GOP FInally Fighting Back vs. Phony 'War on Women'
Women losing coverage under Obamacare, too
WashingtonTimes.com
Republicans are finally learning that the most effective defense can be a good offense, even when the battle is imaginary. Election Day comes ever closer, which means Democrats are once more accusing the Republicans of going to war against women.
It’s a pathetic attempt to divert attention from the real issues, such as the economic policies of President Obama, his disastrous health care scheme and his vanishing influence abroad. Republicans are marching at last to the bang and shudder of the guns.
The notion that Republicans hate women is a frail canard. If there is such a war, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, U.S. senators all, must be conscientious objectors. The “war on women” myth falls apart when voters are reminded that Republican women have played an important and critical role in the Grand Old Party since Jeanette Rankin of Montana was the first woman elected to Congress in 1916.
Sharon Day, the Republican National Committee co-chairman, is recruiting women to draw the attention of voters to the issues that matter. She traveled last week to West Virginia to join Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, running for Senate, to announce the “14 in ‘14” counteroffensive, which will enlist younger women in the suburbs that now lean blue. They would volunteer 30 minutes a week during the final 14 weeks of the 2014 campaign. Their orders will be to knock on doors, identify Republican-leaning voters and get them to the polls.
Earlier this month, a dozen female Republican senators and representatives, including Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a member of the House leadership team, huddled at the Capitol with advisers on women’s issues, including Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway.
“Clearly, there is more work to be done,” Mrs. McMorris Rodgers told Politico, the political daily, “but it is important that people recognize that Republicans are about empowering them.”
Empowerment as envisioned by Republicans means creating the conditions that encourage economic growth by cutting taxes and reducing regulatory red tape. The Obama administration alternative is to patronize women with the fictional everywoman “Julia,” who Democrats woo with promises of costly cradle-to-grave social-welfare programs. Republicans can’t outbid Democrats for the women’s vote that way, nor should they try. A country $17.6 trillion in debt can’t afford an alms race.
The National Republican Congressional Committee has been busy, too, and has 14 female “Young Gun” candidates ready to run for Congress this year. Four of the five female governors are Republicans, and so are 23 members of Congress, and each of them must be front and center as the face of the party in the counteroffensive in the “war on women.”
Women aren’t winning under Obamacare. They’re losing their health insurance coverage and experiencing big increases in premiums, deductibles and co-pays under Obamacare.
Republicans clearly have their work cut out for them, as evidenced by a CNN poll in February that found that 55 percent of respondents overall and 59 percent of female respondents say the Republican Party doesn’t understand women. About half of all Republicans are women, and Republicans who aren’t have mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, as well as female neighbors and co-workers.
The real war on women is fought from the left, with demeaning policies and schemes to promote dependence on government. Conservatives understand that women want what men want — independence and prosperity.