(CBS News) Women's issues have prompted discussion in the political sphere on subjects including reproductive health, contraception and career choices. Recent polls show a sizable gender gap in voters' support, offering insight into questions and speculation about how these issues may affect the upcoming presidential election.

In the latest CBS News/New York Times Poll, 49 percent of women voters now support President Barack Obama, with Mitt Romney receiving 43 percent, giving Obama a 6 point lead. Among men, it's the reverse: 49 percent support Romney, and 43 percent back Mr. Obama, for a 6 point lead in the other direction. Other polls have shown similar - sometimes even larger - differences, with Mr. Obama consistently receiving a greater share of the women's vote than Romney.

This gender division is not unusual. It follows a voting pattern established over the past 20 years. In presidential elections, more women have voted for the Democratic candidate, while more men have voted for the Republican. (Before 1992, the vote among women was split or favored Republican presidential candidates.) It's worth pointing out that in 2004 John Kerry ran just 3 percentage points ahead of George W. Bush among women, due at least in part to concerns among women about terrorism.

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The White House suggested Friday that Sarah Palin is engaged in a "preposterous" attempt to turn the Secret Service prostitute scandal into a political issue.

"It is preposterous to politicize the Secret Service," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Friday.

On Thursday, Palin said on Fox News that the scandal is a "symptom of government run amok" and tied it to what she called the president's "poor management skills."

"And it's, like, you know, who's minding the store around here?" she added.

Palin is among the Republicans who have suggested the Secret Service scandal, along with the recent GSA spending controversy and the revelation of new photographs of American soldiers posing with dead Afghans, reflects poorly on the president. Carney said those critics are "trying to turn these incidents, one that's still under investigation, into, you know, to political advantage."

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(CBS News) Mitt Romney has sharpened his attack on President Obama's economic stewardship. Jim Geraghty of National Journal asked the likely Republican nominee about the scandal at the GSA and how President Romney would root out that kind of waste and fraud. His answer: "I think the example starts at the top. People have to see that the president is not taking elaborate vacations and spending in a way that is inconsistent with the state of the overall economy and the state of the American family."

For much of the primaries, Romney has argued that President Obama was a nice guy but in over his head. This is a tougher charge. The president isn't just out of touch. He's off enjoying fancy vacations while the American people suffer.

When you are a president of the United States, every vacation is elaborate-- particularly if you were not wealthy enough to own a weekend retreat before coming into office that you can repair too. Presidents are also never on vacation. The job goes with them. Romney knows this and will embrace these facts if he wins. Before then, as I wrote earlier this week, he is hoping to use the trappings of the office to make the president look "out of touch."

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(CBS News) CBS News political director John Dickerson was joined on 'Hotsheet Live" on Friday by USA Today's Susan Page, The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny and Scott Conroy of CBS News and Real Clear Politics to break down recent CBS News/New York Times poll that shows the race is a dead heat between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

"This [election] is about the economy," Zeleny said. "We get wrapped up in issues of contraception - this election is not about that, it's not about that."

Page said that the idea of Republicans being a divided party is a non-story.

"[The polls] show nine out of ten Republicans supporting Mitt Romney," Page said. "Whatever they think of Mitt Romney, they know what they think of Barack Obama, that is a huge uniting force for the Republicans."

Conroy reiterated that the election will come down to the economy. "It's important to just keep your eye on the big picture," he said.

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(CBS News) After successfully pressuring an influential conservative legislative group to pull back its involvement in social issues, liberal groups are launching the next iteration of their fight against the group, known as ALEC.

Joined by a handful of Democratic state officials, the grassroots organization Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) announced today it will be targeting "bad Democrats" who are affiliated with ALEC to drop their association with the group. Other organizations, like the civil rights group Color of Change, continue to pressure the corporate backers behind ALEC, which stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council.

States should be the laboratories of democracy, Democratic state Rep. Marko Liias of Washington said on a PCCC conference call. But "ALEC wants to turn our state capitals more into Dr. Frankenstein's lab," he said. "ALEC is where corporations go to quietly undermine the rights of working families."

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(CBS News) Brian Schweitzer, Montana's Democratic governor, invoked sensitive elements of Mitt Romney's family history Wednesday, noting in an interview with the Daily Beast that the presumptive Republican presidential candidate's "family came from a polygamy commune in Mexico."

The governor, who clarified that "I am not alleging by any stretch that Romney is a polygamist and approves of polygamy," and who did not explicitly criticize this element of Romney's history, was discussing the fact that the former Massachusetts governor's father was born in Mexico.

Schweitzer argued that it was not in Romney's interest to claim ties to the Hispanic community even though his father was born in Mexico because "then he'd have to talk about his family coming from a polygamy commune in Mexico." And women in America, he contended, are "not great fans of polygamy."

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PHOENIX, Arizona - The Romney campaign today announced that it hauled in nearly $12.6 million in the month of March - the largest amount they have raised since the former Massachusetts Governor entered the presidential race.

The Obama campaign announced earlier in the week that it raised a combined $53 million for both his campaign and the Democratic National Committee in March. The team did not release a separate total showing how much of that amount was raised specifically for the president's campaign itself.

Romney has so far only raised money for the Republican primary. It was recently reported that the Romney campaign will begin working with the Republican National Committee with a goal of raising $800 million to use against the president in the general election.

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(CBS News) Ron Paul may be far behind in the delegate count for the Republican presidential nomination, but his presidential campaign is still going strong financially.

The Paul campaign announced Friday that it raised nearly $10.4 million in the first quarter of 2012, which ended March 31. The campaign has nearly $1.8 million in cash on hand and no debt -- leaving it well positioned to continue campaigning, even though Mitt Romney's delegate lead has made him the presumptive nominee.

Paul, who enjoys a loyal base of libertarian supporters -- so loyal, in fact, that one of his supporters is developing a Ron Paul video game -- managed to raise more than $2.6 million in the month of March alone, even as he lost nearly two dozen nominating contests that month to his GOP rivals.

Paul's total fundraising haul for the first quarter of this year excludes the nearly $1.4 million raised earlier this week during a Tax Day online fundraising event, or "money bomb."

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This post originally appeared on Slate.

Yesterday President Obama said he "wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth." This line was widely interpreted as a not-so-subtle dig at Mitt Romney, the wealthy son of a wealthy father. At first glance, that seemed plausible, though perhaps too subtle. The president's campaign would like you to think Romney was born with silver tea, soup, demitasse, grapefruit, and runcible spoons--not to mention that funny silver ladle we use just on Thanksgiving--in his mouth. But upon second look, the president wasn't talking about his Republican challenger. He was just talking. The "silver spoon" construction is a standard Obama cliche. He's used it here, here, here, here and here, long before Romney was the nominee. His wife has used it. (The press has even used the cliche when talking about the president.)

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This article originally appeared on RealClearPolitics.

On Labor Day 2007, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama each spent the afternoon in the quintessential New Hampshire town of Milford as they worked to earn votes at a holiday parade.

Romney had reason to feel good that day about his chances of winning the Republican nomination, as he led in the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire and appeared to have the financial resources to go the distance.

The former Massachusetts governor showed off his ebullient mood by jogging, rather than walking, the parade route on that late-summer afternoon, crisscrossing the street to shake hands and introduce himself to the voters who would cast their ballots in the first-in-the-nation primary four months later.

As his staff and members of the media struggled to keep up, Romney spotted a small crowd of people who had gathered under the cool shade of a tree just off the parade route.

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