On “Anderson Cooper 360″ last night, Hilary Rosen slammed Ann Romney for “never actually work[ing] a day in her life.” Within two hours, both David Axelrod and Obama campaign manager Jim Messina were scrambling to distance themselves from Rosen’s comments on Twitter.
Why is the Obama campaign so concerned? Apparently Rosen was enlisted in February to advise Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on public relations (h/t Jim Geraghty’s invaluable Morning Jolt). The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 16 that Rosen was brought on to “tone down” DWS’s image:
Obama advisers have occasionally told [Wasserman Schultz] to “tone it down” and “back off a smidgen,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz says. She agreed with them to enlist two seasoned Democratic female pros, Anita Dunn and Hilary Rosen, to begin giving her occasional political advice and media training, advisers say. “I’m glad to get constructive criticism,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz says.
The media pros prepped her for an important Jan. 13 appearance on the “Bill Maher Show”—from her tone to her clothes (they know better than to suggest she blow out her curly hair, advisers say). Ms. Wasserman Schultz had lots of “don’t” instructions: Don’t make news, don’t try to be funny, don’t laugh at the comedian’s jokes, don’t use your hands (although she balled her fists at one point and did “karate chops” when making her points). Her biggest “do:” Attack Mitt Romney, which she managed to do despite the topic of discussion: Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters.
Despite the backlash from conservatives and the repudiation from the Obama campaign, Rosen stood behind her comments in a lengthy post on Anderson Cooper’s blog:
“My wife has the occasion, as you know, to campaign on her own and also with me,” Romney told newspaper editors, “and she reports to me regularly that the issue women care about most is the economy.”
So it begs the question, is Ann Romney Mitt’s touchstone for women who are struggling economically or not? Nothing in Ann Romney’s history as we have heard it — hardworking mom she may have been — leads me to believe that Mitt has chosen the right expert to get feedback on this problem he professes to be so concerned about.
I have nothing against Ann Romney. She seems like a nice lady who has raised nice boys, struggled with illness and handles its long-term effects with grace and dignity. I admire her grit in talking about her illness publicly.
What is more important to me and 57 percent of current women voters is her husband saying he supports women’s economic issues because they are the only issues that matter to us and then he fails on even those.
Rosen certainly helped “tone down” and “soften” Wasserman Schultz’s image last night, if only because she was the one making the inflammatory charges, not DWS. The question now is whether Messina and Axelrod will stand behind their own criticism of Rosen — that her comments were “offensive” and “inappropriate” and merit an apology. Will Wasserman Schultz and the DNC cut off Rosen’s advisory role? Or is the Obama campaign content to use Rosen as an attack dog and private consultant, while outwardly shunning her attacks on their opponent’s wife?
They have to go after Ann Romney, because she seems so nice and seems even nicer in comparison to Michelle.
A woman like Ann Romney is almost as intimidating to Leftist women as Sarah Palin, maybe more. After all, if she gets some media presence she could set back the "women are men" movement 50 years. The quiet grace of Mrs. Romney is antithetical to the new angry woman of feminism. n nYet Rosen's attack, though clever, is disingenuous. The notion that wealthy married women need their own careers is based on the pervasive mistrust of men. Obviously, a great response to this criticism is: "Ann trusts Mitt." This could even be a whole campaign branch to educate women as to Mitt's commitment to women. n n
I'd like to introduce my mother to this insufferable feminist twit. Now aged 91 and still going strong, she was a stay-at-home mom who raised five sons and a daughter, ran the house, managed the family finances, etc. My mother has always voted Democratic, too—and this is the thanks she gets. n nThe real war agianst women in America today is being waged by progressives like Hilary Rosen against women who doersn't fit their feminst template. Why, if you've never had an abortion, they scarcely count you as a woman at all!
Democrats prove DAILY there is NO place among mankind for them and their Marxist garbage. n nNo room for this subhuman conduct. They are nothing but Walking Death.
