Karl Rove’s American Crossroads Turns the “War on Women” on Obama

Karl Rove's American Crossroads is hoping to help the GOP regain ground among women, particularly Latina women. According to a Gallup poll President Barack Obama has a 48 point advantage among Latino voters, while a CNN poll finds that women voters back Obama over Romney by a 16 point margin. Now Rove's Super PAC is trying to make inroads with these voters, releasing an online ad that attempts to turn the "War on Women" charge on Obama. The Super PAC is testing the video in focus groups, with an eye toward potentially creating a 30-second TV ad, according to CNN.

"Some people say there's a 'War on Women'," a female narrator says in the ad. "We agree. It's a war being waged on the economy... Under President Obama the number of women living in poverty has skyrocketed. Hit hardest in every poverty-related category," says the narrator. The ad cites accurate statistics from the National Women's Law Center which show that poverty rates for women skyrocketed between 2009 and 2010, the first year of economic recovery. The study shows that in 2010 more than 17 million women were living in poverty, an increase of 800,000 since 2009, with poverty rates for Hispanic women at twenty-five percent.

The irony of course, is that GOP proposals would make this dire situation worse. GOP Budget Chairman Paul Ryan wants to slash $5 trillion in support for low-income households, including foodstamps, and presidential candidate Mitt Romney's primary economic proposal is to cut taxes for the wealthy.

American Crossroads is part of a network of independent expenditure groups that pledged to spend 1 billion dollars on the 2012 election cycle. American Crossroads is a Super PAC that works in conjunction with its 501(c)(4) Crossroads GPS Action committee. Thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, Super PACs can accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions, and corporations for the purpose of making independent expenditures in races as long as they do not coordinate these expenditures with campaigns.