Visual source: Newseum
NY Times says Obama is targeting women:
Mr. Obama has had his own political balancing act over the issues. Women’s groups had opposed any exemption from the requirement under the health care law that insurance policies cover birth control, but Mr. Obama from the start exempted churches and other houses of worship. He did, however, require schools, hospitals and other organizations affiliated with religious groups to cover contraception. When that ignited a furor, Mr. Obama quickly modified it in a compromise with supportive Catholic groups.
Now nonpartisan polls suggest that Republicans are the ones who have been hurt as they have kept the issue alive.
NY Times:
“We all agreed that this seemed like a throwback to 40 years ago,” said Ms. Russell, 57, a retired teacher from Iowa City who describes herself as an evangelical Christian and “old school” Republican of the moderate mold.
Until the baby shower, just two weeks ago, she had favored Mitt Romney for president.
Not anymore. She said she might vote for President Obama now. “I didn’t realize I had a strong viewpoint on this until these conversations,” Ms. Russell said. As for the Republican presidential candidates, she added: “If they’re going to decide on women’s reproductive issues, I’m not going to vote for any of them. Women’s reproduction is our own business.”
Bloomberg via
Business Week:
A surge in new jobs last month that held the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.3 percent highlights a strengthening economy that bolsters President Barack Obama as he approaches the November election .
The jobs report “is another plus for the president,” said Stu Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington.
“These numbers suggest the economy is moving in the right direction,” he said. “It’s likely to make people more optimistic, and that’s always, always good for an incumbent president.”
Robert Reich:
Jobs are coming back fast enough to blunt Republican attacks against Obama on the economy and to rob Romney of the issue he’d prefer to be talking about in his primary battle against social conservatives in the GOP. But are jobs growing fast enough?
Steve Benen:
And third, if we're really going to have a conversation about who "has failed" at job creation, we should probably talk less about the guy who prevented an economic collapse, and more about the governor whose record on job creation was something of a fiasco -- during Romney's tenure, Massachusetts' job creation was "one of the worst in the country," ranking 47th out of 50 states in job growth.
PPP polled Maine, but their conclusions are universal:
There are two big reasons for [Obama's] improvement, and these are things we're seeing most places right now:
-The Democratic base is unifying around him. In October he was at 75/17 with his party's voters, now it's 86/10. The more Democratic voters see the Republican candidate field, the more they forgive Obama for not being completely perfect and get behind him.
-Obama's flipped independents from giving him negative reviews (46/49) to positive ones (54/38).
Gail Collins:
And, of course, every time we have one of those exciting discussions about the Limbaugh theory on making women who get health care coverage for contraception broadcast their sex lives on the Internet, the more the Republican Party loses votes, money, sympathy — you name it. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, which last summer found women almost evenly divided on which party should control Congress, now shows that women favor Democrats, 51 percent to 36 percent.
The longer this goes on, the easier it will be to come up with a national consensus about whether women’s reproductive lives are fair game for government intrusion. And, when we do, the politicians will follow along. Instantly. Just watch Mitt Romney.
Ross Douthat tries (and fails) to make the case that the GOP primary voter is sane and responsible because Romney is winning and Cain, Trump, Santorum, et. al. aren't. You can put lipstick on a pig, Ross, but it's still a pig. The nutjobs (including a myriad of state legislatures as well as the Republican House) forced Romney far, far right, and the result is a losing experience where the more the GOP is viewed, the less people like them. Oh, and Douthat's weak tea theory does not account for Rush Limbaugh, who, alas, is the voice of the GOP. Douthat's inability to confront and deal with the social conservatives in his party is just another sign of the irresponsibility and cowardice of many conservative commentators.
David Brooks did a better job of calling them out:
But where have these party leaders been over the past five years, when all the forces that distort the G.O.P. were metastasizing? Where were they during the rise of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck? Where were they when Arizona passed its beyond-the-fringe immigration law? Where were they in the summer of 2011 when the House Republicans rejected even the possibility of budget compromise? They were lying low, hoping the unpleasantness would pass.
Brooks could have been talking about Douthat.
