Romney's Lies And Fake Outrage Won't Obscure His Anti-Women Policy Positions

Tom Tomorrow

Mitt Romney's campaign is suffering from a potentially debilitating gender gap, which is not at all surprising given his and his party's neanderthal positions on reproductive rights, health care, gender discrimination and a host of other issues.  So what do they do?

First, lie, and argue that it is Obama who is actually waging the war on women. 

Then when an opportunity presents itself, lie some more and gin up the faux outrage machine.

Hilary Rosen, a Democratic contributor to CNN -- with no connection to the Obama campaign -- inappropriately notes that Ann Romney “hasn’t worked a day in her life” as part of a larger point that while her husband is  propping her up as a compassionate defender of all women, "she's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we -- why do we worry about their future."

The Romneys and Republican Party are now in full outrage mode, falsely claiming that Rosen is an Obama operative, demanding apologies and using the statement to show that it is really the Obama and Democratic Party that disrespect women.

Do we need to counter this by trotting out all the bat-shit crazy stuff about women spewed by random Republicans?  Or how about just those who are official Romney advisors?

Think Progress has a handy list for starters:

• Donald Trump: The flamboyant reality show star is “a top Mitt Romney surrogate” according to Politico’s Mike Allen. Trump recorded robo-calls supporting Romney in primary states and he participated in “a ton of talk radio for Romney in Michigan, Arizona and Ohio.” Trump also has a long history of sexism, including telling the male contestants on his reality show to “rate the women” contestants on how sexually attractive they are. Calling TV personality Rosie O’Donnell a “big, fat pig” and an “animal,” after she criticized Trump. And, just this month, offering to expose his “very, very impress[ive]” penis to a top woman attorney. The top Romney surrogate, however, is also quite unfazed by criticism of his sexism. As he told Esquire in 1991, “it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of [expletive].”


• Bay Buchanan: Yesterday, in an attempt to overcome Romney’s weak poll numbers with women voters, the Romney campaign hosted Bay Buchanan on a press call as an official campaign surrogate. Bay, the sister of disgraced former TV pundit Pat Buchanan, has a long history of opposition to women’s rights. In a 2003 speech on the “four failures” of feminism, Bay Buchanan claimed that women are being “sold a bill of goods” when they pursue careers instead of having children, and she compared modern women to “alleycats” with respect to sex.


• Robert Bork: Former judge and failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork is the co-chair of Romney’s “Judicial Advisory Committee.” Bork opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans employment and other discrimination against women, calling the idea that laws can require private companies to cease discriminating a “principle of unsurpassed ugliness.” More recently, the top Romney legal advisor mocked the very idea that gender discrimination even exists. In Bork’s words, “[i]t seems to me silly to say, ‘Gee, they’re discriminated against and we need to do something about it.’ They aren’t discriminated against anymore.”

Joan McCarter focuses on the real issue here: "what the Romney-Ryan budget would do to women who do know what it's like to struggle financially. "  As McCarter explains, the budget Romney has embraced would  "shred every bit of support women and their families need through every stage of life."

• At least $291 billion will disappear from WIC, nutrition assistance, Head Start, child care, job training, Pell Grants, and more programs that support struggling families.
• $134 billion from SNAP, or food stamps, will mean something like 8.2 billion meals not served, in a single year; food out of the mouths of children and the elderly, a disproportionate number of which are female.
• $2.4 trillion from Medicaid and other health services will mean mothers will have a harder time finding medical care for themselves and their children, and for their elderly parents, again which are disproportionately female.
• 56 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are women, and the Romney-Ryan voucher plan will make them pay more and more each year out of their own pockets, to try to keep their medical care.

That is something to get outraged about.