Now you may already know what we're talking about. Even if you didn't watch the debate last night, you're probably familiar by now with the phrase "binders full of women." It's now a full-fledged Internet phenomenon. Take a look. About 140 million hits and counting on Google. "Binders full of women" is one of the several hot Twitter hash tags now. There's a Tumbler page loaded with photos, cute phone, snarky photos, binders of unicorn, sharks through the rainbow tones, Hillary Clinton, Fat Bastard, you name it. 

 

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, it seems. The "binders of women" phrase began minutes literally, just minutes after Mitt Romney uttered those words responding to a question about equal pay for women. Mr. Romney pointing to his hiring process when he first became governor of Massachusetts. Listen. 

 

And I said, well, gosh, can't we, can't we find some women that are also qualified? And so 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. 

 

So that's the somewhat silly phrase. Now here's the totally serious context on why it's important to break it down. Women may decide this election, as you probably know. Look at this from the latest Gallup Poll of swing states. President Obama's formerly big advantage among female voters appears to be gone. Now other polling shows a bigger gender gap in President Obama's favor, but whatever the size of it actually is, and Mitt Romney can successfully narrow that gap, that would make the president's road to re-election very, very difficult, nearly impossible. 

 

Campaigning today in Virginia, Mr. Romney said the president has failed America's women and as you just saw, he was touting his own record last night claiming that he, quote, "went to a number of women's groups," and said, "Can you help us find folks." But "Keeping Him Honest," that's not quite true. There's a problem with the timeline. We want to look at that tonight. 

 

The group in question, a nonpartisan outfit called the Massachusetts Government Appointments Project, MassGAP, actually approached him. They put out a statement today saying, and I quote, "Prior to the 2002 gubernatorial election, MassGAP approached the campaigns of candidates Shannon O'Brien and Mitt Romney." 

So they want, they went to him and his Democratic opponent as well. Not as he claimed the other way around. 

 

In addition, Mr. Romney last night credited the recruiting effort that followed with helping him bring so many qualified women on board. And today the campaign put out this from the former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey. Quote, "As we took office, our administration actively sought to recruit the best and brightest women the Commonwealth had to offer. And Governor Romney wasn't just checking a box." 

 

But "Keeping Them Honest," though, in 2007, a MassGAP study reveals that even though it started out strong, female recruitment dropped off by the end of his term, went from 42 percent female in the first 2 and 1/2 years to 27.6 percent. 

 

Running mate Paul Ryan rose to his boss, the, his boss' defense today saying, quote, "He was an exceptional record, he has an exceptional record of hiring women in very prominent positions in his administration and that's the point he was making last night." 

 

As for the Obama campaign, well, they've certainly seen an opening.