WHAT WOMEN WANT:

Democrats are running against monsters. They are running to protect American women from the hostile, patriarchal, domineering men of the Republican Party. (Chivalry is not dead!) In the Democrats’ ghoulish caricature, Republicans are not just wrong on the issues that women care about, but are barely above criminals. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, used rhetoric only slightly more florid than the Democratic norm when she said of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, “What Republican Tea Party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back.”

Republicans who think they can avoid women’s issues, or blunt their power by talk of entrepreneurship or free markets, are rewarding the Democrats’ tactics. Silence gives consent. Moreover, they are conveying their fear that the Democrats’ interpretation of women’s wants is correct. They may even believe it more sincerely than Democrats themselves.

They should try looking at the polls.