“Please Proceed, Governor”: A Clear Win For Obama–He Punched Hard, And He Punched With Facts
Not a close call. President Obama won the second presidential debate as clearly and decisively as he lost the first. For anyone who disagrees, three simple words: “Please proceed, Governor.”
This icy invitation to Mitt Romney came amid an exchange about the killings of State Department officials in Libya. Obama noted that in his initial Rose Garden remarks, he classified the attack as an act of terror. Romney, perhaps misinformed by the right-wing propaganda machine, tried to insist that the president waited weeks to call the incident terrorism. “Get the transcript,” Obama said.
Moderator Candy Crowley stepped in and noted that Obama was correct. (Indeed, according to the transcript, Obama classified the attack as among “acts of terror” that would not deter or deflect U.S. foreign policy.) Having embarrassed himself, Romney had the good sense to move on.
It was a moment that encapsulated what Obama accomplished Tuesday night: He punched hard, and he punched with facts.
In these debates, superficialities can be important. Downcast and mopey in the first encounter, this time Obama was sharp and combative throughout. He went after Romney directly and personally; I lost track of the number of times Obama charged that some Romney assertion or another was flatly untrue. He quoted Romney’s past statements that directly contradict what Romney is saying now. All evening, he was in Romney’s face.
It’s not that Romney had an awful night and certainly not that he was some kind of shrinking violet. But in the first debate, Obama’s passivity allowed Romney to interrupt, interject and generally control the flow of the conversation in a way that seemed merely forceful, not obnoxious. Tuesday night, with Obama playing offense, Romney had to dial his own performance up a notch. At times he seemed a little cranky, a little flustered.
The town hall format — and Crowley’s firm hand — ensured that the debate covered quite a lot of ground. Obama got to fight on favorable political terrain. A question about equal pay for women, for example, allowed him to question Romney’s position on women’s reproductive rights and whether health insurance should have to pay for contraception. A question about immigration let Obama note that Romney has vowed to veto the Dream Act for those brought here without papers as children.
Allowing Obama to make direct appeals to women and Latinos was probably not in the Romney game plan.
Romney did get to make his pitch, however. He made clear that the central theme of his candidacy is a promise to create jobs. Given the state of the economy, it would be stunning if people didn’t at least give him a hearing.
“I understand that I can get this country on track again,” Romney said. “We don’t have to settle for what we’re going through. We don’t have to settle for gasoline at four bucks. We don’t have to settle for unemployment at a chronically high level. We don’t have to settle for 47 million people on food stamps. We don’t have to settle for 50 percent of kids coming out of college not able to get work. We don’t have to settle for 23 million people struggling to find a good job. If I become president, I’ll get America working again.”
Obama sought to demonstrate that Romney’s bold words are backed up by nonsensical policies. He wanted to make Romney sound more like a salesman than a statesman. We won’t know until new polls come in whether he succeeded.
But all in all, not Romney’s best outing. Responding to the final question, he said he cared for “100 percent of the American people.” He never should have opened that door, because it invited Obama to give his best speech of the evening:
“I believe Governor Romney is a good man. Loves his family, cares about his faith. But I also believe that when he said behind closed doors that 47 percent of the country considered themselves victims who refuse personal responsibility, think about who he was talking about.
“Folks on Social Security who’ve worked all their lives. Veterans who’ve sacrificed for this country. Students who are out there trying to hopefully advance their own dreams, but also this country’s dreams. Soldiers who are overseas fighting for us right now. People who are working hard every day, paying payroll tax, gas taxes, but don’t make enough income. And I want to fight for them.”
Romney won’t get to respond until the final debate on Monday. The tiebreaker.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 17, 2012
“The Real Mitt Romney”: Bully, Lie, Manipulate,Threaten…Whatever It Takes
Mitt Romney is unbelievable. Literally. On Tuesday the GOP presidential candidate told the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.”
With four weeks left until the election, Romney unquestionably needs to win over undecided voters by camouflaging his anti-choice stance. But he’s on record championing some of the most extreme — and more importantly, extremely unpopular — tactics aimed at blocking women’s access to basic reproductive health care, including abortion and birth control.
