Thursday, April 12, 2012

Hilary Rosen Beclowns Herself

If you've seen any cable news program in the past 15 or so hours then you've probably heard about Hilary Rosen beclowning herself while on AC360 last night and with an op-ed at CNN this morning. For those who haven't let me give you a quick recap of what happened. Link, relevant part from about 55 seconds to 1 minute but the whole thing is good, and if you don't want to watch the clip Rosen says "guess what [Ann Romney] has never worked a day in her life."

Rosen was saying this in the context that Ann Romney couldn't provide accurate information on the struggle of working mothers because she herself has never struggled to get by as a working mother so I honestly don't think she should get much flack for that comment, as stupid as it was. Where she really beclowns herself is with her op-ed at cnn.  The entire thing is pretty much just a giant rant from Rosen but let's break down the best parts of it.
Spare me the faux anger from the right who view the issue of women's rights and advancement as a way to score political points. When it comes to supporting policies that would actually help women, their silence has been deafening. I don't need lectures from the RNC on supporting women and fighting to increase opportunities for women; I've been doing it my whole career.
This is priceless coming from a strategist for the party that started the claim that the GOP has a "war on women" because we don't agree with forcing a Catholic Church to pay for abortifacients and contraceptive. And had the chairman of the Democratic Party make the news circuit to claim the GOP hates women because he said that the GOP "war on women" is as accurate as a GOP "war on caterpillars."

As Ruth Marcus noted in her column yesterday in the Washington Post, Romney, when asked last week about the gender gap, twice said he wished his wife could take the question.
"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.
So Rosen somehow thinks that to be able to accurately relay information about the struggles of working mothers you yourself have to have been a struggling working mother at some point. Let's play her game for a moment, I wonder how many people know that Hilary Rosen was the President, then Chairman, and then Chief Executive of the RIAA for a period of 10 years. So Hilary Rosen's opinion on the plight of working mothers has no merit either - something i'm sure she doesn't believe.
I personally believe that women hate the way our health issues were made a political football by the Republicans in the last several months. But I am pragmatic enough to believe that the economic issues do matter greatly to women and men alike. But the only way that Mitt Romney will succeed in closing the wide gender gap between him and President Obama is if he stops pretending that it doesn't exist.
And she ends it by claiming the GOP has made women's health issues a political football. In reality it was President Obama and Congressional Democrats who decided to force religious institutions to ignore their tenets and pay for abortifacients and contraceptives for employees.  And, rightly so, Republicans came out in force against such a blatant violation of the Separation of Church and State.

It seems election 2012 is in full swing.

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