The party that tends to favor in-utero legislation is now looking to bolster its appeal to women by tricking some of them to run as Republicans.

According to The Washington Post (via Political Wire), the Republican National Committee has launched a campaign called “Women on the Right Unite” with the aim of recruiting female candidates and, by extension, voters. But as Emily’s List, a group with much experience electing women to public office, points out, the problem isn’t simply the candidates’ gender:

“Our record number of victories during the last election happened not just because we ran fantastic candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin,” said the Democratic women’s group Emily’s List in a memo reacting to the GOP’s new campaign, “they happened because women voters were turned off by the Republican Party’s attempts to roll back the clock on their rights and freedoms.”

Still, women make up more than half of the population and deserve to be represented by more than 18.3 percent of Congress. Even a party that has been accused of waging a war on women is to be commended for trying to be more inclusive, whatever its motives. But maybe the first step is to give up the ovarian inspection argument.

— Posted by Peter Z. Scheer.