Why Women Can Confidently Stand With Mitt

Imagine your house is on fire.  From the curb, you watch your life go up in flames.  To your relief, firefighters arrive and reassuringly tell you they can help.  They run into your home.  Long minutes pass and the black smoke thickens.  Firefighters finally emerge protecting something in their hands.  They run to you and say, “Don’t worry.  We got it.  Here is your birth control.”

This is how I feel about the president’s campaign to target women.  Our economy is still crumbling.  Families still can’t pay their bills.  My neighbors are still losing their homes and four years later, the president hasn’t fixed it.  Days before his re-election, he thinks I should be focused on birth control? 

Please.  I am insulted.

President Obama says women should fear Mitt Romney claiming that Romney will to “take women back to the 1950s.”

There are a few reasons why President Obama and his surrogates are wrong about their erroneous and misleading claims about Mitt Romney.

I lived in Massachusetts when Romney was elected governor.  His actions demonstrated that he cared about women’s issues.  First, he selected a remarkable female Lt. Governor and then filled his cabinet with more women than any time in state history—more than any other cabinet in the country.  And throughout his sterling business career he surrounded himself with countless female executives.

The criticism for Romney’s “binders full of women” comment is juvenile.  Have we forgotten that Monster.com didn’t exist?  He reviewed “binders full of resumes” of women and he ended up hiring dozens of them to be his key advisors.

Like the President, Governor Romney also inherited a “mess.”  Massachusetts was facing a recession.

But unlike President Obama, he not only kept every one of his 44 campaign promises, but he passed health care reform, cut taxes, lowered unemployment to 4.6%, balanced the budget, drove public schools to #1 in the nation, and turned a $3 billion budget shortfall into a $2 billion surplus—and achieved it all without raising taxes or borrowing a single dollar. 

More remarkable?  He accomplished it in one term with an 87% democratically controlled state legislature.  (Has the president’s record even come close?)

Under Romney's leadership, did women lose access to birth control?  Did women lose their voice or place in the workforce?  Did women go back to the 1950s?  Absolutely not—in fact, it was just the opposite.  It’s misleading to act under the misguided assumption that it would be any different under a Romney presidency.

Does Romney have plans to eliminate birth control?  No.  Does he promise to get America’s fiscal crisis in order?  Yes.  Will that require possibly cutting federally funded programs like Planned Parenthood, which could be self or state funded? Most likely.

But someone should tell the President that actions speak louder than words.  The 2011 White House annual report shows that White House female staffers earned 18 percent less than male staffers.

The truth?  President Obama is marching America towards a deficit level that mirrors Greece—a country on the brink of collapse.  Is birth control the top concern for those Greek women?  Probably not. 

Shame on the president and his campaign for thinking it should be here.

We must take the steps to protect America’s stability or we are like women asking a firefighter to run into a burning home just to save our birth control.  If birth control isn’t going anywhere, why should it be the determining factor for whom is most able to lead America back to the path of prosperity?

In the words of Governor Susannah Martinez, “Too many Americans are out of work. Our debt is out of control.  Obama promised to bring us together, to cut unemployment, to pass immigration reform, and to cut the deficit in half in his first term—(he) hasn’t come close to accomplishing any of it.”

I am a woman.  I live in Denver, Colorado and I stand with Mitt because his resume shows that he’ll know what to do and not just know what to say.  A recovery is supposed to feel like a recovery and my family can’t afford to find out what happens if President Obama gets it wrong…again.

Join me and stand with Mitt.  It's time to find out what a real recovery is supposed to feel like.