GOP's Female Surrogates

Amanda Terkle has a spot-on article on the problems facing Mitt Romney when it comes to some - most? - of the females his campaign has lined up as surrogates for their candidate.

To whit: the designated surrogates have often voted or spoken out against bills that benefited women (such as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill President Obama signed into law) while voting for or advocating ones that undercut their best interests (such as the Blunt Amendment). Quite the challenge for the GOP's presumptive candidate!

Pointing out that the campaign has been doing barrel loops to prove he does NOT have a problem with women voters, his staff has brought out a galaxy of female supporters, from his wife, Ann, to rising Republican super stars to longtime members of Congress. Today, the campaign sent out statements from Reps. Mary Bono Mack (CA) & McMorris Rodgers (WA) that pinned women's jobs losses on the president's - oops! both ladies voted AGAINST the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act PLUS the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act. Last month put WI state Sen. Alberta Darling & conservative activist Bay Buchanan in the spotlight; uh oh - Darling co-sponsored legislation repealing Wisconsin's 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act, while Buchanan has famously railed AGAINST, with past statements claiming the movement for more equality hurts women (she blamed, at least in part, feminism for the high number of divorces, single-parent households & teen suicides).

And then there was SC Governor Nikki Haley, who apparently never got the campaign's update about the new tack, because there she was on Fox News two nights ago, saying, "There is no war on women. Women are doing well" while her candidate was blasting the president for the high number of jobs lost by women on his watch.

Today, Romney continued to drive home his charge that under President Obama's "failed economic policies" women account for 92% of all job losses. Interesting thing about those numbers - upon questioning, the campaign tagged the period cited as ending in 2009 - just as the president was sworn in.

Talk about chutzpah!

Of note - government figures show about 3.4 million men have lost jobs since the economy tanked (under President Geo. W. Bush) compared to 1.8 lost by women since the start of the Great Recession.

How many months until November??