Not big on anecdotal stories, but this is certainly reflective of an important constituency.
As baby showers go, the party Mary Russell attended to celebrate her niece’s first child was sweet, with about a dozen women offering congratulations over ice cream and cake.
But somewhere between the baby name game and the gifts, what had been light conversation took a sharp turn toward the personal and political — specifically, the battle over access to birth control and other women’s health issues that have sprung to life on the Republican campaign trail in recent weeks.
“We all agreed that this seemed like a throwback to 40 years ago,” said Ms. Russell, 57, a retired teacher from Iowa City who describes herself as an evangelical Christian and “old school” Republican of the moderate mold.
Until the baby shower, just two weeks ago, she had favored Mitt Romney for president.
Not anymore. She said she might vote for President Obama now. “I didn’t realize I had a strong viewpoint on this until these conversations,” Ms. Russell said. As for the Republican presidential candidates, she added: “If they’re going to decide on women’s reproductive issues, I’m not going to vote for any of them. Women’s reproduction is our own business.”
I'm not sure what the GOP electoral strategy is anymore on a national level. There seems to be a belief that one can win the presidency while Hispanics, African-Americans, and women vote in large majorities for the other side. Yet white male evangelicals/Catholics aren't exactly a burgeoning sector of the electorate.
It's the Tea Party dichotomy all over again. You can use extremist positions to move districts with large Republican majorities to the right, but as the races become larger and the districts become more competitive, the strategy rapidly becomes less effective.
And for the Democrats, Rush Limbaugh talking about women's ladyparts is the best thing that could have happened to this discussion.
7 comments:
Clearly the Republicans are betting that enough "centrist women" will react like Althouse did: http://althouse.blogspot.com/2012/03/centrist-women-tell-of-disenchantment.html
Of course, being a law professor who already has great health benefits, I'm not sure if she's much of an indication of anything.
What I love even more, both from Ann's commenters and from the folks on nutjob forums like Free Republic, is that there are conservatives who actually think the GOP and Rush Limbaugh are winning the messaging war on this issue.
The Democrats don't need to steal your lunch when you're offering it to them for free.
This is an interesting read that shows the contraception battle has not moved the needle at all. Interesting...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/washington-post-poll-contradicts-washington-post-narrative-women-voters_633469.html?nopager=1
I'm not sure it proves anything other than women are interested in and influenced by other issues as well, which should come as no surprise.
A political party isn't playing the game very well if the best they can come out on an issue is neutral.
Neutral not a win? You just made blog post argument that R's were losing the battle by huge margins. This article/poll shows it is having no impact.
After the media onslaught, neutral is actually pretty big news.
The article doesn't say that at all. It says (as have most other polls) that people comfortably support requiring insurance companies to provide birth control, and that people are less in favor (but still generally in favor or evenly split) on requiring religious organizations to provide the same coverage.
To the extent it is or is not affecting polling on a broader level, one must of course consider that no issue exists in a vacuum. My own suspicion is that people tend to get their panties in a wad over gas prices (something no president can do much about, Republican or Democrat) and that's exerting some mitigating influence on these numbers as well.
The birth control issue is not a winning issue for the GOP, especially among those constituencies for whom the issue is likely to weigh most heavily. And it's certainly doing nothing to improve their stead among female voters, which the GOP will have to do at some point if it continues its course regarding minority voters.
But that certainly isn't to say that it's the deciding issue in the election, or that it's the most important issue for most (or even many) voters.
It is however, bad politics, as it further risks alienation among a voting bloc with which the GOP needs to improve performance and curries favor with a group that both already supports GOP candidates and is notoriously cheap when it comes to cutting checks.
Santorum and the others do not speak for all, and probably not for the majority, of Catholics. The media is painting a picture of a monolithic Catholic voting block that is fixated on birth control and abortion as the primary issue in the campaign. That simplistic view is wrong and that voting block doesn't exist.
Post a Comment