And the brag on Michelle today is she is the Fashionista Queen beating Obama in the polling. n
These kind of comments that Rosen made have been going on since the 60's whe women libbers kept saying to me, when I had children, "you don't work" or " what do you do all day" or condemned me for having three children. Sad to see women can't respect mothers. I think abortion attitude has a lot to do with it.
I think sour grapes has a lot to do with it…which is rather pitiful.
Hillary Clinton did it; Teresa Heinz-Kerry did it to Laura Bush in2004 and, andnow this one; whatelse isnew with these cretins. Dignity, grace and,integrity is almost unknown on the left; they are drivenby anger and, jealousy. nObama and, hiscrew candeny all theywant,but Rosen has visited the White House 35 times this year alone, according towhite house logs. nI donot believe them them feigning ignorance!
Wasserman, Dunn, and Rosen – 3 Little Medusa's. Nothing but talking snake heads.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I think Rosen stumbled over trying to make a political point about class not gender. In that way it's no different from the faux populist musings of Rachel Maddow.
Ann has committed so many transgressions: white, wealthy, nonworking, Mormon, nonfeminist, five healthy white sons, etc. My goodness! Do we really want June Cleaver in the White House, when we could have a spicy, exciting, game-changing, nonwhite, feminist, charismatic, progressive gymnast?
The irony ios so thick here! Rosen is trying to say that Ann romney is "out of touch with real women" but Rosen thinks that a woman who raised five sons (that amounts to about 30 years from first baby to kicking the last one out the door), and has a bunch of grandchildren, who has been fighting Multiple Sclerosis for a decade and more recently breast cancer, and is on the campaign trail with the man running for president, "has not worked a day in her life". And that is beside the service she has given within her church and community and the charitable causes she has supported. What has Rosen accomplished in the real world, as distinct from the world of public affairs and illusion?
What do you expect form a woman whose entire career is based on the fact that she is a lesbian?
Another more valid point is pres Obama has NEVER worked in any private industry, always on the public dole.
Shalom, n nRosen & her clique believe: n nUnless you are a man hating lesbian, who believes ALL women should abort what they conceive, you're not a REAL FREE WOMAN!
Watch the liberal media squirm: "It was taken out of context," "She's not really a spokesman…blah, blah, blah…." She said what she said. She's a typical hormonally-dysfunctional feminist hysteric. Along with black racists, Islamophiles, gay marriage screechers, illegal immigrants and their sponsors, cultural and moral relativists, militant atheists and church-bashers, Israel-haters and anti-Semites, she and her abortion-as-virtue ilk are the Dem base. They are to Obama what the GOP base — Tea Party, gun nuts, Southerners and other white racists, Libertarian misanthropes, greed-crazed geezers and the 20% recently estimated to be mentally ill — are to Romney. n nWhich is to say, Ah for the good old days of nice people with policy differences, where one didn't feel like taking a shower after exposure to the opposition. Right and left converge at the lunatic fringes.
