Why are Republicans still talking about Hilary Rosen?

Her non-comment was last Wednesday and now Mitt Romney has made that non-issue part of his campaign.

From a blog on Mitt Romney’s official campaign site:

If you’re a stay-at-home mom, the Democrats have a message for you: you’ve never worked a day in your life. That’s exactly what Obama adviser Hilary Rosen said about Ann Romney last night.

Nevermind the fact that Rosen isn’t an Obama adviser and nevermind the fact that Mitt totally contradicted his own position earlier this year anyway, but you know how notoriously hard it is to keep up with Repugnantblicans and their slimy ways.

You know what…let’s make a timeline of this ridiculousness because you need a clear sense of what’s going on if you haven’t been paying attention.

April 11.
Hilary Rosen, a Democratic political pundit, said the following during an appearance on CNN:

With respect to economic issues, I think actually that Mitt Romney is right, that ultimately women care more about the economic well-being of their families and the like. But he doesn’t connect on that issue either. What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, ‘Well, you know my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues and when I listen to my wife that’s what I’m hearing.’

Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and why do we worry about their future.

So I think that, yes, it’s about these positions and yes, I think there will be a war of words about the positions. But there’s something much more fundamental about Mitt Romney. He just seems so old-fashioned when it comes to women and I think that comes across and I think that that’s going to hurt him over the long term. He just doesn’t really see us as equal.

Call me insensitive but, I agree with her? Ann Romney really hasn’t worked a day in her life…outside of the home. Would the addition of those four words have stopped this from becoming a scandal? I doubt it, because Republicans are ridiculous humans, but that’s clearly what she meant. Hilary herself has kids. In no way would she say that being a mother wasn’t work, but if a Presidential candidate is looking to his stay-at-home wife for economic advice, a woman who has never had to earn a paycheck, a woman whose husband is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, a woman who raised her kids with help of nannies and housekeepers…THAT IS A PROBLEM, OK?! That is so clearly what Hilary was saying. Poor choice of words on her part, yes, but she definitely wasn’t trying to devalue the worth of stay-at-home moms.

April 11…Later.
Ann Romney signed up for Twitter for the sole purpose of responding to Rosen.

I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.

First of all, you look hella silly. I’m sure it was hard work, Ann, but with your wealth and resources? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say I could probably raise five boys my damn self if I had a hundred million dollars at my disposal and all the help I wanted to hire. Plus, you signed up for Twitter just to say that? If you really want to pretend to be some great advisor to Romney, maybe you should stay up on your social media game.

The TwitterWars didn’t stop there. One of Romney’s senior campaign strategists, Eric Ferhnstrom, tweeted the following the same day:

Obama adviser Hilary Rosen goes on #CNN to debut their new “kill Ann” strategy, and in the process insults hard-working moms.

Sleazy, UNTRUTHFUL, Republicans. I swear. The balls on these people. First of all, Hilary isn’t an Obama advisor at all. She’s just a political pundit, meaning she goes on news shows and gives her opinion. The End. And what “kill Ann” strategy? I didn’t even know Romney had an “Ann strategy” in the first place for anyone to kill. She’s not an economic adviser, period. He shouldn’t pretend that she is.

April 12.
Hilary released a formal apology to Ann. She actually went to Twitter the day before to clarify her remarks, but in the hopes of putting the controversy to rest, she made the following statement:

Let’s put the faux ‘war against stay at home moms’ to rest once and for all. As a mom, I know that raising children is the hardest job there is. As a pundit, I know my words on CNN last night were poorly chosen. In response to Mitt Romney on the campaign trail referring to his wife as a better person to answer questions about women than he is, I was discussing his poor record on the plight of women’s financial struggles …

As a partner in a firm full of women who work outside of the home as well as stay-at-home mothers, all with plenty of children, gender equality is not a talking point for me. It is an issue I live every day. I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended. Let’s declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.

That should be the end, right? An apology made in response to a slip of the tongue by someone who doesn’t even matter should be enough to put this to rest. She doesn’t work for the campaign, she’s not a strategist, and no one really even knew who she was before she made that little faux pas on CNN. She apologized, all is well. Let’s move on.

Pfft. OF COURSE NOT! We’re dealing with Republicans here! They have the mentality of 3 year olds.

April 12…Later.
Dr. Keith Ablow, who has had far too many people paying attention to him for far too long, wrote a snazzy little opinion piece for Fox News about Hilary Rosen. She’s a lesbian (which we already knew) who attacked Ann Romney because she’s jealous of women who embrace their femininity.

Top Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen provided a clear psychological window on women who despise other women when she showed gut-level contempt for Ann Romney — describing her as “never having worked a day in her life.”

…

These “anti-gender” women have it in for anyone who embraces her femininity, maternal instincts and capacity to nurture as their highest priority — postponing or passing up other laudable opportunities to work at, say, a law firm or as a marketing executive. They despise the notion that some women may indeed be drawn — instinctively and happily — toward creating special and loving environments in which to raise their children, while spending all their available time sustaining and enriching those environments and those children.

…

They despise the parts of themselves that may be drawn to such roles, as well. That’s why women like Hilary Rosen make such outlandish statements, to begin with. They’re essentially talking to themselves — albeit, with the rest of the world forced to listen — trying to reassure themselves that their own choices in life weren’t only equally as good as those of other women, but better. Far, far better. They feel like their choices are better because they have thrown off the shackles of roles that were once “expected” of them, leaving them not only freer than, but superior to, those women who don’t feel enslaved at home, but feel fulfilled at home.

…

Hilary Rosen vilifying women who choose to be stay-at-home wives and mothers is particularly ironic, given that she has chosen an alternative lifestyle raising twins with a female partner, meaning no father-figure is present in her home. To enjoy the benefits of her alternative lifestyle while denigrating the lifestyle of Ann Romney shows that her seemingly infinite bandwidth for alternative lifestyles flows in one direction: only alternative. (cont.)

Faux News is a cesspool displaying the worst humanity has to offer. I actually feel guilty watching shows on Fox because I’m convinced that by watching, I’m giving money to the corporation, which ultimately helps their news station keep filth like this pumping into the public consciousness.

This filth aside, that was still just the next day. Surely, they can’t keep this controversy going can they?

April 15.
Obviously, we need to get Michele Bachmann’s take in all this. I know personally whenever something happens in the political news arena, my first thought is “I hope Michele Bachmann has an opinion about this.” She is just so relevant and all. She was on “Meet the Press” and said the following:

I thought it was shocking and insulting. I’m a mother of five, I’ve been at home full-time with our children, I’ve also worked full-time as a federal tax litigation attorney. And one thing I know: When women are home full-time, they probably have a better pulse on their economy than even their husbands have because they’re the ones impacted by the price of groceries, by the price of gasoline, by the price of dealing with banking.

Shocking and insulting that a WORKING mother would say that a STAY-AT-HOME mother and wife of a millionaire wasn’t qualified to comment on the economy because she’s never had to earn a paycheck? Really Michele? You’re shocked by that? I mean, you look shocked…permanently…so I’m always unsure how much weight your words carry. The real people who should be insulted are the average moms all across the country, the ones who actually have to balance a budget and pay attention to the prices of things like groceries and gasoline. Those moms should be insulted that Mitt Romney seems to think his wife’s experience has anything to do whatsoever with the average mother, stay-at-home or working.

And now it’s Tuesday, the 17th.
Mitt Romney’s campaign has taken an off-the-cuff remark made last week by, honestly, a nobody and applied it to the entire Democratic party. That’s the kind of crap we’re dealing with in this campaign. Women are flocking to the Democratic party and Obama in droves because Republicans have built a War on Women out of thin air, trying to regulate women’s vaginas without the input of women whatsoever. Now, in an effort to win some of those women back to the Repugnantblican Party, they’ve built a brand new War out of thin air—a War on Stay -at-Home Moms—with the Democrats playing the bad guy.

Oh but wait: If you’re poor, you need to work to be fulfilled. Being a mother isn’t enough.
In yet another flip flop by the master of all political cartwheeling, Romney would’ve never called what stay-at-home moms do “work” back in January.

From the Washington Post:

“While I was governor,” Romney said, “85 percent of the people on a form of welfare assistance in my state had no work requirement. I wanted to increase the work requirement. I said, for instance, that even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless,’ and I said ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving daycare to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.’”

Read that again: “I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.” And by “individuals,” Romney means “mothers.”

To understand this comment, you need to understand that there’s no such program as “welfare.” There’s only “TANF”: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. And the key word there is “families.” Welfare is not now, and never was, a program for poor people. It’s a program for poor mothers.

So what Mitt Romney was saying, in other words, was that he believes poor mothers should go out and get jobs rather than to stay home with their children. He believes that going out and getting a job gives mothers — and everyone else — “the dignity of work.” And so, finally, he believes that staying home and taking care of children is not “work,” and does not fulfill a “work requirement,” and does not give poor mothers “the dignity of work.” And he believes all of this strongly enough that, as governor of Massachusetts, he signed those beliefs into law. (cont.)

Are we all paying attention? Republicans, are you paying attention to your party or are you just catching quick soundbytes on Faux News? Clearly, your party is dirty and your politicians are lying to you at every turn, telling half-truths and spouting misleading information.

Pay attention and see those rats for who they really are.