grocery budget, while 27 percent moved in with family, took on extra roommates, or moved into a cheaper home.

[…]

Hadley Heath, senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, agreed with Roseboom. “Women, broadly, are more focused on the economy and jobs,” she said.

Heath—a young, unmarried woman—called the Democrat’s “War on Women” not only “preposterous,” but also an insult.

“It is insulting to women to put our issues in a box because they relate to the female body or contraception,” she said. “All issues are women’s issues.”

Heath praised former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. “He’s never treated women any less than he’s treated men,” she said.

Lastly, to show how much of an impact the war on women narrative has had on the electorate – just look at Sandra Fluke’s campaign stop in Reno where a whopping ten people showed up to hear the poster child on government dependency and liberalism run amok, push for early voting

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Matt Vespa

I'm a staunch Republican and a politics junkie who was recently the Executive Director for the Dauphin County Republican Committee in Harrisburg. Before that, I interned with the Republican Party of Pennsylvania in the summer of 2011 and Mary Pat Christie, First Lady of NJ, within the Office of the Governor of NJ in 2010. I was responsible for updating his personal contact list. My first political internship was with Tom Kean Jr's. U.S. Senate campaign in 2006.

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