{"id":866,"date":"2012-10-22T12:55:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T12:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/22\/fighting-around-the-world-for-women"},"modified":"2012-10-22T12:55:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T12:55:00","slug":"fighting-around-the-world-for-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=866","title":{"rendered":"Fighting around the world for women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Tonight\u2019s the night when President Obama and Mitt Romney debate one final time before the Nov. 6 election. The topic will be foreign affairs.<\/p>\n<p>But my friend Cliff and I had a discussion this morning at the Amarillo Town Club about a topic we agree could be woven into the debate: women.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would bet you 10 bucks that the topic of women will come up tonight in the foreign policy debate,\u201d Cliff said. I didn\u2019t take the bet, because the moment I began thinking about it, the more plausible the notion became.<\/p>\n<p>We came up with this context: <\/p>\n<p>The discussion will turn quickly to Afghanistan and our ongoing war against the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan with the heaviest of iron fists for many years before we threw them out of power right after the 9\/11 terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n<p>I can hear the president say something like this: \u201cAnd let me assure my fellow Americans that our brave men \u2026 and <em>women<\/em> \u2026 are fighting for the rights of Afghan women, who for so many years were subjugated as second- or even third-class citizens in their own country. Did I mention that our women are in the battlefield as well?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why the interest in women at this debate? The president is seeking to rebuild the narrowing gender gap between him and Romney. Women favor Obama, but by a smaller margin now than they were, say, a month ago. So here\u2019s the president\u2019s chance to score points at home while making an important statement about our nation\u2019s role in the world. Granted, it would take some rhetorical deftness, but of the two, Obama is the more verbally nimble.<\/p>\n<p>Democrats and Republicans are competing vigorously for the women\u2019s vote. You can take this to the bank as well: Both sides are looking for any advantage they can find with that critical voting bloc. <\/p>\n<p>I think my pal Cliff is on to something.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight\u2019s the night when President Obama and Mitt Romney debate one final time before the Nov. 6 election. The topic will be foreign affairs. But my friend Cliff and I had a discussion this morning at the Amarillo Town Club about a topic we agree could be woven into the debate: women. \u201cI would bet &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=866\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Fighting around the world for women<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}