According to the polls, Democrat Terry McAuliffe is leading Republican Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia governor's race. What is so astounding is that McAuliffe has a whopper of a 24 point lead among female voters. Female voters crucifying the GOP at the ballot box is nothing new.
In 2008, John McCain lost the women's vote by 14 points. That result was repeated in 2012, when Mitt Romney lost the same women's vote by 12 points, losing single women voters by more than 38 percent....
The 2012 presidential election represented the largest gender gap in history – specifically, the margin between men's and women's support of a candidate (20 points). The party's autopsy reminded itself that women "represent more than half the voting population in the country, and our inability to win their votes is losing us elections." In 2012, women were 53 percent of the electorate and, in swing states like Virginia, nearly half a million more women voted than their male peers.....
According to a Washington Post/Abt SRBI poll, Democrat Terry McAuliffe has opened up a five-point lead over his Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. This lead has been almost completely attributed to a shift by women voters. In May, the two candidates were even among women, but this week's poll shows that women now prefer McAuliffe by a whopping 24-point margin. When asked "whom do you trust to do a better job handling issues of concern to women?" McAuliffe is trusted more by a 48 to 25 percent margin.
Source: The Same Old GOP Shows Up in VirginiaFemale voters are turning against the GOP over abortion rights and to a lesser extent over foreign policy. Women do not want government interfering with their abortion rights nor do they like sending their kids off to die in neocon wars.
States with Republican controlled legislatures are rolling out ultrasound bills and the transvaginal ultrasound is especially repugnant to woman because it requires that a dildo with a camera on the end of it be literally stuffed up the vagina of any woman seeking an abortion. Many women consider the transvaginal ultrasound to be a rape.
The Virginia legislature passed a transvaginal ultrasound bill but pro-life Republican governor Bob McDonnell stripped the transvaginal mandate and replaced it with a mandate for an abdominal ultrasound, here. Women were still miffed that Republicans would even dare to probe the most intimate part of a woman's body - her vagina.
TX passed a transvaginal ultrasound bill in 2011 and it fired up the female animosity against TX Republicans. To make matters worse, the TX legislature passed in 2013 a draconian anti-abortion bill that effectively shuts down most abortion clinics in TX. This fiasco grabbed national attention when TX Democrat Senator Wendy Davis stood for 11 hours to filibuster the bill. Now it appears that Wendy Davis is serious about running for governor of Texas.
Wendy Davis, who staged abortion filibuster, to run for Texas governor: sources
Does Davis even stand a chance in Texas? It's a valid question because TX is considered a solidly red state. However, TX is also showing signs of leaning purple and is increasingly considered a swing state in the making. Because Republicans control the TX legislature, representation in the state legislature and DC has definitely been gerrymandered to benefit Republicans but the same thing happens where the Democrats hold political power. While the social conservatives have held power in TX for a long time, it's anything but a foregone conclusion that they will continue to prevail as Texas changes demographically.
One thing is certain. Female voters in America are overwhelmingly angry at Republican attempts to rein in their abortion rights, especially with such things as forced transvaginal ultrasounds. That's a fact, not speculation. On the other hand, Americans are increasingly supportive of banning late term abortion and restricting abortion rights to 12 weeks or so, barring any medical reason that would jeopardize the life of the pregnant female.
The American people cannot be forced by laws to value the life of the unborn from a zygote to a blastocyst to an embryo to a fetus. They can only move on the issue as far and fast as they are willing to move and while they are slowly moving in the direction of preserving life, they aren't there yet and far from it.
The radical pro-lifers cost the GOP at least 2 US senate seats in the 2010 election cycle when Sharon Angle (NV) and Ken Buck (CO) lost general elections. In 2012, Richard Mourdock (IN) and Todd Aiken (MO) of the now infamous 'legitimate rape' variety lost to Democrats because both believed that a woman could not possibly be impregnated by an act of rape. Speculating that rape is somehow consensual is lunatic fringe pro-life insanity that proves total ignorance. Such attitudes inflamed the nation and especially outraged females.
At the end of the day, preserving human life translates to a whole lot more than abortion laws. It involves culture, values and family and these are things that have been destroyed by the systematic rise of the state and its insidious and relentless quest for power, endless wars and empire. Respecting human life starts with Americans doing some serious soul searching on the millions of folks our foreign policy has murdered and it also involves acknowledging that government by its very definition is immoral and anti-human life.
Meanwhile, one of the greatest ironies of America's pro-life movement is that these folks are the least pro-life folks in America. They consistently endorse things that I morally oppose like wars, Police State USA and capital punishment. The social conservatives who comprise the motherload of the GOP primary voting base don't seem to care about anything except their guns, waging wars and growing government.
Before America plunges into yet another contentious round of venomous social issue debates, it would constitute an act of profound morality and sanity if somebody actually held the moral high ground but since America is now a full fledged lunatic asylum run the the inmates, nothing that advances the moral preference of the people to preserve life is going anywhere. America has been reduced to a place where everything is a war on something. Yeah, we've lost something. Our moral compass and perhaps even our souls.
Judy,
ReplyDeleteYou are missing an important factor here in that Cuccinelli's votes are being siphoned to Libertarian candidate Rob Sarvis, who has 5-7% according to the latest polls.
The GOP losing the women vote to abortion is nothing new. Democrats often time, especially in this state, bring up abortion when they cannot win on the other more important issues. To cite the female vote and it's relation to abortion is nothing new.
I will admit it has become a larger issue lately when the largest Planned Parenthood clinic in Fairfax shut down, allegedly due to the increased safety regulations imposed by VA state law (so much for safe, legal, and rare). What they fail to realize is that if they had a steady number of clients, then perhaps they would have been able to meet the expenses. What this indicates is that abortion rates are declining and thus clinics are going out of business.