Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are turning to women voters to help some of the candidates currently trailing in the polls in key races for the House and Senate.
In a last-ditch effort to prevent what is shaping up to be a landslide election for the pro-life movement, Obama and his Democratic allies are looking to woo women voters for candidates who may find themselves on the losing end of the vote.
They’re getting support from “women’s groups” like NARAL and Emily’s List who take particular umbrage with pro-life women candidates who dare oppose abortion while seeking elected office.
In Seattle today, according to an AP write-up, Obama told local women and others that “how well women do will help determine how well our families are doing as a whole.” He surrounded himself with women at the campaign stop for pro-abortion Sen. Patty Murrary, who is facing a challenge from pro-life candidate Dino Rossi.
But Obama’s words are just the tip of the sword as he and Democrats relies on new television commercials, mailers, Internet ads and other communications to reach women voters, who are more reliable Democratic voters but who are being lobbied on abortion even as polls show a majority of women are pro-life.
One example of the targeting is the new ad the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund purchased in Colorado. The groups spent more than $800,000 on an ad that started yesterday and will run until the end of the election.
“Colorado women deserve respect,” a Colorado mom tells voters in the ad, designed to attack pro-life candidate Ken Buck and reference a comment he made earlier in the campaign. “We need leaders who will stand with us, whether we’re in high heels or cowboy boots.”
“Ken Buck thinks he’s more qualified because he doesn’t wear high heels, because he’s not a woman,” she says.
The comment from Buck came in response to his primary campaign of Jane Norton, who now endorses Buck in his bid against pro-abortion Sen. Michael Bennet.
A recent Associated Press poll finds the efforts need to work for candidates to not lose on November 2. Women, who voted for Obama by double digit margins in 2008, are now supporting his Congressional allies by just 5 percent.
“The current margin mirrors 1994, the year of a Republican wave that swept Congress,” AP said of its poll.
Amber Marchand, spokeswoman for the NRSC, says the efforts will fail and told CQ the ad against Buck, for example, won’t resonate with voters.
“As the Democrats desperately try to save appointed Sen. Michael Bennet, it’s not surprising that they are trying to smear Ken Buck’s public service and distract voters from Bennet’s failed economic policies,” she said.
Abortion advocacy groups are also turning hp the heat on their members for money and to get out the votes.
“It’s outrageous. Never in my life have I seen such an onslaught from Republicans,” Emily’s List ex-president Ellen R. Malcolm says in an email today that LifeNews.com obtained.
She talks about three pro-abortion women facing tough challenges and says they “are being challenged by tea party reactionaries who sling plenty of mud but offer no reasonable solutions to our nation’s problems. These courageous first-term congresswomen have been targeted by Sarah Palin, the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List, and shadowy third-party groups that want to turn back the clock.”
“Republicans think they can sink our women with these independent expenditures, but we’ve been here before,” she complains. “Spending by right-wing special interests and tea party radicals has been an assault on all we stand for.”
Women voters of the pro-life persuasion would say abortion and the promotion of taxpayer funding of abortions is the real assault. Voters will have the final word on November 2 to determine if they favor Obama and his pro-abortion allies or a chance in the pro-life direction.
