Former Rep. Claudine Schneider (R-RI)

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.”

Former Rep. Connie Morella (R-MD)

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.”

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)

“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.

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson

“Look at every place where a women is in control,” said Peterson. “You see nothing but confusion. There’s no good in it at all, none.”

Peterson’s sermon began with comments about Sandra Fluke, doubling down on Rush Limbaugh’s slut remarks. But halfway through his speech, he kicked the hate into another gear:

PETERSON: “I think that one of the greatest mistakes that America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote. We should have never turned that over to women.”

“It was a big mistake…these women are voting in the wrong people. They’re voting in people who are evil, who agree with them…Men in the good old days understood the nature of the women, they were not afraid to deal with them.”

“Wherever women are taking over, evil reigns.”

Amazingly, just last week, Sean Hannity, who sits on the board of Peterson’s group BOND: Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny, invited him to sit on his Great American Panel once again to discuss the president’s comments on the one-year anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden.

But the conversation never quite made it that far. Fellow panelist Kirsten Powers, a Fox News columnist and political analyst, abandoned the segment to hit back against Peterson and his anti-women views, over the objections of Hannity who wanted to spend his time attacking President Obama.

For two minutes, Powers and Peterson exchanged barbs while Hannity and the third panelist, Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R), sat quietly on the sidelines. Powers told Hannity that she had no idea Peterson would be a guest on the show alongside her, and invited him to repudiate Peterson’s remarks (he declined).

Peterson has made appearances on Fox News for years, fielding frequent invites from Hannity in particular despite Peterson’s history of hateful comments. And it’s not like Hannity had no warning. Peterson has previously said he “thank[s] God for slavery, because had it not, the blacks that are here would have been stuck in Africa.” He also called the victims of Hurricane Katrina “welfare-pampered,” “lazy,” and “immoral.”

And while Powers was rightfully outraged at Fox News’ decision to offer Lee a national platform, Hannity was unapologetic, quickly shutting down the spat and pivoting to his usual agenda of attacking the president.

But despite the Senate’s ultimate passage of the bill — which included the support of 14 Republican senators, including all of the female Republicans — the House is ready to fight these provisions again. Their version of VAWA also removes the protections for marginalized communities. According to Congressional Quarterly, a watered-down bill, of which Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL) is the lead sponsor, is likely to pass in the House:

The House bill also would eliminate Senate language that supporters say would do more to help victims of domestic violence including gays and lesbians, immigrants and American Indians. Adams considers those provisions unnecessary, a spokeswoman said. “The grants are available to all victims, and there is no evidence to conclude that victims are being turned away,” said spokeswoman Lisa Boothe in an email.

The backing of Smith, of Texas, and California’s McCarthy signals the House measure is on a fast track to passage — and a showdown with the Senate.

While Adams may think the provisions are unnecessary, there is ample proof that she is mistaken. Cases of LGBT domestic violence increased 38 percent from last year. Seven people died from domestic abuse. And of those who sought it, 44 percent of LGBT victims were turned away from traditional shelters. As for Tribal victims, Native American women face the highest rate of domestic violence in the US — three and a half times higher than the national average — and can currently not seek any protection if the perpetrator is non-Tribal.

And undocumented victims? Maybe they aren’t “turned away” in Adams’s definition, but that’s because they fear that if they call the police, they will be deported.

Members of Congress have already seen heated debate around VAWA, with one member even recounting her own experience of being raped as a girl. With the attempt to strip out provisions for particularly vulnerable communities, the fight is likely to get even more difficult.

“Now we know, at least from both of your perspectives,” Maddow said, pointing to Castellanos and Romney surrogate Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), “women are not fairing worse than men in the economy that women aren’t getting paid less for equal work.” “It’s about policy and whether or not you want to fix some of the structural discrimination that women really do face that Republicans don’t believe is happening,” she added. Castellanos responded to Maddow’s policy argument by remarking on her passion, to which the MSNBC host took offense:

CASTELLANOS: It is about policy and I love how passionate you are. I wish you were as right about what you’re saying as you are passionate about it. I really do.

