According to The Washington Post, 50 percent of women now disapprove of the president compared to 44 percent who approve, a near reversal of his support among female voters in the 2012 exit polls when he had 55 percent support compared to 44 percent.
“There is fresh and growing evidence that many women’s faith in Obama has turned to misgivings — possibly making it more difficult for his part to retain their support in this year’s midterms and beyond,” the Post said, noting that women make up slightly more than half of the electorate and are traditionally most likely to be swing voters.
The survey showed that women were particularly concerned about Obama’s handling of foreign policy, with just 37 percent saying they approve of the job he is doing, the lowest rating on record that he has had on the issue.
In particular, a number of women said in follow-up interviews that they had been deeply disturbed by the beheadings of two American journalists, and Obama’s decision to play golf immediately following his remarks on the death of one of the journalists, James Foley. [Source: Washingtonpost.com 9/9/14, Newsmax.com 9/12/14]
It’s an interesting development. Even during the era of Ronald Reagan’s conservative landslides, there were reports of a “gender gap” where women were significantly more likely to support Reagan’s opponent than were men.
However, women — and men as well, who voted twice for Obama — will eventually have to make up their minds. You can’t cling to mistaken ideas and then reject your candidate when the ideas and policies you applauded in the election season lead to disaster, in practice.
Obama could not have made it any clearer, when he ran for office, that he sees the government’s primary responsibility as providing social safety net programs for those who want them. He has done everything in his power to raise taxes, expand the growth of government domestically, and drive the federal debt — already outrageous under his predecessors — practically into infinity, to a point of no return.
Too many people have not thought these issues out. When some politician — especially one deemed as “cool,” as Obama once was — says, “My job is to take care of you,” then you can’t complain when government incompetence and overreach gets in the way of things like economic growth, innovation, and diverse choices in the marketplace. When you pay people not to work, and tell them they’re entitled not to do so, then you will naturally suffocate self-responsibility, productivity and ultimately liberty itself. When you embrace any false prophet with no sort of real-life experience in anything, and you put him in charge of just about everything on the planet, it’s probably going to end up as a disappointment — at best.
It’s the same principle with defense issues. Obama made it perfectly clear, as soon as he came on the national scene, that he did not favor high defense spending nor anything at all that risks offending the cause of Islam in the Middle East. Unlike a lot of politicians, he has shown again and again that he means what he says. His ideology is pretty clearly and plainly one of government intervention in the economy, massive domestic spending and regulation and as little concentration on defense as possible. His first official foreign policy act as president was to travel around the world and apologize for decades of American imperialism and arrogance (his view), which he made very clear was going to end.
As for Obama’s insistence on playing golf as the Middle East burns, American hostages are beheaded and American interests (and economic viability) go down the drain with Islamic lawlessness taking over that region — well again, what did you expect? Let’s be honest. Obama had virtually no private sector experience or political experience to qualify him as a President. He was a junior Senator, with some state assembly experience and a resume claiming “community organizer.” If it was a traditional Big Government politician you wanted, Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton were far more qualified; and if it’s someone with real-life private sector experience you wanted, Obama had even less experience (i.e., none) in that department. Whatever motivated people (particularly women) to so enthusiastically support the man back in 2008, it could not have been competence and experience, regardless of how you define those things.
So when you elevate someone to such an awesome level of power — for two terms of office, no less — on the basis of almost nothing, why are you surprised when he acts like an arrogant and petulant prince who should simply play golf all the time? Voters did this to themselves. In a democracy, people get the government they deserve. Those who voted twice for this man got what they asked for, and have no business complaining now. Not unless they’re prepared to replace him not just with hapless, insincere Republicans, but with a set of leaders who really aim to reverse course in economics and defense.
You women — and men — who supported Obama in the first place ought to stand by him now, if you really believed in his ideas and sentiments in the first place. And if his implementation of those ideas has led to disaster, don’t just blame it on him. Blame it on the philosophy of government (not to mention human life) that both you, as voters, and he adopted. Obama’s not ever going to change his thinking, and he’s never going to apologize for a thing. He was given way more authority and power than he could have ever been expected to handle. He’s not ever going to admit this, probably not even to himself.
But if you don’t want continued disaster in the Middle East and continuing stagnation economically, then you had better start opening up your minds to some major course reversals — and soon.
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