For a candidate with virtually no staff and who tends to talk off the cuff, Rick Santorum has been nearly gaffe-free. However, this evening might have been his first, and it comes at a time when he is trying to convince voters he is more than “just” a social conservative. 
 
 When asked about the Pentagon’s plan to allow women to serve in some combat roles, Santorum told CNN’s John King: “I want to create every opportunity for women to be able to serve this country . . . but I do have concerns about women in front-line combat. 
 
 “I think that could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved. It already happens, of course, with the camaraderie of men in combat, but I think it would be even more unique if women were in combat,” Santorum added. “And I think that’s not in the best interests of men, women or the mission.” 
 
 Such remarks may please some social conservatives who were never that keen on women serving in the military, but this may not sit well with women who work, sometimes in male-dominated jobs. 
 
 This is not the first time Santorum has ventured into this territory. In 2005 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported: 
 
 So not long after his first book, “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good,” hit Washington bookstores over the Fourth of July weekend, his opponents were sifting through the 430 pages at warp speed -- culling controversial passages in which the Pennsylvania Republican criticizes public schools, America’s “divorce culture” and argues that more American families should consider whether both parents really need to work. . . . 
 
 Many women, he adds, have told him that it is more “socially affirming to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children.” 
 
 That ideology, he says, has been shaped by feminists who demean the work of women who stay at home as primary caregivers. 
 
 “What happened in America so that mothers and fathers who leave their children in the care of someone else -- or worse yet, home alone after school between three and six in the afternoon -- find themselves more affirmed by society? Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism,” Santorum writes. 
 
 “Sadly the propaganda campaign launched in the 1960s has taken root,” said Santorum. “The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.” 
 
 Yikes. Santorum might want to rethink that and figure out a way to walk back some of that. With women making up almost half the workforce (and now out-numbering men among workers with at least a bachelor’s degree), Santorum’s remarks sound badly off-key. Perhaps he’ll walk back his comments on CNN and explain he’s rethought what he wrote in his book. In such matters, the sooner he does that, the better. ||||| “On the personal level and on the social issues, he had completely alienated suburban women,” the strategist said. “And look, it’s not just the women, either — their husbands tend to have a similar viewpoint.” 
 
 Democrats say they have absolute confidence that the gender gap would be, if anything, larger in a general election if Santorum was the GOP nominee — effectively wiping out any chance of giving Obama a tough race. 
 
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 “Women are feeling very much under assault with all these Republican presidential candidates. … I would say in a lot of the battleground states, women would vote against Santorum,” said New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who walked out of the Republican-led congressional hearing on contraceptive coverage Thursday. “I think they would come out in force to vote against him.” 
 
 Santorum’s problem, argued Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, is not his personal views per se, but that he wants to “impose them on everybody else.” 
 
 “These are issues that women think were resolved 100 years ago. … These are things, these were fights that happened in the ’50s and ’60s. They don’t happen in the 21st century,” Lake said. “I think he has a lot of private beliefs that people are only marginally comfortable with, that he brings into the public arena.” 
 
 The Santorum campaign has pushed back only intermittently against the perception that its candidate struggles to connect with women. There’s been no large-scale defense of “It Takes a Family” or his views on contraception. Two Santorum representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment on the gender gap he’s facing. 
 
 As Santorum has received greater scrutiny from the press, however, he has played down the degree to which his views on gender are to the right of the political center. He said in Ohio Friday that while he is personally against contraception, he believes birth control should be generally available. In an interview on ABC’s “This Week” last Sunday, Santorum said that the most controversial pieces of his book were “co-written, if you want to be honest about it, by my wife, who is a nurse and a lawyer.” 
 
 “The bottom line is that people should have equal opportunity to rise in the workforce,” Santorum said. “I was calling for … an affirmation of whatever decision women decide to make.” 
 
 That kind of explanation might do the trick for Santorum in a Republican primary — reassuring persuadable female conservatives that he respects them, while advocating for traditional values that at least some of them embrace. 
 
 Marjorie Dannenfelser, who heads the anti-abortion rights Susan B. Anthony List, rejected the idea that women might uniformly bristle at Santorum’s views. 
 
 “Women have all different opinions on all kinds of things,” said Dannenfelser, whose group on Friday backed Santorum in the Republican primary. In the contraception fight, she said, “the idea that only [Obama] — the candidate who is undermining individual choice — can speak to women is a non sequitur.”
– Rick Santorum isn't on board with the Pentagon's decision to formally open up some combat roles to women, he told CNN's John King last night—but it's not because he thinks women are too emotional, as it originally seemed. Putting women in the front lines "could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved," Santorum said in his original comments last night. "It already happens, of course, with the camaraderie of men in combat, but I think it would be even more unique if women were in combat." But he clarified this morning, when asked about the statement on Today, explaining that his actual concern has nothing to do with women's emotions. Rather, "I think men have the emotions when you see a woman in harm’s way," he said, and that "natural inclination to not focus on the mission but to try to be in a position where you might want to protect someone" could compromise the mission. Writing for the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin called yesterday's quote Santorum's first gaffe of the campaign. (Of course, it hasn't been all smooth sailing; yesterday Politico laid out the candidate's 10 biggest problems.)