Throughout his campaign for president, Romney has said again and again that he would end funding for family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood that provide abortion services as part of a broader range of women’s health care.
His own party’s platform states: “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.” Plain English translation: they support criminalizing abortion.
In October 2011, Romney told Mike Huckabee on FOX News that when he was governor of Massachusetts he “absolutely” would have supported a state constitutional amendment establishing that life begins at conception. Like the measure defeated in Mississippi earlier this year, such “fetal personhood” laws not only criminalize abortion, but would also outlaw popular forms of contraception, fertility treatment and stem cell research. Romney added, “My view is that the Supreme Court should reverse Roe v. Wade,” and promised that he would send justices to the high court who would be inclined to do just that — take us back to the days when abortion was criminalized in much of the country.
But somehow we’re supposed to believe that a President Romney wouldn’t pose any threat to reproductive choice? With a candidate this dishonest, voters have to decide for themselves which version would preside over the nation. Right-wing supporters of Romney are standing by the socially conservative incarnation of their guy.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, told USA TODAY:
“We have full confidence that as president, Gov. Romney will stand by the pro-life commitments he laid out in National Review in June 2011,” including his promise to “advocate for a bill to promote unborn children capable of feeling pain.”
I’m inclined to agree with Dannenfelser. In that National Review piece, penned by Romney himself, the candidate said: “If I have the opportunity to serve as our nation’s next president, I commit to doing everything in my power to cultivate, promote, and support a culture of life in America.”
Interestingly, Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul sent to the conservative National Review a stronger backtrack of her boss’s latest pronouncement than the one she delivered more widely. In an email to the National Review, Saul had this to say: “Governor Romney would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life.”
It’s not hard to figure out why, where women’s reproductive health care is concerned, Romney flips here, flops there, gives the old Etch-A-Sketch a good shake, and slicks out a sound bite for each new audience du jour. The simple reason: Romney’s policy agenda for women’s health is deeply unpopular with all voters, and especially women voters.
So now it has dawned on Romney that his unpopular positions may hurt him with the voters who are still up for grabs. So what does he do? Lie. Shape his message not to reality but to the goal of winning debates, winning votes, winning at all costs.
Here’s my newsflash for Governor Etch-A-Sketch: Women are not fooled by his shape-shifting public persona. The real Mitt Romney is revealed by what he says in private, when the cameras aren’t rolling (or so he assumes). In these unmasked moments, Romney has revealed a more accurate version of himself. He is the guy who glibly wrote off 47 percent of the U.S. population as lazy, irresponsible moochers. He is the guy who used his position as lay bishop to bully women in his church about their pregnancies, their health and their families. That guy’s the real Romney.
Romney Knows Best
The following stories reveal just how chilling the real Mitt Romney can be. Repeatedly, he has shown himself to be a man who thinks he knows best what women should do with their bodies and how (or even if) they should raise their children.
Before entering politics, Romney served in several positions of authority in the Mormon Church. Judith Dushku, a Mormon feminist who stood up to Romney numerous times when she was in his congregation, shared with the Boston Globe and other media outlets her impression that Mitt’s fleeting pro-choice stance was a strategic move to win votes when he ran for the U.S. Senate. Dushku said Romney told her face-to-face: “Well, they told me in Salt Lake City I could take this position, and in fact I probably had to in order to win in a liberal state like Massachusetts.”
Dushku also brought to light the story of her friend Carrel Hilton Sheldon, a Mormon woman who discovered she had a blood clot while pregnant. With her life potentially at risk, this mother of four children decided to have an abortion, and she even got permission from the proper authorities in the church. But Romney tried to talk her out of it, shaming her with comments like, “Well, why do you get off so easy when other women have their babies?” He told her that “as your bishop, my concern is with the child.”
And it wasn’t just one incident. According to The New York Times, Janna and Randy Sorensen approached Romney in the early 1990s seeking his help in adopting a child. The church did not facilitate adoptions for mothers who worked outside the home, and the couple told Romney they thought the rule was unfair. But Romney would not proceed with helping the couple until he had convinced Janna to quit her job.