MADDOW: That’s really condescending. This is a stylistic issue. My passion on this issue is actually me making a factual argument on it.

Watch it:

In an interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer earlier this month, Romney refused to say whether he would sign the Lilly Ledbetter Act, but claimed that he would not change it. Romney’s women surrogates — including McMorris Rodgers — all voted against the legislation. Castellanos himself consulted Romney during the 2008 presidential election.

Failed Supreme Court Nominee Robert Bork

Mitt Romney, however, apparently finds this kind of outlook quite appealing, because he selected Bork to co-chair his “Justice Advisory Committee.” At a recent campaign event, Vice President Biden went after Romney for his poor judgment in selecting Bork for this role:

[Biden] addressed specifically the issue of contraception, saying that he “noticed today” that Judge Robert Bork, “a fine man, and a man who I disagree with a lot,” had been named as the Romney campaign’s “justice coordinator.” (He appeared to have read an editorial in today’s New York Times which addressed this fact. Bork was actually named as a chair of Romney’s “Justice Advisory Committee” last August, a Romney spokesperson confirmed.)

He discussed the Bork confirmation hearings, which he oversaw as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the discussion of Griswold vs. Connecticut.

“So we’re kind of returning to the past. You know that movie, ‘Back To the Future?’ It feels like to me that we’re going Back to the Future,” he said.

Not too long ago, of course, the Romney campaign spent days pretending to believe that President Obama’s own view of motherhood was somehow in question because someone who has no association with his campaign said something dumb on CNN. Meanwhile, Romney continues to trust Bork as one of his top legal policy advisors — even after Bork claimed that there’s no such thing as discrimination against women and that women who think there is are “silly.”

So it’s really not that much of a surprise that he found yet another law he thinks is unconstitutional today. This time, it’s the entire Violence Against Women Act:

[The Violence Against Women Act] oversteps the Constitution’s rightful limits on federal power. Violent crimes are regulated and enforced almost exclusively by state governments. In fact, domestic violence is one of the few activities that the Supreme Court of the United States has specifically said Congress may not regulate under the Commerce Clause. As a matter of constitutional policy, Congress should not seek to impose rules and standards as conditions for federal funding in areas where the federal government lacks constitutional authority to regulate directly.

Watch it:

Once again, Lee might want to consider reading the Constitution before he behaves like he’s an expert in what it says. Although it’s true that Congress cannot prohibit domestic violence under its power to regulate commerce — unlike, say, a comprehensive regulation of the nation’s health care market, domestic violence laws are not economic regulation — the Constitution permits Congress to do a whole lot more than just regulate the nation’s economy. Specifically, the Constitution allows our national leaders to “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” and there is simply nothing in the Constitution’s text that prevents Congress from providing for the general welfare by funding grants that states can use to combat domestic violence.

Lee, however, has made quite a political career out of ignoring the text of the Constitution — and wielding his fake Constitution to declare that pretty much any federal law that protects the sick, the unfortunate, the young, the old and, now, women is somehow unconstitutional.

Women, on the other hand, are much less likely to have blinders when it comes to big moves. They also do a better job placing choices in context. In football terms, female scouts might have seen that Vince Young, for all his awesome talent, was not a good fit with the team, coaching staff or scheme in Tennessee.

Another place where the NFL could really use a woman’s touch is with the impossible task of predicting how a newly minted 21-year-old millionaire will behave once he hits the league. Most teams use personal interviews to gauge a potential player’s intangibles — work ethic, leadership, motivation, teamwork — but the results would likely be more reliable if women were leading this process. Shrira says studies show that women are intuitively better at discerning and exploring a candidate’s character. Adds Spencer, “This is the unique dimension women would add to the draft: getting to the absolute heart and soul of a player.”

