Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) campaign and the media would have us believe that herds of disaffected women voters will be stampeding to the Republicans this year because a woman candidate won't be on the presidential ballot in November.

McCain's campaign has been making a clear play for women voters in recent weeks, hosting conference calls with Republican women and touting that his policies on national security, the economy and healthcare appeal to women voters.

But the suggestion that women -- and feminist women, at that -- will be lining up behind him is a fairytale. At least, it should be. McCain's record and policies on issues of importance to women are neither moderate nor maverick.

In The Nation, Katha Pollitt put it simply: "[T]o vote for McCain, a feminist would have to be insane."

But the chatter about the voting decisions of former presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) supporters continues. Much of the recent talk has focused on PUMAs (the acronym stands for "Party Unity My Ass"), a group supposedly so angry about the Democratic primary that they won't vote for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). But as blogger Amanda Marcotte reported, PUMA PAC was started by a McCain donor, according to the Federal Election Commission.

That doesn't mean there aren't angry Clinton voters. But the number of progressive or even moderate voters who would seriously consider voting for McCain is much smaller than the media would have you believe. Unfortunately, McCain's propaganda seems to be working, at least on those who aren't aware of his record on issues of concern to women voters. (...)

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Palin referred to lipstick as she accepted the Republican nomination for vice-president, saying that it's the only thing that separates a hockey mom like her from a pit bull.

Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, brought up lipstick Tuesday in comparing the policies of McCain, his Republican rival for the White House, to those of President George W. Bush.

"You can put lipstick on a pig," Obama said during a campaign stop. "It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years."

McCain's campaign accused Obama of "smearing" Palin in "offensive and disgraceful" comments and demanded an apology -- though McCain himself used the folksy metaphor a few times last year, including once to describe Hillary Clinton's health care plan.

Obama's campaign responded by saying that Obama wasn't referring to Palin and then accused the Republican camp of engaging in a "pathetic attempt to play the gender card." In an email to reporters, the campaign noted two other instances of McCain using the phrase and its use by other Republicans such as House Minority Leader John Boehner and Arizona Senator Jon Kyl. - CTV

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You may be wondering today: Besides being a despicable sexist, what else about Barack Obama is disturbing? Well, you're in luck, because John McCain's latest semi-honest ad reveals that Obama wants schools to teach kindergartners "comprehensive sex education." "Learning about sex before learning to read?" the narrator asks incredulously. The Obama campaign, which has faced these accusations before (from Alan Keyes in 2004 and Mitt Romney during the primary), maintains that the bill Obama supported promoted "age appropriate" sex education, including awareness of abuse. Added to a string of other recent distortions by the McCain campaign, and the dawning realization that we will almost certainly never talk about a real issue again, some in the political commentariat can barely maintain their composure.

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As has been discussed before, there is no downside for lying for the GOP. They lie about anything, and never pay a price, so why not accuse Obama of wanting to teach sex ed to kids so young that they can not yet read ? Some moron somewhere will see it, most likely on one of the Cable tv shows as they play it repeatedly for free, and not from seeing it during an actual ad buy, and then will miss the repeated debunkings. Then, for the next 30 years, it will be another one of those zombie lies that never dies.

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