During a segment on women’s evolving roles in the workplace on Meet the Press Sunday morning, GOP political operative and former McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt made a compelling case for equal opportunity in American businesses and the country at large, asserting that organizations that do not afford women a place at the table are on the wrong side of history and will, eventually, lose out.

Schmidt also extended the criticism as far as his own party, pointing out that Republicans face an institutional disadvantage due to their lack of female leaders and poor outreach to women:

SCHMIDT: I think in any organization where women are not at the table, where it is skewed male in today’s day and age, that’s an organization that’s deficient. That’s an organization that’s going to have problems. It’s one of the problems we have structurally in the Republican Party. We don’t have enough women at the table. But any company, any organization in today’s day and age that doesn’t give equal opportunity to women, that doesn’t advance women to the table, is going to be an organization that has difficulty competing.

Watch it:

While women have indeed made enormous strides in the last several decades, they remain hamstrung by the legacies of institutional sexism. And Schmidt is certainly correct to point out the contemporary GOP’s woes with women — out of the record 20 women currently in the Senate, only four are Republicans. President Obama handily carried women voters in the 2012 election, thanks in large part to horrific comments about rape and the Republican Party’s overall decidedly anti-women policies.

On Sunday  morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) stopped by Fox News Sunday to preview his new budget, which will be released in full on Tuesday. As it had the past two years, this year’s version will call for massive cuts to social service programs, including food stamps, job training, Medicaid, and Medicare. Host Chris Wallace challenged Ryan on the viability of his plan, pointing out that he wants to repeal and replace Obamacare, and, “that’s not going to happen.”

Still, Ryan insisted that he and then-running mate Mitt Romney won the election on this issue because they “won the senior vote”:

WALLACE: Are you saying that as part of your budget you would repeal — you assume the repeal of Obamacare?

RYAN: Yes.

WALLACE: Well that’s not going to happen.

RYAN: Well, we believe it should. [...]

WALLACE: This was a big issue in the campaign between Romney-Ryan vs. Obama-Biden. They think they won and they think that’s one of the reasons they won, and there are, Congressman, a lot of independent studies that say if you put this into effect, the net effect will be that seniors will end up having to pay more of the share of their healthcare cost. [...]

RYAN: I would argue against your premise that we lost this issue in the campaign. We won the senior vote.

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Ryan’s plan would repeal Obamacare, but maintain the law’s $716 billion in savings from Medicare.

Republicans have attempted to repeal or defund Obamacare over 30 times since its original passage. But none of the efforts have been successful, because the public supports the provisions in Obamacare, and opposes Republican efforts to repeal the bill. In a clear sign of impossibility of repeal, Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) latest effort failed to garner any co-sponsors.

Voters also clearly rejected the Romney-Ryan plan for Medicare in the 2012 election.