The National Organization for Women, to nobody’s surprise, has endorsed President Obama for re-election.

The reasons cited for NOW’S endorsement show once again, if anyone had doubts, how NOW is built on three ideas: government must grow, there can be no diversity among women on the issue of abortion, and anybody who disagrees with NOW’s positions must be labeled “an extremist.”

From Politico’s report:

"NOW PAC is proud to stand behind a president who unquestionably represents the path forward to achieve equality for women. Throughout the past four years President Obama has listened to our concerns and repeatedly stood up for women's rights against a right-wing juggernaut bent on undermining our access to reproductive health care, our economic security and even our safety from intimate partner violence and sexual assault," the group said in a statement.

Citing Obama's health care reform, the Lilly Ledbetter pay act, and the Violence Against Women Act, the group blasted some elements in the GOP — invoking the Democratic refrain of a "war on women."

Where to begin? The Lilly Ledbetter act is a tort lawyer’s dream in skirts—as Carrie Lukas observed, the law has everything to do, not with the issue of discrimination, but with changing the statutory rules for filing suit. It is unclear if the Violence Against Women Act actually curtails violence against women, but it does promote an ideological approach to violence and provides a lot of money for hiring people who share the NOW philosophy.  

As for the “refrain” about an alleged “war on women,” Republicans have been fighting back, perhaps most prominently with an “Obama’s War on Women” ad by American Crossroads that promotes the idea that the real war on women is a lousy economy.

American Crossroads has sent out a Red Alert on the ad:

A video released by American Crossroads today alleges that the Democrats’ much-touted “War on Women” is indeed taking place, but not by Republicans. Instead, the video goes after President Barack Obama and the Obama economy, claiming that the President’s bad economic policies, not the GOP, are the reason women in American are suffering.

The video begins with the narrator stating, “Some people say there’s a war on women, we agree.”

The dramatic video then presents a list of statistics showing that the number of women living in poverty has “skyrocketed” under President Obama.

NOW is preparing to counter this argument:

[NOW President Terry] O’Neill said Wednesday that she’s looking forward to challenging that message. She counters that women’s employment has taken a hit largely due to local government layoffs, and a high concentration of those layoffs have taken place under Republican governors.

Notice that for Ms. O’Neill, as for president Obama, the jobs that count are government jobs—while most of us would like to shrink the public sector and grow the private sector, Ms. O’Neill laments local government layoffs. Wonder if she thinks that the private sector is doing fine?