This is a pretty desperate meme. If this is the worst thing Romney said in the debate I imagine it can't have gone too poorly for him.
it wasn't the worst it was just hilarious
You over-estimate low-info independents
Meanwhile..
Not a true story.ROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women?
ROMNEY: Thank you. An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.
And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, “How come all the people for these jobs are — are all men.” They said, “Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.” And I said, “Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?”
And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women.
I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.
Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort.
What actually happened was that in 2002 — prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration — a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.
They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.
http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/33...ind-the-binder
It's trending because it's funny, not because it's the worst thing Romney said in the debate. It's an indication of how weird and out of touch he is. Just a completely bizarre phrase that only could have come from the mouth of Mitt Romney.
I find it ironic given all of the play Fox News gave last week to the idea that Biden's rudeness turned off female voters.
"Just a completely bizarre phrase"
The trees are just the right height
I like to fire people
Corporations are people, my (stupid, little) friend.
The offensive part is his saying he needed someone to give him binders full of women in order to find women qualified to be in his cabinet, as if he nor anyone in his administration knew any qualified women themselves.
affirmative action for underqualified women, sounded like. seemed patronizing reading from the transcript, but I didn't watch the debate.
"affirmative action for underqualified women, sounded like"
more like, negatory inaction against qualified women he can't see because he and the right-wing are blinded by their shriveled- misogyny.
or perhaps, misremembered:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast....other-lie.html
What actually happened was that in 2002 -- prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration -- a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor. They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.
Going out of your way to fill your openings with an underrepresented minority sure sounds like affirmative action to me.
"underrepresented minority"
... sounds like discrimination to me.
I do admit that dubya affirmative-actioning underqualified/incompetent/embarassing Alberto Gonzalez may be why Repugs hate affirmative action so much.
But Gonzo WAS a man, so what could go wrong?
What a stupid thing to criticize him for. Here is what the huffpost (not exactly a bastion of republicans) had to say about it...
Mitt Romney's comment about "binders full of women" comment by Mitt Romney that got a lot of snark during the debate last night (and instantly spawned a contemptuous tumblr, Twitter and Facebook page). Here's exactly what he said in reply to a question about the pay gap for women:
ROMNEY: Thank you. And important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.
And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we -- can't we find some -- some women that are also qualified?"
ROMNEY: And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.
I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.
There are a lot of things about Romney I don't like, but what he did to address sexism was excellent, and I'm frustrated it's being treated as a laugh line by other liberals. What he did was (sadly) pretty remarkable:
Romney noticed they weren't thinking of hiring women
He assumed this indicated a problem with his team's process instead of evidence that no qualified women existed
He realized he and his team didn't know how to find well-qualified women
So he turned to womens' groups for guidance
And then he hired women!
Most organizations don't make it very far past step one. They assume the dearth of qualified women is a fact about the world, not evidence of their own bias or problems in the pipeline. Even though, just this month, another study came out showing that men and women rate a sample resume as less qualified if there's a woman's name at the top of the page.
But even the good groups can derail at Step 4. Where Romney turned to women for data (in binders), plenty of HR people just throw up their hands and decide, since they don't know how to solve the problem, it must not be their responsibility.
I would be thrilled if more individuals showed the kind of initiative and leadership on gender issues that Romney did when he was staffing his cabinet in Massachusetts. But it's because a lot of people fall short of his example that I support Barack Obama and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
If companies are being systematically sexist (whether though negligence or deliberately), they're hurting women and they're hurting themselves. But market incentives aren't strong enough to make people work through the problem the way that Romney did. Government action can help put the pressure on solve the pay gap and hiring gap problems.
It's great that Romney did such a good job reaching out to women, and he deserves praise, not snark for his efforts. But if he wants to win the votes of women and other feminists, he needs to show that he's willing to lead by more than example.
except, that's not what happened. MassGAP put the binders together pre-election, then gave them to Romney upon his election. The governor's memory seems to be faulty here.
Oh my..they kicked his door in and tied him up and made him read them? Then they made him appoint all those women? Damn. Surprised we didn't hear about it then.
Yeah maybe this is me being out of touch but I don't really see what's especially funny or offensive about any of this. Just strikes me as a coordinated effort to create a funny catch-phrase to easily sway opinion of the debate.
There's also the irony of a Mormon talking about having binders full of women. I don't think many people got that but its there also. I don't think its a huge gaffe but its definitely the type of thing that will become a meme. I don't believe it hurts him.
Agreed
I also think it's stupid for the Republicans to be laughing about Obama saying "yours is bigger than mine..."
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