America Is ‘War on Women’ Weary : A Favorite Democratic Tactic Loses Traction with Voters. Kim Strassel

http://online.wsj.com/articles/kim-strassel-america-is-war-on-women-weary-1412900814

Colorado Sen. Mark Udall has been called a lot of things, but the nickname highlighted during his Tuesday debate with Republican Cory Gardner deserves some meditation. “Mr. Udall,” said the female debate moderator, “your campaign has been so focused on women’s issues that you’ve been dubbed ‘Mark Uterus’ . . . Have you gone too far?”

Don’t tell Harry Reid , but the “war on women” theme is losing political altitude. Don’t tell the entire Democratic Party, in fact, which this year chose to elevate this attack—that Republicans are hostile to women—to the top of its political strategy. Mr. Reid spent most of the past year holding Senate show votes (on “equal” pay or the Violence Against Women Act) designed to give his candidates further political ammunition. Democrats by some estimates have already devoted as much as 60% of their $120 million in midterm TV advertising to the “war on women”—claiming Republican candidates are anti-birth-control, anti-women’s-health, anti-reproductive rights, anti-equal pay. Even Republicans at the height of anti-ObamaCare fervor were never so monomaniacal.

When a party throws $70 million at an issue, it will move the voter dial. Yet what’s remarkable is how little that dial is moving for Democrats compared with past elections. In Colorado, where Mr. Udall and his allies have beaten the “war on women” drum harder than any campaign, the most recent poll, from Quinnipiac, shows Mr. Gardner down by only three points among women. Colorado Republican Ken Buck, who failed in a Senate bid in 2010, lost women by 17 points.

New Fox News state polls show the same everywhere. Alaska Republican Senate candidate Dan Sullivan is losing women by five points. In Kentucky, GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell is down among women voters by two points—and he’s running against a Democratic woman. Republican Tom Cotton in Arkansas is outright tied among women against Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor.

Credit for these tight margins goes partly to the GOP, which after too many thrashings finally came into an election with a counter-strategy. The National Republican Senatorial Committee put a new premium on picking nominees talented enough to avoid saying stupid stuff. This was no small task, given the media’s obsessive focus in interviews and debates on social issues, and thus the endless potential for Republican error. Less than a month from Election Day, the GOP has yet to suffer a Todd Akin moment.

Republican candidates have also gone on offense. Mr. Gardner (as well as a half-dozen other GOP Senate candidates) flummoxed the left with his support for over-the-counter birth control. The position has helped inoculate him from Democratic assaults. Republicans still could—and should—do more to highlight Democratic extremism on social issues. Mr. Udall, for instance, recently refused to say he was opposed to sex-selective abortions, meaning he’s apparently not against terminating girl babies solely because they are girls. War on women?

Mr. Udall’s race offers another insight into the Democrats’ diminishing war-on-women returns. Women are open to a bit of fear-mongering about Republicans, but they are less sure about a Democrat who can’t talk about anything else. A September Quinnipiac poll in Colorado asked voters to rank their top issues. About 77% of women polled listed one of the following as their top voting issue: the economy, health care, immigration, energy. About 16% said their big issue was abortion. Mr. Udall had likely locked up that 16% before he even started campaigning. Who has he been talking to since?

Not men. Polls show they are judging this Obama presidency far more harshly than women—on the economy, on health care, on foreign affairs—but have heard little from Democratic candidates to change their minds. That latest Quinnipiac poll in Colorado has Mr. Gardner winning men by 19 points. The Fox polls have Alaska’s Mr. Sullivan up among men by 14 points, Arkansas’s Mr. Cotton up by 15 and Mr. McConnell in Kentucky up 11. Note to media: Republicans don’t have near as big a woman problem as Democrats have a man problem.

As for that GOP problem, it is more complex than Democrats would concede. A late-August generic battleground poll from George Washington University had Republicans winning married women by 16 points; white, married women by 23 points. They were losing white, single women (most susceptible to the Democratic theme) by just two points.

The GOP’s overall woman deficit is caused primarily by minority women—losing by 85 points among black women and 57 points among Hispanic women. The GOP’s task in changing those numbers likely has far less to do with reproductive rights as it does immigration reform and outreach.

Democrats are too invested in this strategy to let up now. But if they lose the Senate in November, it will be in part because voters—men and women alike—expect more from a party than gender pandering.

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