Republicans losing lady voters. Gee, no one saw that coming by Kaili Joy Gray

This from "Daily Kos" -- follow link to original.
---------------------------------------------------------

Republicans losing lady voters. Gee, no one saw that coming

by Kaili Joy Gray

Pity the poor Republicans.

In 2010, finally freed from the shackles of their belief that women should keep their damn mouths shut and leave the serious governing stuff to the menfolk, Republicans applauded themselves for their bold realization that chicks can do stuff too. They even convinced themselves that 2010 was going to be the Year of the Woman, but for Republicans. With Sarah Palin stomping around the country, anointing lady candidates with her magical Mama Grizzly fairy dust, Republicans seemed poised to finally seize that reliable lady voting bloc from Democrats.

Sadly for Republicans, it didn't exactly work out as they'd hoped. Meg Whitman, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell and Carly Fiorina were all laughed into obscurity, and even some of the successful lady candidates, like South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, did better with men than women—not exactly demonstrating an ability to arouse conservative women to rise up in a show of sisterly solidarity.

Still, Republicans managed to do better with women voters than they'd ever done before, not because they actually did well with women, but because Democrats did a piss-poor job of giving women a reason to bother voting at all. Thus, Republicans remained convinced that they just might have a shot with the lady voters in 2012.

So what did Republicans do? Why, they ramped up their war on women, of course. And now, according to NPR:

[T]he events of recent days are raising questions about whether Republicans, who so recently saw an opportunity to close the gender gap, may now be watching it widen given the recent maelstrom surrounding women, contraception, Congress, Catholics and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. [...]

Many Republicans are still shaking their heads at how quickly the debate turned on an issue where they had traction with a wide swath of the electorate.

Shaking their heads at how they managed to so thoroughly erase their perceived edge? Yeah, I'll bet they are.

After spending a solid year in the House trying to pass laws to ban women's health care, redefine rape, protect the "religious liberty" of hospitals that would prefer to let women die rather than provide necessary health care to them, Republicans weren't certain they'd made it clear just how anti-woman the party is. So they decided to turn the dial to 11 by attacking basic health care as a violation of their "religious liberty." And they held No Girls Allowed hearings about how vaginas make Catholic bishops very sad. And then, just for good measure, they chased off one of the few Republican women in the Senate because her occasional mild interest in women's rights doesn't jibe with their 17th century platform.

And then, just to make extra certain women get the message, while Rush Limbaugh was devoting most of his airtime to insulting women who care about health care, those few Republicans who could even be bothered to comment offered such mild criticism that a skeptic might think Republicans really didn't see why Rush's three-day slut tirade was such a big deal. After all, if sluts weren't such sluts, Rush wouldn't have to call them sluts. Everyone knows that. And besides, it's not like sluts vote, right?

Add that to some of the standard anti-woman rhetoric the Republican presidential candidates are spewing, and their unwillingness to appropriately condemn Rush's slut crusade, and things aren't looking so good for the Republicans:

The GOP candidates' tepid responses to Limbaugh's comments did not help the party's effort to woo women. They ranged from Santorum suggesting that as "an entertainer," Limbaugh "can be absurd," to Romney's "it's not the language I would have used." The superPAC supporting Newt Gingrich is running ads on Limbaugh's show.

All of which adds up to bad news for Republicans, and good news for Democrats.

An Associated Press-GfK poll conducted in February showed Obama's approval rating improving, and gaining with women who give him more credit than men for the strengthening economy. His support between December and February climbed 10 percentage points among women.

A Washington Post/Pew poll released this week showed that Obama was even gaining among white women, a group he lost in 2008. In January, white women preferred Romney 50-44 percent, according to Doherty of the Pew Research Center. By February, Obama had taken the lead, with 52 percent of white women saying they preferred the president to Romney, who had fallen to 46 percent.

Pew experts were also struck, Doherty said, that Obama's lead against Romney among all women "was quite substantial, 59-38 percent."

But keep talking, Republicans. Please. Keep telling women they're sluts. Keep complaining about how vagina health makes you sad. Keep thinking up creative new ways to strip women of their most basic rights. Because it's all working out better than expected—for Democrats