A leading group dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women is launching a full-bore campaign against House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), accusing the Ohio Republican and the caucus he leads of being fundamentally bad for female voters.
The national organization EMILY's List is set to unveil a new website on Thursday, making the case to female Democrats that the policies they value would be endangered by a Boehner-led House. The site, titled Boehnersamerica.org, in addition to an accompanying web video (below), will hone in on specific issues that resonate best with the targeted constituency: from the GOP pledge to overturn health care reform, to the push for privatizing Social Security, to the threats leveled by several Republican candidates to scale back the entirety of Roe v. Wade.
"Mr. Boehner didn't say if, as Speaker, he'd stick with the same strategy of NO, NO, NO the GOP has embraced so far," said EMILY's List president Stephanie Schriock, in remarks unveiling the new campaign. "But let me be fair. It's not John Boehner, but the extreme Republican majority he would lead. Republican members with positions so extreme, they would have been disqualified twenty years ago. Though, 90 years ago, these folks would have been right at home.
"I'm not going to pull out a whiteboard to draw you a picture, but I want to connect the dots very clearly for you: John Boehner can only take the speaker's gavel from Nancy Pelosi, by defeating the Democratic women you and I have worked so hard to elect. And by discouraging women voters so much that they stay home on November 2nd."
The push by EMILY's List, which aides say will take place from now until the election, echoes are larger effort by the Democratic officials to turn out voters who traditionally support the party. Suburban women, in particular, have become more and more reliable constituencies during recent election cycles.
Where the group may have problems is connecting GOP leadership to the offending policies. Boehner and company have stayed fairly close to an election script heavy on economy issues and light on the cultural matters. While health care repeal is a top topic for the Republican Party, overturning Roe v. Wade has barely been mentioned in the campaign context. And for strategic reason. As Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour put it at a recent breakfast, social issues "won't change people's votes."
"The American people - men and women alike - are asking, 'where are the jobs?' and Washington Democrats have no new answers," Boehner spokesman Michael Steele said of the EMILY's List campaign. "We need to stop their tax hikes, cut government spending, and get our economy moving again - that's an agenda everyone can embrace."
WATCH EMILY'S LIST'S VIDEO BELOW: