President Obama didn’t call out Mitt Romney by name in a speech to a women group fundraiser in Washington Friday — but he brought back the Democratic “war on women” rhetoric in such a way that made the target clear.
In stark and often direct terms, Obama painted the GOP as anti-women, and tied the party’s positions on women’s health across the country to its likely presidential nominee.
“I’m always puzzled by this,” Obama said. “This is a party that says it prides itself on being rabidly anti-regulation. These are folks who claim to believe in freedom from government influence and meddling. But it doesn’t seem bother them when it comes to women’s health.”
Pointing to GOP governors and legislatures across the country that have passed laws requiring ultrasounds before abortions, Obama said Republicans believe “women can’t be trusted to make their own decisions.”
“It’s appalling,” Obama said, referring to a statement from Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s (R), who defended his state’s mandatory ultrasound measure by suggesting women simply “close your eyes.” “It’s offensive and it’s out of touch,” Obama said.
Corbett signed on as a Romney backer during the primaries, and Democrats have tried to play up the alliance ever since.
Tying Romney to the Republicans in Congress and legislatures across the country is emerging as a go-to strategy for Obama.
While Romney remained nameless throughout Obama’s speech, his policy stances did not.
“When you say we should ‘get rid of’ Planned Parenthood, you’re not just talking about restricting women’s ability to make health care decisions, you’re talking about denying the preventative care like cancer screenings millions of women rely on,” Obama said. In a sort-of gaffe back in March, Romney said he’d “get rid of” Planned Parenthood — meaning he’d eliminate federal funding for the program and allow it to continue by relying only on private sourcing, a popular idea among Republicans.
Obama also needled Romney for his equivocation on the Lilly Ledbetter Act. Romney has said he wouldn’t get rid of the law if elected, but has refused to say whether he would have signed it.
Attacking that stance amounts to an easy lay-up for Obama.
“Standing up for equal pay and equal work isn’t something I’ve got to ‘get back to you’ on,” he said. “It’s the first law that I signed.”
Some Republicans believed that after Republicans briefly gained the upper hand in the tug-of-war over women when CNN contributor Hillary Rosen made a questionable comment about Ann Romney, some of the wind would be taken out of the sails of the so-called “war on women” attack Democrats have wielded since the 112th Congress took over. Obama’s speech Friday suggested he’s not afraid to keep the attacks dialed up to 11.

Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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Thumbgumby
There never was a war on women staged by the democrats, it was, once again, one statement taken out of context that made it seem like the democrats have a problem with stay at home mothers. That said, it became important for the republicans to play down any law that the president has signed even if it has equality significance, more so if it means an assault on white male supremacy, according to the bible they don’t use to define their stances yet pretend to.
Ugg the Repug
Zing! Good job, Evan. Well done.
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montn2
What happened to the indignation of having government between patient and doctor the republicans displayed so fervently just last year? Now they will not stay out of a female uterus (recently passed laws regarding ultra sounds ) and even attempted to enter the bedroom (denial of contraceptives). These people are control freaks and simply want to shove their religion down our throats. Enough!
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PluckyInKY
I wonder/pray if Obama is going to finally being making the argument that Rethugs only want government out of the way of businesses so that they can be free to do whatever they want to whomever they want without any regard to consumers. Otherwise they’d like government in your uterus, your bedroom, your doctor’s office, and anywhere else they feel a pious moral obligation to intrude.
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Hoodathunk
PluckyInKY I believe it was Sniffit who made the comment that the Republicans are working hard to make an IUG. After all, those things are smaller than a bath tub.
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cdguru
We just have to hope that there is not a critical mass of the voting public that has bought into the Fox News version of funhouse-mirror distorted reflections of reality. The reality-based stylings of our president cannot reach those incurious, brainwashed people.
Robin
This is good stuff. Dems need to go on the attack from Day 1 and stay on the offensive. The biggest pitfall for Dems is that they too often allow themselves to be led into a defensive position and end up sounding weak, desperate, and defensive. Obama has a lot of personal strength and this is the right time for him to use it.
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Doctor Biobrain
Robin What Dems are you talking about? When has Obama sounded weak, desperate, or defensive? Ironically, it’s comments like *yours* that make us sound weak and defensive, as it perpetuates the myth that we often lose. We need to get out of the mindset, as it’s not only counterproductive but it’s patently untrue.
