Swing States Poll: A Shift by Women Puts Obama in Lead

One can only hope that Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum remains in the GOP presidential nomination contest for quite a while longer because he continues to drag Mitt "Etch A Sketch" Romney to the ultra far right and voters - especially women voters - are watching the GOP's back to the 1950's batshitery and find it disgusting. A new poll shows that Barack Obama leads over Mitt Romney and much of the margin comes from women who reject the GOP rush to embrace a past that was none too kind to anyone other than heterosexual white males. While GOP strategists whine that the GOP has been unfairly hit by the contraception debate, they refuse to open their eyes to the reality that (1) it's 2012, not 1952, and (2) this is a completely self-inflicted wound that stems from pandering to religious extremists. Here are some highlights from USA Today:

President Obama has opened the first significant lead of the 2012 campaign in the nation's dozen top battleground states, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, boosted by a huge shift of women to his side. In the fifth Swing States survey taken since last fall, Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney 51%-42% among registered voters just a month after the president had trailed him by two percentage points.

The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney's support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.

Romney's main advantage is among men 50 and older, swamping Obama 56%-38%. Republicans' traditional strength among men "won't be good enough if we're losing women by nine points or 10 points," says Sara Taylor Fagen, a Republican strategist and former political adviser to President George W. Bush. "The focus on contraception has not been a good one for us … and Republicans have unfairly taken on water on this issue."

n the poll, Romney leads among all men by a single point, but the president leads among women by 18. . . . Obama campaign manager Jim Messina says Romney's promise to "end Planned Parenthood" — the former Massachusetts governor says he wants to eliminate federal funding for the group — and his endorsement of an amendment that would allow employers to refuse to cover contraception in health care plans have created "severe problems" for him in the general election.

"Romney's run to the right may be winning him Tea Party votes," Messina said in an interview, but he says it's demonstrated that "American women can't trust Romney to stand up for them." He adds: "It would be hard for them to win if you have this kind of gender gap."

While women typically are more likely to identify themselves as Democrats than men are, that difference widens to a chasm in the USA TODAY poll. By 41%-24%, women call themselves Democrats; men by 27%-25% say they're Republicans.