Howard Dean: Bachmann 'perfectly ridiculous' to claim women will vote Romney

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D) is calling Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) "perfectly ridiculous" for claiming that women would support presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney because the war on women was a "myth" and they had "overwhelmingly" voted for the GOP in 2010 -- which they didn't.

CBS host Bob Schieffer on Sunday asked Bachmann how Romney could reverse polls that showed him far behind President Barack Obama among female voters.

"First of all, that's a myth and it's not true," Bachmann insisted. "There's not a Republican war on women. That's coming from the Obama re-election team because everything they do right now is -- any word that you hear will go through the grid of Obama's re-election."

"It must be working then because most of the polls show he's way behind," Schieffer noted.

"But actually if you look at the 2010 election, women went Republican," Bachmann explained. "They didn’t go Democrat, and they will this time as well, because women are more concerned about the economy and jobs for themselves, for their husbands, for their children, and that’s not happened because Obama’s broken his promises."

"The polls showed and the ballot box showed in 2010, women went with the Republican," she continued. "Remember, a women lost the gavel as the Speaker in 2010. That was Nancy Pelosi. And it was women who overwhelmingly went Republican and threw out a woman Speaker."

"I think this time again what women want, Bob, is they want competence, and, unfortunately, with all due respect to the president, he’s not competent to deal with the economy. Mitt Romney is competent in spades. That’s what women are going to be looking for."

While Republicans did better with women in 2010 than any year since 1982, exit polls didn't indicate an "overwhelming" advantage. As Think Progress pointed out, Republicans and Democrats tied among women in the 2010 midterms, 49 percent to 49 percent.

Following Bachmann's appearance on CBS, Dean blasted the Minnesota congresswoman's assertion as "perfectly ridiculous."

"Michele Bachmann has never had much command of the facts and that shows us exactly why," the former Vermont governor declared. "Women are terrified of what the Republicans are talking about. They're talking about basically stripping away their ability to have insurance pay for their birth control pills. Latinos are terrified of the Republicans because they seem to have a total tin ear when it comes to the basic needs of treating people with dignity."

"And the average American thinks that Mitt Romney doesn't care about them," Dean added. "Here's a guy that's building, during a campaign, a mansion in Malibu with an elevator for his car. He had a Swiss bank account and invested in the Cayman Islands. I don't think we've ever elected a president who's invested in the Cayman Islands as a tax dodge before."

"This candidacy is a shipwreck, and for Michele Bachmann to go out there and claim that women are going to vote for Mitt Romney is perfectly ridiculous."

Watch this video from CBS's Face the Nation, broadcast May 6, 2012.