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Romney's Women Woes. Hint: They Like Guys Who Listen

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A Pew Research Center poll has Romney trailing Obama by 20 points among female voters for the second month in a row — and virtually tied among men.

And the latest Gallup/USA Today poll found Romney trailing the president by 9 points among women in battleground states in March — and by a ratio of 2-to-1 among women under age 50 — after a virtual tie a month earlier.

Why? Conventional wisdom blames a string of debates and controversies about birth control and related social issues of particular importance to women. In fact, these issues have often crowded out the economic issues on which Obama is more vulnerable.

As Romney looks increasingly like he will be the Grand Old Party's nominee, he faces the same challenge that dogged Sen. John McCain four years ago: How do you hold on to the party's skeptical conservative base while reaching out to attract swing voters and close the gender gap? McCain answered that challenge by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. That didn't work out so great. McCain lost the election, but the pantheon of TV punditry gained a new right-wing superstar.

Romney's awkwardness about equity for women showed itself when a reporter asked for his thoughts at the all-male Augusta National Golf Club. Obama had just called for the club, home of the Masters golf tournament, to accept women as members.

 

Romney agreed, but with an awkward response so loaded with qualifying "ifs" that it sounded like an insurance contract: "Certainly if I were a member, if I could run Augusta, which isn't likely to happen, of course I'd have women into Augusta," Romney said. I think that was a "yes."

Romney often sounds like he could use what President George H.W. Bush used to call "the vision thing." It calls for more than balanced budgets. It begins with a strong inner desire to repair the nation's divisions and revive our sense of shared values and common purpose. Women appreciate that. Men do too.

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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com.


(c) 2012 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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