Even Romney’s attacks are defensive, as they all involve him hitting Obama with attacks that really work against himself, in hopes of inoculating himself against the attacks. But that’s not offense, that’s defense. It’s been rare indeed to see Obama ever play defense.
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Thumbgumby
Doctor Biobrain Robin We had the chance to do so much more when we had house majorities when Obama was first elected. His willingness to work with republicans gave us the feeling he was weak and cowardly, or that his actions were not in the best interest of democratic leanings. And his fear of marijuana legalization is unfounded and backward. His backing of assaults on our internet freedom also have me worried and conflict with his Nobel. But I also realize that the alternative is a faster path toward the inevitable, an age of serfdom when our freedoms become totally restricted. The reality of alternative power is passing us by as long as the republicans convince their constituency that it is bad for business.
Hobbes83
Robin Its kind of hard to play offense when you have to fight a unified Republican party, and at the same time have to be wary of your left flank because of all the professional knee-cappers that we have running around. Its a bit difficult to wage war on two different fronts.
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Thumbgumby
Hobbes83 Robin Err, I don’t see a unified republican party. I see a bunch of dissatisfied greedy bastards that don’t want to vote for someone they hate. They know that if elected he will rob them blind.
CindyDellClark
Men in the Republican Party are the last of a weak breed. Women have overtaken men in college, medical school, law school — oh and in having the pivotal role in modern reproduction. The fact that these mere sperm-disseminators are trying to intrude on women’s wombs shows how desperate they are to keep their traditional control over feminine power. This is a campaign against woman, don’t mistake it for being otherwise. If they valued the post-birth well being of children, they’d be Democrats.
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Darrius Cole
CindyDellClark Damn anti-man much?
Republicans are over-playing their hand. They are allowing their hatred for Obama and thus Obamacare to mix with their hatred for abortion to get out of control. This combination is allowing them to go to far in their attempts to restrict abortion and health care, and has them restricting things that all people believe should be legal (like birth control), and their are suffering the backlash in the polling so far.
However, your tone, CindyDellClark, is not helping. This is not a gender war. It doesn’t benefit us to attack men in the same way that Republicans are attacking women. Men and women in this together. Dems are leading right now because republicans are forgetting that. Your post sounds like you are forgetting it too.
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PluckyInKY
Darrius Cole, I absolutely agree with your post. The birth control issue, for instance, is also about men and the kind of fathers they want to be. If you’re not a millionaire, you probably can’t afford to have 5 or 6 kids and yet still be an active part of their lives. There’s an argument in there about the importance of fathers not just contributing financially but also being present. They can’t do that if they’re working 2 or 3 jobs just to put food on the table. Also, issues surrounding women’s health are issue for husbands, fathers, and sons too. If a female loved one doesn’t have access to quality preventative care that woman may suffer or die needlessly.
I don’t think women should be in the business of alienating men. Quite the opposite. We need to be making men aware of how these legislative efforts against women’s health can be catastrophic for them too. I truly believe that for far too long we’ve allowed men to get away with being ignorant to women’s health issues. We talk about our problems and they shut down. That’s no longer acceptable. We need to make certain they are part of the dialogue and that they understand women’s issues or their issues too.
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Thumbgumby
PluckyInKY Yes but then again she has every right to defend her stance on the assault of her basic rights. I don’t feel that her rant was an attack on men in general but more a venting of her frustrations based on the facts we have been presented. As the article showed, there have been many laws backed by republicans to define women’s options, without women’s input.
dwqwerty09
@CindyDellClark — As a mere “sperm disseminator,” I really resent this comment. Why the heck would you vote for a “mere sperm disseminator” like Barack Obama, given your obvious hatred of males? Shouldn’t you be running a woman on a third-party ticket?
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cognachas4paws
In the first three months of 2012, Republican lawmakers across the country introduced over 900 bills infringing on the rights of women. Included in this collection of vileness was a bill that would have required a woman to undergo a trans-vaginal ultrasound if she were seeking a legal abortion; in essence, her doctor would be forced to rape her with a foreign object against her will and against his medical advice. While that part was stricken from the bill, women are still required to undergo an unnecessary ultrasound. Other bills include waiting periods forcing women to visit a doctor multiple times before she can get a legal abortion; so-called personhood amendments; bills that would virtually outlaw some forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization; bills that reduce the amount of money given to Planned Parenthood for preventative health care like mammograms, cervical cancer screenings, etc.; one bill actually passed and signed in by the Governor of Arizona declares that a woman is actually considered pregnant two weeks PRIOR to fertilization; other bills curtail the ability of women to earn equal pay for equal work. In addition, the GOP held their infamous hearing on contraception that included a panel of MEN – no woman was allowed to testify before the full committee.