Ten years earlier, Romney similarly tried to twist the arm of Peggie Hayes when he was bishop in his local ward. As reported in Vanity Fair, Romney urged the 23-year-old single mother, whom his family had known quite well for years, to give up her soon-to-be-born second child for adoption. When Hayes informed Romney of her intention to keep and raise the child, his response was to threaten her with excommunication from the church.
Bully, lie, manipulate, threaten. Mitt Romney believes these tactics will get him what he wants. But I believe in the good sense of women voters throughout the country. And for the next four weeks, I’ll be working along with thousands of NOW chapter leaders and activists to get the word out: Mitt Romney’s real agenda is dangerous for women. Come Nov. 6, we will defeat Governor Etch-A-Sketch and re-elect President Obama, who actually means it when he says he is pro-choice.
BY: Terry O’Neill, President, National Organization For Women; The Huffington Post, October 10, 2012
“Unpaid Interns”: Political Wives Of The GOP
At an event for Mitt Romney last night, Ohio Governor John Kasich did his best to pay tribute to women by talking about the difficulties of being a political spouse.
“It’s not easy,” he said. “You know, they’re at home, doing the laundry and doing so many things while we’re up here on stage.… [it’s hard] to put up with the travel schedule and have to be at home taking care of the kids.”
To tell the truth, I’m not outraged over Governor Kasich’s remarks. He was just complimenting women the only way he likely knows how—by acknowledging their domestic acumen. Given the outrageous remarks about women lately—from “legitimate rape” to slutty birth control users—suggesting that all political wives do is the laundry is the least offensive comment from a Republican in months.
Besides, to conservatives, recognizing women for their roles as wives and mothers—rather than as individuals unto themselves—is a fabulous compliment. It’s a pat on the head for all those ironed shirts. But this focus on women’s caretaking is more than just misguided attempt to woo female voters, it’s a disturbing window into the very limited way that Republicans view women.
After Ann Romney’s epic RNC “I love women” moment, MSNBC host and Nation columnist Melissa Harris-Perry noted how her speech focused on women “in their relational roles—women are mothers, women are widows, women are wives.”
“Actually women are lots of other things,” Harris-Perry said. But not in the Republican imagination, where women are happiest at home and most fulfilled by their husband’s accomplishments—not their own. Where being a leading lady means loving your supporting role.
It’s as if Republicans view wives as unpaid interns—expected to do grunt work just for the experience and joy of being part of someone else’s success. (At least the interns get something on their resume out of it.)
This isn’t to say that the care and domestic work that women do isn’t important—it is. In addition to the important task of raising children, domestic labor is what allows these politicians to do their public work. As Jill Filipovic has written, “Men who have stay-at-home wives literally have nothing other than work to worry about.”
They have someone who is raising their kids, cooking them dinner, cleaning the house, maintaining the social calendar, taking the kids to doctor’s appointments and after-school activities, getting the dry-cleaning, doing the laundry, buying groceries and on and on (or, in the case of 1% wives, someone who coordinates a staff to do many of those things). That model enables men to work longer hours and be more productive.
But if you’re going to value domestic work, really value it—don’t just give it a wink and a pinch on the butt. And that’s the problem with this constant veneration of women as wives and mothers—it’s all talk. It’s easy for male politicians to acknowledge their wives’s hard work when the expectation is that this is simply what women exist for—and even easier to vote for policies that assume the same. Because if we’re just wives and mothers—not individual people with their own desires—what do we need with pesky things like the right to bodily autonomy or equal pay? After all, we have laundry to do.
By: Jessica Valenti, The Nation, September 13, 2012
“RNC Ladies’ Night”: GOP Appeal To Women Is About Tokenism
As I previously reported, the Republican National Convention—in the hopes of softening the party’s well-deserved reputation for being hostile to women—scheduled many women speakers on Tuesday night. So when I ventured onto the floor this evening, I tried to ask influential Republican women about the challenge their party faces among women voters. Their answers varied widely, and demonstrated that, other than constantly changing the subject to the economy, they do not have an answer.
