I blogged earlier today on the New York Times story reporting that “centrist women” are feeling “disenchantment” with the GOP.

The Times reporting was unconvincing and the GOP positions were so misstated that the writer was either confused or trying to help the Democrats.

The Washington Post had a similarly-themed article. Both these stories push the notion that (in the words of Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner) “being socially conservative is a huge turnoff for female voters — and thus imply that Christianity and traditional values are conspiracies to repress women, or something like that.” Like me, Carney thinks that this just isn't the case.

We have repeatedly been assured, for example, by the liberal media that Rick Santorum, the socially conservative Catholic candidate, is not liked by women. But there is no real justification, other than wistfull thinking. Lack of evidence hasn't stopped the press from promoting the idea, however, even though Santorum polls better among women than men.

Evolving Strategies has worked with the Weekly Standard to do a poll (General Election Dynamics…Santorum vs. Romney) that also finds that being culturally conservative isn't the kiss of death. Evolving Strategies found that his stand on social issues hasn't harmed Santorum with women:

When we look to the data, we see that being socially conservative or liberal has a significant impact on a respondent’s vote, but men and women are fairly similar, with women a bit less conservative overall.

Furthermore, there is no significant interaction between being socially conservative or liberal and the Santorum treatment. In other words, there does not seem to be a significant backlash against Santorum in response to his social policy views.

Not only is the “war against women,” a pathetic figment of a Democratic imagination, not helping President Obama, it seems that his numbers are worse after a month of these shenanigans. John McCormack looks at the polls. But don't count on a New York Times story saying that women are disenchanted with the president.

Alana Goodman also has a good piece on how the liberal media is ignoring polls to cherry pick a few anecdotes to promote the disenchanted women myth.