Sen. Roy Blunt's bill to exempt employers from providing contraceptives serves no other purpose other than giving politicians on both sides something to point to when the November election rolls around. Mitt Romney, for one, was "too confused" to take advantage of the opportunity. As Reuters notes, the Missouri Republican's bill is expected to fail when the Senate takes up the measure on Thursday. But that doesn't mean that it isn't an underhand pitch to politicians to appeal to their bases by either championing women's rights or claiming that the nation is slipping away from religious liberty. Mitt Romney, like most of his GOP counterparts, probably should have gone with the latter. "I’m not for the bill," Romney told an Ohio news station on Wednesday, according to The New York Times. "The idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a women, husband and wife, I’m not going there."
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Now, championing someone's private right to contraception isn't a bad thing, but Mitt wasn't exactly toeing the party line. The Times' Michael Barbaro and Erik Eckholm note that his comments raised "furor" and report that "Mr. Romney and his aides quickly corrected his remarks, saying he strongly supports the Senate amendment, and had not properly understood the question."
It wasn't just Republicans who noticed the change. "It took little more than an hour for him to commit his latest flip-flop. Even worse, he ended up on the wrong side of an issue of critical importance to women," said Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager told Reuters, adding that Romney's remarks "showed why women don't trust him for one minute."
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