GOP's Women Problem Isn't Going Away

Dana Milbank: It's because of policies, not dumb moves by likes of Rep. McAllister
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 9, 2014 2:05 PM CDT
GOP's Women Problem Isn't Going Away
Rep. Vance McAllister, R-La.   (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Just Republicans' luck: On Equal Pay Day, they're stuck with headlines about Louisiana congressman Vance McAllister, who fired a low-paid female staffer after surveillance video showed them kissing. "Republicans aren’t responsible for McAllister any more than Democrats are to blame for Anthony Weiner's weirdness," writes Dana Milbank at the Washington Post. But a big problem for the GOP is that incidents like this one give more ammo to Democrats for their "war on women" attacks against the GOP.

A bigger problem for the GOP is that this perception wouldn't linger if the party's actual policies didn't back it up, writes Milbank. Eric Cantor's proposed budget, for example, cuts programs that would hit women disproportionately hard, including food stamps, Pell grants, and Medicaid. McAllister-like incidents are clearly bad. "But the indignities visited on a few women wouldn’t be a problem for Republicans if millions of other women weren’t also threatened with injury—by the clinical language of a budget resolution," writes Milbank. Click for his full column. (More Vance McAllister stories.)

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