News From The Front: The War on Women

It’s true that the GOP has a problem with women. I’d estimate it’s about a 5-7% gender gap at normal times -- though this isn’t uniform among all women. And the Democrats have tried very, very, very hard to exploit that gap with their “Republican war on women” meme because they need to win women overwhelming to win the election. But now that the primary is over, the Democrats are in for shocker.

What kind of shocker you ask? How about this: a leftist CBS/NYT poll released yesterday finds that Romney is LEADING among women by 46-44%. Fascinating. This is an 8% swing even from April, when Obama’s lead among women was already beginning to vanish. Let’s discuss.

For starters, there are reasons the Democrats do better with women, and it’s best to understand those:

● For one thing, many more black women vote than black males, and black voters skew nearly 100% toward the Democrats. With blacks representing 11% of all voters, this could account for as much as 2% of that 5% difference. Interestingly, McCain actually won white women by 54% to 46% (compared to white males voting for McCain 59% to 41%) -- he lost blacks by 96%.

● Secondly, single professional women are loyal to the Democrats because the Democrats promise affirmative action. Believe it or not, the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action have not been blacks, they have been white professional women.

● Single women are also much more likely to depend on government benefits (everything from welfare to student loans), which again makes them likely Democratic voters.

● Finally, women work disproportionately for the government, which again makes them Democratic voters.

The only thing offsetting these factors and keeping the gender gap as low as 5% is that once you start talking about older married women, a significant pro-Republican gap appears similar to that of males.

So how do we explain the disappearance of this gap and Romney actually pulling ahead? How about this:

1. Romney No Scary. That’s right, Romney doesn’t scare women. He looks dull. He doesn’t pound the table about impure women trying to sneak out of the home. He’s not rabid about abortion and he doesn’t run around claiming women should “submit” to the husbands. More importantly, it’s pretty clear to everyone that Ann Romney is no shrinking violet. Does anyone doubt that she’s a forceful presence in the Romney household? And if Romney is married to someone like that, then it’s pretty hard to paint him as secretly looking to subjugate women.

2. Obama No Nice. Yep, Obama’s an ass. Let’s be frank about it. When Obama came on the scene, all you heard was him calmly reading inspiring words from a teleprompter in a soaring, hopeful voice. But since that time, all we’ve seen is a snippy, angry jerk you wouldn’t want to spend time with. He pushed off responsibility (i.e. blame) on everyone around him, he plays passive-aggressive with people he’s dealing with, and then he says really asshole things when everything falls apart. He can’t even deliver a self-effacing joke without tearing down others, and his favorite target over the years has been Hillary Clinton. When we started this blog, I speculated that Obama might be a misogynist. I think that’s been proven. Name a woman he hasn’t disrespected? Not to mention, there have been constant and persistent claims of sexism from highly placed women in the Obama administration (like the latest issue about an 18% pay gender-gap). Do you really think women don’t notice these things?

3. You Talkin’ To Me? There’s also the debacle of the Democratic “War on Women” meme. It became very clear very quickly that the Democrats were using women as a political punching bag and were just trying to score points rather than actually help them. At a time when women are getting laid off in record numbers, when there are no jobs, and when women are losing their health insurance at work because of Obama, the Democrats have taken to the ramparts to define women as whiny, rich, spoiled, law school sluts who don’t want to pay for their own condoms. Nice. If you were a single mother struggling to find a job, would this give you confidence that they care about you?

Then there’s the Julia website, where Obama and the Democrats want you to believe that women are incapable of succeeding at ANYTHING in their entire lives without uncle Obama holding their hands the whole way. Trust me on this, women hate being condescended to. And think about all the ultra-sexist smears of conservative women by liberal Hollywood types right in the middle of the supposed war on women and how the Democrats tried to claim, “oh, that’s different.”

All of this must have independent women wondering just what the Democrats really think of them and just how the Democrats are planning to make their lives better?

So what you have here is a Republican candidate who not only doesn’t scare women, he seems to be offering the very thing they want: jobs and economic security. On the other side, you have Democrats acting like jackals, substituting theater for substance, and defining women in stunningly unflattering ways. Add in a President who appears to be a misogynist and who can’t stop taking shots at the women around him and you’ve got a real turn off for women voters. That has translated into a collapse of the gender-gap.

I can’t say that this trend will stay, but if it does, forget everything I said about this election being close. . . it’s going to be a blowout.