This is the craziness going on out there so I find it hard to believe when the Republicans try to say that Democrats started the War on Women. These bills were introduced by Republicans – they fired the first shot and now that they are losing the support of women across the country, they’re trying to shift the blame. It will not work.
I say again: the GOP started this war – women will end it in November.
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moodpost
The Republican constituency has believed the lies they’ve been told for so long that now they are not fit to be governed. Wealth will trickle down. Iraq is harboring WMDs. Obama is an illegitimate president because we don’t know his grades. Obama is trying to control everyone in the country by executive order. The guys in my poker game believe it all, and now you can’t even talk to them. The discussion is never about policy. It’s about President Obama. Always.
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Early Out
moodpost Calmly, and without being confrontational, ask them for specifics. Don’t let them wave you off with the usual slogans. Ask them exactly what the Government has done, or is even proposing to do, that they find so objectionable. Don’t argue – just hope that their inability to come up with anything will make them do just a little more thinking.
nominalize
moodpost better idea: Mention how great Obama is, just to rile ’em up during the poker game, and take them to the cleaners.
dwqwerty09
@moodpost — Probably time to find another poker game.
vlyons
And now the Rep House has passed extending low-interest student loans by raiding the funds for women’s cancer screenings from the “Obamacare slush fund.” They could have cut any other program for funds, such as oil subsidies, DOD, NASA, Transportation, etc. But no …. they go after women. Preventive medical care, for god’s sake! Didn’t they hear their Mama’s say, “an ounce of prevention costs less than a pound of care?” These people are just plain stupid and mean-spirited.
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PluckyInKY
It’s really kind of amazing isn’t it? You’d think that the politics of it alone would keep them from continuing to fiddle with women’s health, but it’s as though they just can’t help themselves. Sometimes when Boehner yells at the president, I think he’s really just projecting his feelings for his own caucus onto Prez. Even he must know continuing to pick fights over women’s health is a horrible idea.
OverreachTHIS
The other side is vicious and beastly, beneath human dignity. You dial into Romney’s daily “conference call” and it’s “Failed President Line.” To unilaterally disarm is not effective against such vile insolence.
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vlyons
OverreachTHIS Yeah, they have “outrage disease”. Gotta run at the mouth and poo out nastiness every time Obama bats an eyelash.
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dtgraham
He has to “keep the attacks dialed up” because virtually 100% of talk radio and the number one rated cable news network (Fixed News) make it their business to discredit him at every single opportunity.
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jbinphilly
dtgraham That’s partially the Democrats’ fault for not making their message and rhetorical style powerful enough to attract viewers and listeners. If that weren’t the case, they’d have the clout to get their own radio shows and have their equivalent of Fox News.
Say what you want about conservatives, but they know how to get the audience’s attention. Why can’t Democrats learn to do likewise?
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vlyons
jbinphilly dtgraham Because Dems are too embarrassed to tell such outrageous lies
RashersRonald
jbinphilly dtgraham Because they’re honest and pure and ……..LOL!
Methodological Naturalist
jbinphilly dtgraham In my opinion, liberals and progressives are a far more heterogeneous bunch of people demographically than conservatives. And progressives/liberals are also more skeptical and contrary. They are probably also a more difficult group to sell things to whether it’s political candidates or toilet bowl cleaner. There’s not as much money to be made from a progressive/liberal audience. I don’t think you’re ever going to see a “Progressive” version of Fox News anytime soon.
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PluckyInKY
Agreed. Plus, I just don’t think progressives like to be told what to think. I think we are naturally just a bit more contrarion, even rebellious, and we don’t want someone else doing our thinking for us.
davidasr
“…CNN contributor Hillary Rosen…”
Finally, writers are starting to get it right!
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labman57
Below is a list of the GOP’s 2012 talking points, as elucidated by various conservative politicians and pundits:
Corporations are people.
Women who use birth control are sluts.
A chicken in every pot, and a spy-cam in every uterus.
College students are snobs.
Higher education is part of a left wing brainwashing conspiracy.