The most useless attitude for Republican women to adopt is one of pure self-delusion. Despite years of women mostly favoring abortion rights, some Republican activists simply assert that women are opposed to them. Republicans don’t have to worry that their platform’s call to ban all abortions will turn off women, Jean Turner, the president of the Ohio Federation of Republican Women, told me. Why is that? “Women know what life means,” she explained. “Women have babies.”
Some Republican women are not so certain. Charlotte Rasmussen, the former president of the Wisconsin Federation of Republican Women, embodies the conflicted discomfort that many Republican women feel on reproductive issues. On the one hand, she thinks it should be ignored because the economy is more important and the law is in the hands of the Supreme Court. On the other hand, she is against abortion, but she does not know if exceptions should be made. “I don’t want to talk about abortion,” she said. The reasons she offered are that “it’s a controversial issue,” and women are more concerned about the economy. Rasmussen thinks “abortion is not an issue,” because “it’s not going to change.” What she means is that Roe v. Wade is unlikely to be overturned, although, “I’d be fine with it being overturned.” Rasmussen also believes that “every abortion is bad.” But does that mean she agrees with the GOP’s stance that a girl who is raped by her father should not be allowed to have an abortion? “I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s not an issue I’ve had to deal with so I don’t want to comment on it.” That’s not a winning message for women who are concerned that Republicans are insensitive to issues women’s health.
The best explanation for the Republican platform plank on abortion actually came from a woman who disagrees with it, Karen Dove, a delegate from Florida. “If you look at party platforms, Democrats say partial birth abortion is good,” she said. Democrats, of course, don’t actually say any abortion is good, but it’s true that the party has not come out for banning so-called “partial birth” abortions. “Would most Democrats say partial birth abortion is OK?” asked Dove rhetorically. “I don’t think so.” Her point, which is fair insofar as it goes, is that both parties have to cater to their interest groups, even if the resulting platform statements are not supported by most party members. “We have a big contingent that thinks abortion is wrong in every case,” noted Dove. “Every party has to cater to people who come out and vote. On both sides you have extremes.” Analytically, this is accurate. But, if the next time Dove goes out canvassing in her neighborhood and a woman who answers the door says she is thinking of voting for Mitt Romney but just can’t get behind that abortion plank, Dove’s answer is unlikely to fully reassure her.
And, as I predicted, the appeal to women was about tokenism, not substance. It worked on some of the delegates. Mia Love, the black mayor of Sarasota Springs, Utah, and a Congressional candidate spoke, early Tuesday evening. Shortly thereafter I spotted Deidre Harper, a Colorado delegate, sporting a Love campaign button because she was so impressed by Love’s speech. “It’s great to see a black woman in Utah [running for Congress as a Republican],” said Harper. “I think that’s a question you hear about Republicans: there aren’t blacks or Latinos [in the party.] But from what I’m hearing, in high offices there are more blacks and Latinos than among Democrats.” A cursory glance at the Democratic and Republican Congressional delegations will show that to be wildly false. But Republicans seem to have at least convinced themselves that minorities are well represented in their ranks.
Rebecca Kleefisch, the politically adept Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin, was by far the best at shifting the abortion question to safer territory. Kleefisch deploys an ostentatiously modest demeanor to present herself as a down-to-earth soccer mom. “The president does not dictate the priority list of American women,” Kleefisch told me. “It’s insulting and irritating that [Obama] thinks he can tell women that birth control and abortion are their top priorities. Women value their personal relationships, their families and making ends meet and having enough left over to fill up their tank to take their kids to soccer practice.” After that hokey, broad brush shtick that presumed all women are middle class suburbanites with children, Kleefisch asserted, “Women are done with the president throwing a blanket of generalizations over my gender.”
Ultimately, Kleefisch argues, “The Barack Obama presidency is expensive, and we can’t afford him any more.” This might work with some female swing voters when unemployment and gas prices are high. It’s not a long-term answer as to how the anti–women’s rights party can appeal to women.
The speeches from the dais were condescending to women, if they mentioned them at all. Here, for example, was New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s sole reference to gender equality in his keynote address: “My Mom, who I lost eight years ago, was the enforcer. She made sure we all knew who set the rules. In the automobile of life, Dad was just a passenger. Mom was the driver.”
