A flight of recent polling has suggested that Mitt Romney and the GOP have a “women problem,” losing support among half the voting population in swing states at a dramatic pace.

Asked about the issue in a Newsmax interview yesterday, Mitt Romney not only acknowledged the existence of the problem, but also accepted that the recent debate over contraception caused it. But don’t worry, Romney said, just wait until voters see “our real position,” as Democrats have “distorted” the debate:

ROMNEY: But there’s no question that over the past several weeks, that a discussion about religious liberty was distorted into a discussion about contraceptives. And there was the somehow Republicans are opposed to contraceptives. I think it was most unfortunate twist by our Democrat friends. I think this will pass as an issue as people understand our real position.

I, for instance, have made it clear that I do not oppose contraceptives. But the women that I speak with, and the women that my wife speaks with, tell her that their number one issue is the economy.

Watch it:

When Republicans decided to start a political controversy over the Obama administration’s ruling that all insurance companies should provide coverage for birth control, many on the left warned it would backfire. Indeed, polling seems to bear that out. But conservatives have denied the significance of the contraception debate, and even the existence of gender problem at all, as RNC Chairman Reince Priebus infamously did this morning.

So it’s notable that Romney seemed to agree that not only is there a gender problem, but the contraception debate started it.

And his comment about revealing “our real position” doesn’t look good coming from someone who’s known to change his positions, and is expected to do as he pivots to the general election, especially on women’s issues.

Meanwhile, Romney claims the economy is the top issue with women, but that may not be true. As the Atlantic’s Molly Ball points out, a recent USA Today swing state poll found that health care was women’s number one issue, while men’s was the debt and deficit. (Those economic issues came in at number four for women.) Since health care is not exactly Romney’s best issue, he has an interest in pretending women don’t care about it or, for that matter, about contraception, as his surrogate, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), said.

Among the GOP presidential candidates, likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney staked out the most severely anti-immigrant position on the campaign trail. He has admitted that his immigration plan is to make the lives of undocumented immigrants miserable so that they self-deport, and he has promised to veto the DREAM Act if elected president.

And at least one Arizona Republican agrees whole-heartedly with Romney: Russell Pearce, the former state senator who helped write SB 1070, the state’s harmful anti-immigrant bill. On Tuesday, he told the Washington Post that Romney’s immigration views are the same as his own:

“His immigration policy is identical to mine,” Pearce said. “Attrition by enforcement. It’s identical to mine – enforce the laws. We have good laws, just enforce them.” [...]

Of Romney’s position on illegal immigration, Pearce said, “I don’t want to take credit for being there and helping him write it, but much of his policy was modeled — by people who I’ve worked with — after my legislation.”

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), who has played an instrumental role in authorizing illegal immigration laws in Arizona, Alabama and elsewhere, has served as a Romney adviser since the beginning of this year.

Granted, Romney’s camp already is attempting to soften his immigration position as he heads into the general election and continues to trail President Obama among Hispanic voters in key states. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) defended Romney’s immigration record earlier this week. And Romney has gone after President Obama’s immigration record in an apparent attempt to deflect.

But all the position shifting and reframing will not change the fact that Romney is the most anti-immigrant Republican running for the party’s presidential nomination.

Despite spending four years at the school himself, Mitt Romney slammed President Obama today for spending “too much time” at Harvard, where the president went to law school. And while Romney has twice as many degrees as Obama and an extra year at the school under his belt, this is not the first time Romney has attacked the president for attending the elite Massachusetts university.

But Romney wasn’t always so down on his alma mater. He used to brag about his tenure there regularly, and so did his wife, Ann:

MITT ROMNEY: Harvard has a terrific program, they call it the joint degree program. … You can apply to the business school and the law school. You can get into both. You can take five years of educational training in four years.

ANN ROMNEY:He graduated from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, that he went to at the same time. It takes also a great mental capacity to do that kind of thing.

Watch a compilation:

Romney did not forget he went to Harvard. The jab exposes what seems to be a deliberate strategy of taking Romney’s biggest weakness and used them to attack Obama. Just this week, he’s accused Obama of being out of touch and a flip flopper, two of the biggest narratives against Romney. But rarely are they so transparently and audaciously hypocritical as the Harvard line.

Speaking at his Pennsylvania campaign headquarters this morning, Mitt Romney attacked President Obama as out of touch for spending too much time at Harvard, where the president went to law school. “We have a president, who I think is is a nice guy, but he spent too much time at Harvard, perhaps,” Romney said.

Watch it:

Unfortunately for Romney, his attack is undermined by the fact that the GOP presidential hopeful has twice as many degrees from Harvard as Obama. Romney earned a combined JD/MBA from the elite Cambridge, Massachusetts university. That means Romney spent an extra year at Harvard, getting the combined degree in four years, compared to Obama’s three for the JD alone. Indeed, Romney thrived at Harvard by all accounts.

Romney has previously attacked Obama for taking advice from the “Harvard faculty lounge,” even though one of Romney’s top economic advisers is Harvard professor Greg Mankiw.

Romney has also taken at least $32,000 in contributions from Harvard faculty and administrators.

Citing attacks on abortion and contraception rights, many liberals have accused Republicans of waging a “war on women.”

But in an interview with Bloomberg TV, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus dismissed these charges as entirely baseless. He comparing the “war on women” to a “war on caterpillars,” blaming the media for trumping up the supposedly fictional attacks on women’s rights:

“If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend. “It’s a fiction.”

While his choice of comparison to caterpillars is questionable, the bigger problem with Priebus’ comments is that they completely ignore the fact that policies advanced by his party in Congress and the states are already having an effect on women’s rights and women’s health. One could take issue with calling it a “war on women,” but not the reality that conservatives are actively working to curtail women’s constitutionally guaranteed rights as much as possible in dozens of states across the country, and access to contraception in Congress.

While some conservative environmental policies may hurt caterpillars somewhere, Republican lawmakers haven’t systematically targeted the insect’s rights the way they have with women.

To dismiss and belittle this fact with a glib remark suggests Priebus is either ignorant or in denial. Given that attitude, perhaps it’s not surprising Mitt Romney is struggling to gain support from female voters.