Gay Americans are an abomination.
Poor people deserve to be poor.
Union workers are socialist thugs.
The unemployed are lazy parasites.
Latinos are illegal until proven otherwise.
The Bible trumps the Constitution.
America is a Christian nation.
Secularism equals Satanism.
Global warming is a hoax.
The U.S. auto industry should go bankrupt.
All progressives are communists.
Naturalized citizens with heavy accents are not true Americans.
Liberal Democrats hate America.
The U.S. President is a Muslim socialist agent from Kenya.
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AlphaDad
labman57 Close. A chicken in every WEALTHY pot.
Maybe
labman57 Don’t forget Romney’s comment about how it wasn’t worth going after Bin Laden if we had to cross borders. And Romney’s insistence that our Cold War with the Soviets is a top foreign policy priority.
vlyons
labman57 EXCELLENT!!!! +100
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Methodological Naturalist
labman57 We’ve got the greatest healthcare system [add other attributes that really aren’t so great here] in the world.
Dead_Wood
Why make it go to 11? Just make 10 louder.
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Hobbes83
Dead_Wood That’s what they were aiming for; if they had to go to eleven, they would have had to take their socks and shoes off.
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RantingTommy
Dead_Wood but these go up to eleven
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midnight rambler
RantingTommy Dead_Wood I was actually in a music store a few weeks ago, and they had an amp that went up to 12. It was quite old too, undoubtedly predating that.
RantingTommy
midnight rambler Dead_Wood
awesome
hell, all my “amps” are digital on the PC these days (usually in the form of a VST plugin), but sometimes it’s fun, if not very useful, to crank up the old noisy marshall and shake the windows
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HeartT
Thank goodness the president is not letting up on this. Republicans have a way changing the tone and getting the heat off of them. They do this consistently because they believe that we the people have the concentration of knats and will not remember who bankrupt the country, who said no to education, healthcare and the jobs bill. They think that we the people are too stupid to notice that they are willing to pay tthrough the nines to get out their mssages of hate and self pity. They’re banking on our apathy, our ignorance and our disgust with the system to notice how they, are committing class warfare, pitting People vs. money. The irony, is that if all people don’t have access to money, the country will go to the money. Vote, vote, vote for democrats. Then hold their feet to fire for we the people. Vote for the democrats because we know that the republicans want to acquire wealth not save an economy. Because to save an economy, we need to make education, healthcare accessible to te masses. To save an economy, we have to do as much to protect the common good as we do to encourage entrepreneurship. To grow an economy we have to have a fair tax code. To save an economy, we cannot cut out the poor and middle class. The republicans have made it clear that the common good is not in their doctrine. But if for no other reason, we should vote for democrats in droves to prove to the republicans once and for all that we are not stupid, and that we will no longer allow them to manipulate our vlunerabilites to destroy our democracy.
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RantingTommy
HeartT I agree with all of that
just one word tho: paragraphs, man, paragraphs
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BB Latooie
RantingTommy HeartT Did you understand what was meant? Is the content lacking because of a lack of paragraphs? Methinks you nitpick too much. This isn’t a thesis.
deliaruhe
I think this is a winner, but the trick is not to overdo it. Linking it to Republicans in the House and Senate might even have an impact. Because the way it looks right now, Obama is gonna have an even worse time with a GOP-dominated Congress in his second term.
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bluelandred
deliaruhe The only way to deal with a GOP Congress is to attack it directly. Obama tried to compromise and the GOP just laugh at him. Now, Obama just does, and while the GOP screams about how unfair it is, at least some stuff is getting done.
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RantingTommy
bluelandred deliaruhe
I understand why Obama had to wait to go on attack
He has been very successful at demonstrating the childish intransigence of the Republicans by cornering them into pure opposition and zero governance.
That was necessary at first to establish who is the adult in the room. Now that he has done that, it’s time to ‘take off the gloves’ and play hard ball.
People laughed at the “11th dimensional chess” concept, but I think at least Obama is in 3D while the Republicans are left flat, and given their recent push for retro issues, perhaps in black and white.
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cdguru
RantingTommy bluelandred deliaruhe Nice analysis, and succinctly put.
Maybe
RantingTommy bluelandred deliaruhe Obama also had to be careful to avoid the “angry black man” meme. Even now he is fighting calmly and strategically, stirring up audiences with mostly positive messages and some humorous jibes.
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