Speaking as one of those 20% "estimated" to be mentally ill — AND NOT — I would like to know exactly what makes you think that (a) the self-serving estimate of those leftists who stand to reap vast financial gain from this is actually accurate and, more importantly, (b) what makes you think that the majority of those who are mentally ill are conservatives in the first place??? n nOr is it just the leftist knee-jerk "all conservatives are crazy" that comes from the closed minds of the closed guild of the supposedly "helping professions" — so closed that we are maybe five years and a SCOTUS decision from having two schools of mental health just like we have the Osteopathic approach to medicine as well as the traditional one. (There already is talk in some of the academic circles I am on the edge of about the second school of psychology. And two federal lawsuits are already working their way through the courts.) n nThis is nothing but a broad brush with which to defame those with whom you disagree. n nWhat people don't realize is that if the DSM-V comes out as it currently is edited, EVERYONE will be defined as crazy. 100% of the population will be crazy. And what will that mean? n nAs Nietzsche wrote in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" n n"All sheep and no shepherd nEveryone is the same nEveryone wants to be the same nAnyone who is different goes voluntarily to the madhouse." n nAnd while maybe Nietzsche may not have technically been a member of the Nazi nparty (you know, good old Adolph and the gang), he philosophically was right along those schmucks. And it gets really scary when you start defining people as "mentally ill" because you disagree with their politics, the Soviets did that and we know where that went. n nI am conservative, not crazy, and there is a difference. A damn big one — I spent 5 years working in public housing, I know what mental illness looks like, trust me, I know….. n n(And I never had the heart to tell her that NPR was actually provided by the government that she was convinced was trying to prevent her from listening to it. I am not making this up, any more than the time I had the tea party with the client's non-existent friends, which we had to end early because of the approaching non-existent thunderstorm. I did draw the line with the woman whose bathroom door was out in the snowbank though. Code says you gotta have a door on your bathroom, particularly if you have a couple of teenaged boys living with you.) n nSo go and claim that 40% of conservatives (we are a 50/50 nation, if all 20% are conservative that makes it 40% of the conservatives) are mentally ill. You are wrong, but you needn't let yourself be confused with the facts as we all know you will continue to be convinced that all conservatives are crazy regardless of any evidence whatsoever.
We all know that feminists and liberal activists are deeply distainful of women who choose to raise their kids rather than pursue professional success, notwithstanding their rhetorical blather. Hilary Rosen has merely committed the ultimate Kinsley gaffe, unintentionally saying what she and almost everyone she knows and associates with actually think.
The more the left attacks Romney, the more I am starting to like the guy. n nWe had the "FoxNews Mole" yesterday releasing the video from Romney getting ready to go on Hannaty and the man actually appeared human there — the attempt to make Romney look bad actually endeared him to me. n nNow we have this — I am not going to repeat what Howe Carr's take on it was (Alana, you can guess, and I respect you for not stooping that low) — and I love Ann Romney's response about how five teenaged boys can find more than enough trouble to get themselves into if someone isn't busy watching them. Six guys — six active and assertive guys — that is a strong-willed woman to just hold her own in that household, and we aren't even talking about the MS. n nOne is usually diagnosed with MS between the ages of 20-40. She was diagnosed at age 49 — which means that she had to have been living with it for a decade if not longer before diagnosis — that is toughness. That is something we can all respect her for — she kept going until she fell down so much that she had to deal with it. We aren't talking a Meagan McCain here….. n nAnd the more the left attacks Romney, the more I am actually starting to like the guy…..
#teaparty #auspol @FoxNews n nOn a cable-TV appearance, Hilary Rosen slammed Mrs Romney for “never actually work[ing] a day in her life …." n nGood God, Almighty, had we known that we could have made her the candidate — or at least have allowed her to trade in her Couple Score-Or-So-Million Dollars campaign debt for keeping the secretary of state's chair warm and aeroplane ever warmer, for the next four years! n n…. Within two hours, both David Axelrod and Obama campaign manager Jim Messina were scrambling on Twitter to distance themselves from Rosen’s comments …. n nThis particular hypocrisy despite the White House Logs which record Rosen's more than thirty-five recent visits to none other than Obama, Axelrod, Messina and others of their execrable ilk. To whom Rosen has a direct pipeline and for whom is a direct megaphone! And reads from the same TelePrompTer. n nThank Good God Almighty for our Age and for its aids to communication that ensure that obscene gang no longer so Goebbelsesquely owns, operates and controls the Narrative. n n'For the first time in my life I am proud of my country' so having advanced the technology as to have leveled the Narrative's playing field!
Yes, it was not the best comment and might offend some. Trying to blow this up into something bigger than it is, however, is ridiculous. Also, if Romney is going to use his wife as his "go to" on women issues, he needs to take responsibility for putting her in the fray. Next over-blown scandal please.