SF Chron Paints McCain as Bad for Women

San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci dutifully dusted off the same liberal talking points we hear every four years about Republican nominees: the women in their own party hate them.

In her front page article, Marinucci found no conservative Republican women to defend McCain or critique him from the right, but she found three Republican, including Obama backer Susan Eisenhower, and two Democratic women to slam McCain.

But as might be expected in the liberal media, the largest reason these liberal Republican women won’t vote for McCain was chalked up to "women’s rights," code words for abortion. The article devoted a special section to McCain's stance on abortion. Of course this ignores the fact that millions of socially conservative Republican women backed equally pro-life candidates such as Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney in the primaries.

The most famous woman featured was Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of former GOP President Dwight Eisenhower, and an otherwise inconsequential player in Republican politics. She is noted as supporting Obama because he has "shown more understanding of how the Iraq war, the economy and other key issues affect women’s daily lives."

Marinucci then held forth Barbara O'Connor, a professor of political communication at Cal State Sacramento to provide academic support for leftist arguments against McCain. O’Connor claimed that the 'average soccer mom" will not support McCain because he is a Republican: "While McCain is refreshing compared to his peers, and a solid citizen on his values ... he's really a Republican in his heart on social issues. And that's going to drive the average soccer mom around the bend."

So, apparently, "average soccer moms" are all socially liberal and won’t support McCain just because he’s pro-life.

Marinucci’s second Republican woman featured as opposing McCain was Harriet Stinson, a founder of a Republicans for Choice group, who said: "If McCain is so against abortion, why does he oppose all the measures needed to reduce the need for it - making insurance companies cover contraceptives, federal funding for birth control and comprehensive sex education?"

But that position makes Stinson not just socially but economically liberal, more in line with Democrats than Republicans. After all, she's calling for federal regulation of private insurance to cover birth control. In other words, Marinucci is citing a Republican hitting McCain from the left. Good luck finding Democratic women wary of Obama who will hit him from the right.

Aside from Eisenhower, Marinucci highlighted another Republican woman who supports Obama. Jillian Manus-Salzman, GOP activist and a Gov. Schwarzenegger donor, said she will "not be surprised if Republican women begin writing checks and openly expressing their support of Obama." She also said, "I would have had a hard time selling Republican women on Hillary Clinton. But selling Republican women on Barack Obama is a whole different story" because "they don't see him as a partisan. My instinct, as a woman, is that this is a truly special person who respects women, who will listen to our voice and use women to rejuvenate and resurrect this country."

What Marinucci left out is that Manus-Salzman is a frequent contributor to the WISH List - America's largest fundraising group for pro-choice Republican women candidates at all levels of government.

In short, while the Chronicle staffer tried to show that McCain has problems with women voters, especially Republican women, most of the article focused on Democratic or socially liberal opposition, as if all women voted on the basis of liberal feminist priorities such as abortion without restriction.

The Chronicle is hardly alone in painting McCain as despised by women voters.

The June 20 Palm Beach Post featured an opinion article which claimed that "a vote for Sen. McCain is a vote against women." Additionally, the Los Angeles Times recently featured an article which highlights women supporting Obama, and as MRC analyst Scott Whitlock noted recently, ABC’s Kate Snow claimed that "women's rights" groups would reject the "anti-abortion" John McCain.