S.E. Cupp explains the Republican's Gender Gap: Women prefer big government! And that's too bad.

Women, it seems, are falling for the left’s “we’ll take care of you” economic paternalism, the insistence that women need the state, or wealthy taxpayers, to rescue them from a life of oppression, squalor and servitude. 

And Obama knows it. In a campaign speech in Vermont last week, he tried to convince voters that they really, really need the government — and the wealthy — to take care of them. “I am my brother’s keeper,” he pleaded. “I am my sister's keeper. That’s a value.”

There are plenty of men who look to the government to take care of them too. They're called bureaucrats, special pleaders, progressives and politicians.

As P.J. O'Rouke once observed, conservatism is a tough sell because in essence, the conservative candidate is saying "Vote for me, I'll do less for you." But it can be sold. Ronald Reagan sold it. Even though he couldn't shrink the size of our federal leviathan, he appealed to America's can do spirit and said things like "Government isn't the solution to our problem. Government IS the problem." As I recall, he did pretty well with female voters.

Then again, maybe female voters have changed since 1980. More are single and divorced and they find themselves in need of government help to raise their children and now even to provide them with free birth control.

It seems to me that Democratic leaders are constantly insulting women while pretending to flatter them. Always focusing on their "issues." You never hear politicians talking specifically about men's health or inequality issues. Women now make-up 60 percent of college undergraduates and yet they are still treated like some, disenfranchised minority that needs affirmative action to succeed.

Feminists and male liberals still portray women as victims of an unjust, violent and patriarchal society. As women and especially, black women, make greater and greater strides in our society, outpacing men in various fields, we read about the difficulty they're having finding a suitable male to marry. So many of the men are in jail, unemployed, and beneath them socially and educationally. What's a women to do?

Fortunately, there is still a considerable number of women out there who get it. Women like S.E. Cupp who push back against an overweening and intrusive government. Women who don't need men like Barack Obama and Harry Reid to buy their contraceptives for them.

These grown-up, conservative/libertarian women are a force to be reckoned with and a growing force in America. Younger women are increasingly listening to them on college campuses and elsewhere. The Gender gap may help re-elect Barack Obama this November. But it didn't help him in the 2010 mid-term elections, when male and female voters replaced his Democratic majority with Republicans.

There is still plenty of time for a Republican presidential candidate to convince female voters that out-of-control government spending, deficits and a sluggish economy is not in really good for anybody. Them included. We'll see.