Top Republican Strategist Denies Women Are Paid Less Than Men

By Igor Volsky on thinkprogress.org;

This morning, during a heated discussion with Rachel Maddow on Meet The Press, GOP consultant Alex Castellanos denied that women make 77 cents for a man’s dollar in the workplace and noted, “there are lots of reasons for that.” Maddow expressed shock at the assertion, but concluded that it explained why Republicans and Mitt Romney are so hesitant to embrace the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, a law that helps women hold accountable employers who discriminate in the pay practices based on gender.

“Now we know, at least from both of your perspectives,” Maddow said, pointing to Castellanos and Romney surrogate Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), “women are not fairing worse than men in the economy that women aren’t getting paid less for equal work.” “It’s about policy and whether or not you want to fix some of the structural discrimination that women really do face that Republicans don’t believe is happening,” she added. Castellanos responded to Maddow’s policy argument by remarking on her passion, to which the MSNBC host took offense.

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Top Republican Strategist Denies Women Are Paid Less Than Men

How the War on Women Became Mainstream

By Staff, People For the American Way from truth-out.org;

Since the rise of the Tea Party movement, the Right has found stunning success in its attempts to turn back decades of gains in the rights and status of women. The efforts to turn back the clock on American women focus on reproductive rights but also attack the changing roles in the workplace, in the family and in government that reproductive rights have helped to allow women to assume.

Anti-woman proposals that have been percolating in the right-wing fringe for years – such as “personhood” measures – are suddenly supported by mainstream presidential candidates. Rights that women have come to take for granted – like the right to access birth control – have suddenly come under attack for the first time in decades.

These renewed attacks on women are unacceptable – and they can be stopped. As the impassioned response to the Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood controversy showed, American women aren’t ready to see their hard-won rights slip away, and they aren’t willing to be painted as scapegoats for the nation’s problems.

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How the War on Women Became Mainstream

Maddow to GOP: Women notice when you try to take away our rights

By David Ferguson from rawstory.com;

Friday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow highlighted the remarks of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) who urged Republican men to go home and ask their wives and daughters whether they feel like the GOP is waging an all-out assault on the rights of women.

On Thursday, current RNC Chairman Rance Priebus said that the perception that Republicans are waging a war on women is as absurd as declaring that they have declared a “war on caterpillars.” On Friday, RNS spokesperson Sean Spicer said that for the Democrats to use the word “war” in describing the assault on women’s reproductive freedom “borders on unpatriotic.”

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Maddow to GOP: Women notice when you try to take away our rights

Romney Losing Support From Women

By Morgan Little from latimes.com;

The key to these results is the sizable departure of independent women from Romney’s camp over the last few months to Obama's. In polls conducted between October and December 2011, Romney led Obama 48% to 43% among independent women. But since then, the aggregated data from February to March bode well for Obama, with independent women now preferring the president 51% to 37%.

That’s a whopping 19% swing – Romney down 11 percentage points and Obama up 8 – and it was seen within the male independent electorate as well, with a 12% swing accounting for Obama’s current slim 46% to 45% lead.

Interestingly, though the initial thought would be to chalk up the shift to the recent debate over contraceptives and health insurance, 8 out of 10 independent women polled were unaware of Romney’s stance. Of those who were aware of Romney’s position on contraception, the majority disagreed with him, by a 2-to-1 margin.

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Independent women lead exodus of support from Romney