Obama’s ‘Life of Julia’ campaign tool mocked by GOP

The latest volley in the fight for women voters, “The Life of Julia,” has pitted the Obama campaign’s vision of a country under Mitt Romney’s leadership against the president’s record.

“The Life of Julia” is essentially an interactive timeline, a tool that examines the life of a composite of American women -- a fictional character named Julia -- and the different ways in which the policies of Obama and Romney would affect her.

Under President Obama, for example, the tool asserts that at the age of 3, Julia would be “enrolled in a Head Start program to help get her ready for school. Because of steps President Obama has taken to improve programs like this one, Julia joins thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.”

The description is a stark contrast to Julia’s hypothetical childhood under Romney, whose “budget could cut programs like Head Start by 20%, meaning the program would offer 200,000 fewer slots per year.”

“From cracking down on gender discrimination in healthcare costs to fighting for equal pay, President Obama is standing up for women throughout their lives,” according to the interactive timeline, which was sent out to supporters early Thursday.

Republicans quickly took to social media to mock the promotional tool, using the hashtag #julia to turn the ad into a joke, drawing comparisons between the Julia of the campaign and the Julia featured in the dystopian novel “1984.” They describe Julia’s life as one in which Obama’s policies lead to Social Security’s insolvency and cause her economic suffering.

“#Julia the 23 year old is living with her parents in the Obama economy,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said.
Julia is just the latest example of the sparring between the two campaigns over which candidate would better help women. Obama has in the past called GOP policies on contraception “like being in a time machine,” while Romney has accused the president of continuing economic policies to the detriment of women.

“When he says, ‘Oh, there is a war on women,’ let’s bring him back to the fact that it is the real war upon women that has been waged by his economic policies,” Romney said as he began to step from the primaries to the general election. “Let’s hammer day in and day out what has happened under his policies, and recognize those policies, those things he believes, do not work.”

morgan.little@latimes.com

Original source: Obama’s ‘Life of Julia’ campaign tool mocked by GOP