Major Leagues: Team Obama Outmaneuvers Romney On Women

[babylonsister]

Major Leagues: Team Obama Outmaneuvers Romney On Women
Benjy Sarlin April 12, 2012, 6:08 AM


snip//

Romney’s first day of the general election turned into a stark reminder that Obama will be a far tougher opponent than the poorly funded, disorganized candidates he battled in the primary. Romney was outmaneuvered and forced off message throughout the day — beginning with a morning press call in which the campaign was caught flat-footed over a simple question about Romney’s position on the Lilly Ledbetter Act — overshadowing the economic message he was trying to push, with the gleeful help of an armada of professional Democratic operatives.

The new Republican standard-bearer began the morning on FOX News on the defensive, pushing back against Democrats’ claim of a Republican “war on women” by blaming Obama for slow job growth among women.

“His polices have been really a war on women,” Romney said. “Over 92 percent of the jobs lost under this president were lost by women.”

The move was a classic example of what has become a consistent Romney maneuver: projecting his own vulnerabilities onto his opponent, in this case his toxic polling with women voters. But Romney’s move quickly revealed the dangers of playing on your opponent’s territory.

A group of Romney advisers held a conference call immediately after the Fox News interview in which they repeated Romney’s “92 percent” claim and lamented the “enormous damage” done to women under Obama. But when three reporters asked the logical follow up — why are there fewer jobs for men in recent months and what would Romney do to fix the gender gap in hiring? — they were unable to offer any explanation. Another obvious follow-up question, “Does Romney support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for women to sue over pay discrimination and was Obama’s first signed law?” generated only a long, awkward pause before an aide finally responded: “We’ll get back to you on that.”

The Democratic machine sprang into action. Operatives jumped on the Ledbetter line, sending it out to supporters and media and urging Romney to detail his position. Before Romney’s campaign could even clarify, the Obama campaign had already produced a lengthy statement from Ledbetter herself, describing how “shocked and disappointed” she was by the ambiguity. Democrats had also distributed a copy of the audio from the Romney camp’s phone call.

more...

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/major-leagues-team-obama-outmaneuvers-romney-on-women.php?ref=fpa

[Iris]

1. Where is that 92% meme coming from?

At the beginning of the recession, all reports I heard talked about how men were impacted the most because of the huge losses in the construction industry.

On edit:

Here's this from PolitiFact:


"'Between January 2009 and March 2012 men lost 57,000 jobs, while women lost 683,000 jobs. This is the reverse of the recession period of December 2007-June 2009 (with an overlap of six months) which saw men lose 5,355,000 jobs and women lose 2,124,000 jobs,' Steinberg told us in an email.

So timing was important. And if you count all those jobs lost beginning in 2007, women account for just 39.7 percent of the total."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/apr/10/mitt-romney/romney-campaign-says-women-were-hit-hard-job-losse/

[babylonsister]

2. Romney is flailing and failing; here's a debunking posted

yesterday (w/charts!):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/125128887