Former Rep. Claudine Schneider (R) was the first — and only — woman to represent Rhode Island in Congress. Over five terms in the House (from 1981 to 1991), she helped pass key environmental, health, and gender-equity laws, including the Economic Equity and the Pension Equity Acts. Like former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO) and former Rep. Connie Morella (R-MD), Schneider told ThinkProgress there is no longer a place for centrists like herself in the modern Republican Party:

THINKPROGRESS: Why do you think today’s Republican Congresswomen are so much less progressive on issues relating to women’s health and safety?

SCHNEIDER: Because they are afraid of losing in the primaries. The have drunk the Kool-Aid that makes them think it is more important to win, than to do what is right by ending discrimination. The conservatives have co-opted the primaries and in order to win, they appear to do whatever it will take. Clearly, based on [the voting records of the 24 current Republican Congresswomen], they are NOT voting in the best interest of all women and men, because when women lose (on fair pay, etc.) families lose!

THINKPROGRESS: Would you have felt at home in the Women’s Policy Committee with these 24?

SCHNEIDER: Not at all! Congress is elected to represent all of the people in one’s district, to begin, one’s state, country and the world. As a Congresswoman, my job was not to represent my Party or my contributors. My job was to vote for the “good of the whole.”

Schneider says that there is “obviously not” a room for centrist women in today’s Republican Party, noting that “moderates have been pushed out in every primary” or retired to avoid being bullied by leadership. President Ronald Reagan, she claims, “would be embarrassed” by what has happened to the party. She is “disappointed and sad that the Republican women have chosen to form the Women’s Policy Committee to divide and fracture the Congress further. It is only by working together that the Congress can be effective … This is merely posturing so that the Republican party might stop hemorrhaging the women’s vote.”

Over her eight terms as a Congresswoman from Maryland’s Eight District, Connie Morella earned a reputation one of the strongest voices for women’s rights and reproductive choice in the Republican Party. A bipartisan-minded moderate, she worked with members of both parties to shepherd the 2000 re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act through the House with a 415 to 3 majority. Like former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO), she hardly recognizes her party today.

In an interview with ThinkProgress, Morella expressed disappointment with the anti-women voting record of the 24-member Republican Women’s Policy Committee and the lack of bipartisan House support for the Senate version of the Violence Against Women Act.

Among her observations:

On the GOP’s move to the right:
I think the [Republican] Party has moved more towards the right and it has become more solidified in terms of not offering opportunities for other voices to be heard. Look at [Indiana Republican Senate Nominee Richard] Mourdock’s statement when he proclaimed victory: I’m not going to give into them, they’re going to come over to me. The word compromise is not even in the lexicon, let alone an understanding of what it means.

On moderates in Congress:
I went to Harvard in 2008. My program’s theme was “An Endangered Species: A Moderate in the House of Representatives.” If I were to go back now, I think I’d have to say “An Extinct Species,” not endangered, extinct.

On the GOP-only Women’s Policy Committee:
I’ve always said that when you look at Congress, you had more bipartisanship with Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues. The number of issues has gotten smaller… I was the prime sponsor in 2000 of the Violence Against Women Act, when it was reauthorized… On the floor, there was hardly a vote against it. And now, I don’t know why these women have been cornered, so to speak. Maybe they are motivated by the fact that this is an election year — and in a presidential election particularly, they want to act to counter the concept of the War on Women. That’s why they’re coming up with their own caucus, I suppose. I’ve always felt [the women's caucus] needed to be bipartisan… I think it’s a defensive attempt on the part of this caucus, because they’re concerned.

On a backlash for the GOP’s votes on women’s issues:
Women are a majority of the voting bloc. If they sense that some of the equities they worked so hard for are being taken away, you’ll see a backlash.

While she thinks the economy will be the biggest issue in the 2012 elections, she warns that if House Republicans insist on a Violence Against Women Act that says “except certain women,” it could hurt the party in November.

Morella says she’s disappointed with where the Republican Party has gone. “If I were there, I’d be one of the minorities voting against the party. There’s no big tent, not even a small tent. It collapsed.”

In today’s New York Times, former cable news anchor Campbell Brown attacks President Obama for “condescending” to women with a “paternalistic,” “fake,” and “grating” attitude. In the 10th paragraph, she discloses that her husband Dan Senor is a top advisor to Mitt Romney.

Brown launches her assault based on Obama’s commencement address at Barnard College — the women’s college at Columbia University — and suggests that though “it’s a tough economy,” he shouldn’t have encouraged the young women there that they are “tougher” and that “things will get better” in the nation’s job market.

Brown’s primary contention is that Obama is ignoring economic issues related to women to focus on things like abortion rights and affordable access to contraception. To justify her attack, Brown cites a handful of stories from personal friends and relatives, then cites polling data:

The struggling women in my life all laughed when I asked them if contraception or abortion rights would be a major factor in their decision about this election. For them, and for most other women, the economy overwhelms everything else….

Another recent Pew Research Center survey found that voters, when thinking about whom to vote for in the fall, are most concerned about the economy (86 percent) and jobs (84 percent). Near the bottom of the list were some of the hot-button social issues.

She’s right: the economy and jobs are at the top of voters’ lists of issues. But it’s not at the expense of all other issues. Indeed, the same Pew poll Brown cites shows that more than a third of voters ranked “abortion” and “birth control” — 39 and 34 percent, respectively — as “very important” issues. And, according to the report, “Birth control is significantly more important to women (40% very important) than men (27%).”

Four pages past Brown’s essay in the Times’s Sunday Review, the Times editorial board takes Republicans to task and outlines their continuing assault on women’s issues. The problem with Romney — elided by Brown — is that he shares many of these extreme views. Brown writes:

Most women don’t want to be patted on the head or treated as wards of the state. They simply want to be given a chance to succeed based on their talent and skills. To borrow a phrase from our president’s favorite president, Abraham Lincoln, they want “an open field and a fair chance.”

A career “independent journalist,” which Brown claims in her disclosure to be, would be prompted to ask why the Romney campaign dodged a question on whether he supported the Lilly Ledbetter Act, a landmark 2009 law (signed by Obama) that empowers women to seek restitution for pay discrimination. The campaign quickly covered itself with the hedge that Romney “supports pay equity and is not looking to change current law.” Republicans in Congress opposed the law when it was debated. Only two GOP senators — Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who side with the President against their party on women’s issues — voted for it.

Wisconsin State Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) is facing a tough recall election against Democrat Lori Compas, and over the weekend he expressed incredulity that Compas was capable of mounting her challenge without the help of her husband and the state’s powerful unions.

“I don’t for one minute believe she is the organizing force behind this whole thing,” Fitzgerald told the Wisconsin State Journal, which reported that “Fitzgerald said he thinks her husband is one of the main forces behind her campaign.”

Compas, a former journalist and freelance photographer who has been trailing Fitzgerald in polls, hit back hard:

“That is pretty insulting, but it does seem in keeping with his general views on women,” she said. “He doesn’t seem to have a lot of respect for them. That’s OK; he can keep underestimating me.”

Compas said that if Fitzgerald really doubts she is a serious candidate, he should accept her invitation to debate. “I have challenged him to five debates,” she said. “If he thinks I can’t handle myself, he should come out and face me.”

Fitzgerald, who voted to repeal Wisconsin’s pay equity law and eliminate all state funding for Planned Parenthood, has already earned the ire of women’s groups across the state, and Planned Parenthood is supporting the recall effort and has endorsed Compas.