For months, President Obama has been focused on courting the American woman. This week the latest CBS News/New York Times poll shows that she is not returning the love. In fact, it appears that she is seriously thinking about breaking up with him. In the last month, Romney has managed to close the gap with women voters and according to the CBS/New York Times poll now leads President Obama among women voters 46-44%.
While poll numbers will fluctuate through November, and the actual significance of the ballot question will start to be clearer after Labor Day, Romney’s growing strength with women voters is a reminder in just how a woman wants to be treated.
Romney’s strategy is to level with women on the serious nature of our economic collapse and what we need to do to pull ourselves out of this hole.
On the other hand, President Obama’s approach is to divide and conquer by slicing up the country into groups based on their income, gender, ethnicity and now sexual orientation. He hopes to entice women to vote for him by saying that the other guy will take away your rights and your access to “free” health care benefits.
In April, President Obama was touting his significant advantage with women voters, and his strategy was to solidify and grow with parts of the electorate with whom he is historically strong.
His next move with women was the contraception mandate and fabricating the “Republican war on women.”
What the president should have learned from this failed political tactic is that women don’t want a war but results in Washington.
The president has failed to set the policy stage to help improve the economy, and women are not being fooled by his attempt to change the subject.
President Obama should recognize that women are not all members of Planned Parenthood, and that our public policy goals are not just about our reproductive organs.
His advisers are hopelessly out of touch with the average woman, someone who is struggling to make ends meet and concerned about the economic future of our country.
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Women want to make sure that they and their loved ones can find jobs and improve their economic standing, and they worry that their country is going the wayward path of European socialism.
Let’s take the latest on-line ad by the Obama campaign introducing “the Life of Julia,” a fictional character who receives government support in each stage of her life.
Beginning at the age of 3, Julia is receiving Head Start; as she grows older she gets federal education loans and of course contraception that someone else has to pay for. She later retires and volunteers in a community garden.
While government does have a role in our society, Julia’s life is a story of the countless government programs that lead to a cycle of dependency throughout one’s life.
Don’t we deserve a president who views women as major contributors to our society and economy as opposed to women who are needy and dependent on the government?
Feminists and those advising the president should be advocating for strong and independent women rather than women who are needy and dependent.
The “Life of Julia” slideshow looks more like a page taken from the French President Francois Hollande’s website. The dependency government state is not America, and it is not the country that women want for themselves or their children.
Under President Obama’s vision of America, the goal of economic freedom is becoming ever more difficult as more Americans, especially women, give up looking for a job and are forced into a cycle of dependency because of government’s increasing presence in their daily lives.
Women are relating to Romney’s economic message because they feel uncertain about their own future. Their labor participation rate fell in March from 57.9 percent to 57.7 percent, and over 800,000 women have lost their jobs on President Obama’s watch.
In other words, the real life Julia is unemployed and not content with the government handouts! Julia may be getting ready to put a “Mitt Is It” bumper sticker on her Prius.
Our nation needs policies that lead to less Americans dependent on government programs and not living in poverty. President Obama’s divisive approach is taking women in the opposite direction: more women are living in poverty, and less women are able to find jobs.
Only through a prospering economy and a government that can rein in spending and clean up its own financial disaster can more women become independent. This formula is exactly what Romney is pushing, which will give him a chance to gain and maintain the support of women voters and leave Obama without a date to his prom.
Mercedes V. Schlapp is the mother of five daughters, Republican strategist and co-founder of Cove Strategies in Alexandria, Virginia. She worked at the White House under President George W. Bush.
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