A lot of the piece is based in general business psychology, rather than in the track records of the very few women (like Linda Bogdan, pictured here) who have gotten a say in NFL. But that research and the evidence of other successful businesses do make a compelling case that any organization might want to consider diversity not simply for its public image, but for its bottom line. Different perspectives can bring not just different ways of making decisions, but different costs and potential problems to light. Myra Kraft famously convinced the Patriots to release Christian Peter after the team drafted the man even though he had a horrible record of violence against women. A scouting corps that included more women might be more likely to weigh past records of such allegations more seriously, not just because abusing women is bad, but because players who get in trouble outside of the stadium lose playing time and mental focus.

There’s no question that it won’t be easy to get more women in the scouting and executive ranks. It’s not like there are no women who are substantially interested in football, but it is a specialization beyond general business acumen. And if, as the article points out, women tend to get powerful positions in NFL teams only if they’re related to the owner, even if they perform well, that’ll likely be a hurdle to convincing other teams that they got their on their own abilities, no matter how sterling those abilities are. Allegations of nepotism tend to stick, even if they’re utterly unfounded. I’m not sure what the way in will turn out to be. But, rooting interests aside, I’d applaud whatever team decided to seek new insight and get some women in the mix. Neither men nor women are collectively perfect decision-makers. But new eyes and new perspectives are rarely a bad idea, and it would be interesting to see how female scouts challenge the existing consensus about what’s valuable in the NFL, and in other sports.

Ann Romney was at the center of a national discussion recently after a Democratic consultant charged that the would-be future first lady couldn’t possibly understand the plight of working mothers because she had the luxury to stay home and devote herself full time to raising her kids. The Romney campaign fired back, accusing Democrats of lacking respect for stay at home moms.

The issue was largely dismissed after a few days as a ginned-up “silly season” controversy, but Ann Romney’s comments last night at the Connecticut Republican Party’s Prescott Bush Awards Dinner could potentially reignite the issue. After discussing how she understands the challenges mothers face, Romney said, according to BuzzFeed:

Romney alluded to the fact that not all women can stay at home saying, “I love the fact that there are women out there who don’t have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids. Thank goodness that we value those people too. And sometimes life isn’t easy for any of us.”

It seems Romney was trying to express empathy for women who don’t have the option to stay at home, as she did. But the comment that she “love[s]” that some women “don’t have a choice” and must work is unusual, to say the least, and could lead to a new round of charges that the Romneys don’t understand average Americans, given their enormous wealth.

Nearly two-thirds of women are the breadwinner or co-bread winner in their households. Nonetheless, the gender pay gap remains. And while Mitt Romney has broken with most Republicans to support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, he has still not yet taken a position on the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Grenell, who served as George W. Bush’s spokesperson at the UN and was announced as the Romney campaign’s new representative yesterday, has gone after Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Callista Gingrich, Sandra Fluke and others. He also asserted that President Obama’s children should be fair game for political debate. A selection of his thoughts on women:

In another comment, that has since been removed, Grennell discussed the first lady “sweating on the East Room carpet.”

This afternoon, Grennell offered an apology, of sorts, for his attacks, writing, “my tweets were written to be tongue-in-cheek and humorous but I can now see how they can also be hurtful. I didn’t mean them that way and will remove them from twitter. I apologize for any hurt they caused.”

Because of this gap women working full time are able to afford less education, housing, transportation, food, and health care for themselves and their families than their male counterparts. As a result women and female-headed households are more likely to be in poverty and less likely to have health insurance. The pay gap translates into a significant economic disadvantage for women and their families, especially when nearly two-thirds (63.9 percent) of women are now either the primary breadwinner or a co-breadwinner, bringing home at least 25 percent of their family’s income.

With the money lost over her lifetime, a woman could feed a family of four for 37 years, pay for seven four-year degrees at a public university, or simply save the money for retirement, boosting her quality of life when she leaves the workforce:

For some women, of course, the pay gap is even worse. According to a report from the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Latina women face a pay gap of 40 percent.