The night featured several women who are notable solely for being married to a male politician. Ann Romney was introduced by Lucé Fortuño, the First Lady of Puerto Rico. Fortuño was clearly chosen just because she could deliver her first line: “I am the proud mother of 20-year-old triplets, a practicing attorney, a proud Latina and a die-hard Republican!”
Ann Romney’s address was filled with such treacly pabulum, that it is worth quoting at length:
Sometimes I think that late at night, if we were all silent for just a few moments and listened carefully, we could hear a great collective sigh from the moms and dads across America who made it through another day, and know that they’ll make it through another one tomorrow. But in that end of the day moment, they just aren’t sure how.
And if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the women sighing a little bit more than the men. It’s how it is, isn’t it?
It’s the moms who always have to work a little harder, to make everything right.
It’s the moms of this nation — single, married, widowed — who really hold this country together. We’re the mothers, we’re the wives, we’re the grandmothers, we’re the big sisters, we’re the little sisters, we’re the daughters.
You know it’s true, don’t you?
You’re the ones who always have to do a little more.
You know what it’s like to work a little harder during the day to earn the respect you deserve at work and then come home to help with that book report which just has to be done.
You know what those late night phone calls with an elderly parent are like and the long weekend drives just to see how they’re doing.
You know the fastest route to the local emergency room and which doctors actually answer the phone when you call at night.
You know what it’s like to sit in that graduation ceremony and wonder how it was that so many long days turned into years that went by so quickly.
You are the best of America.
You are the hope of America.
There would not be an America without you.
Tonight, we salute you and sing your praises.
The notion that such meaningless gibberish would convince women to toss their interests aside in the voting booth is offensive. Many of the other women speakers, such as South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Representative Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA), simply did not mention women at all. Rather they stuck to the evening’s message of “We built it,” a rejoinder to the apocryphal quote by President Obama that business owners didn’t build their companies. If undecided women were watching the RNC on Tuesday to see if they would be given any meaningful support on issues of gender equality, they were surely disappointed.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, August 28, 2012
“Re-defining Presidential Politics”: Voting Women Is Key For Complete Gender Equality
The fight for women’s equality will stand still unless women vote. This election year is especially important as Congress will vote on issues key to women’s economic security and health. Today, on Women’s Equality Day, we all can take a step toward complete gender equality by encouraging our young women to vote on Nov. 6.
Since the height of the women’s rights movement, the percentage of eligible women who vote in presidential elections has declined. According to the Center for American Women and Politics, while 72% of eligible women voted in the 1964 presidential election, only 60% voted in 2008. This apparent complacency among young women with a right that our forebears fought so desperately to earn must be addressed.
Universities and colleges across the country are launching voter initiatives that speak to the young community. TurboVote is an online registration tool that sends email and text message reminders to students with the goal of registering record numbers of students in this presidential election year, a time seeing significantly lower youth enthusiasm than four years ago.
College campuses are a bright spot in the work toward women’s equality. Today, women have surpassed men in pursuit of higher education, graduating in greater numbers and with more degrees than their male counterparts. Another great higher education initiative is Vision 2020, a national campaign launched at Drexel University with the goal of achieving gender equality by 2020, the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
When I was a young college instructor, such a goal would have been unimaginable. My department chair told me I would never be granted tenure. Apparently, I had embarrassed my male colleagues by publishing more papers than they had written collectively.
As a president of a Big Ten university and a former U.S. secretary of health and human services, I cannot help but feel proud looking back at overcoming such blatant discrimination. But I also cannot help feeling concerned about the many places in the country still dominated by males – whether it be corporate boardrooms, chambers of commerce or even our nation’s capital. I am proud of the strides we have made as a country, but we have a ways to go.
Women’s equality is a problem not just for women but for all Americans. The best policies are made when there is genuine diversity of thought involved in the process, which includes the distinct voice of women.
Today, as our country celebrates the legacy of those who fought hard for justice, opportunity and prosperity, let us recommit ourselves to the goal of gender equality in our country. And by voting this November, the nation will have no choice but to hear us. Ninety-two years after the passage of the 19th Amendment, we may finally see women redefine presidential politics.
By: Donna Shalala, President, University of Miami, JSOnline, August 24, 2012
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