It's funny how a 43-second video can ruin the Romney's campaign's entire offensive on stay-at-home moms.
On Wednesday, CNN pundit Hilary Rosen noted that Mitt Romney claims to rely on his wife for guidance on women and economic issues, which Rosen argued is odd, since Ann Romney has "never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing." As you probably noticed, this led Republicans to say Democrats are "attacking" moms, and it led many in the media to suggest "both sides" are engaged in a "war on women."
The Romney campaign, in particular, tried to exploit the CNN pundit's observation in all sorts of creative ways, most notably pushing the line, "All moms are working moms." Take a moment, however, to compare that sentiment to the line Romney pushed in January, as was first reported yesterday on MSNBC's "Up With Chris Hayes."
For those who can't watch clips on line, the former governor was reflecting on his Massachusetts policy, forcing women on welfare to meet a mandatory work requirement. He told a New Hampshire audience, "I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 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 day care 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.'"
It's hard to overstate the extent to which this contradicts the Romney campaign's line from last week. Romney argues in this video that a woman caring for a two year old isn't really "working," and should find a job outside the home in order to have some "dignity."
So, if you're Ann Romney, being a stay-at-home mom counts as "work." If you're a low-income mother struggling to get by, being a stay-at-home mom is undignified and doesn't count as "work."
When Mitt Romney told the NRA last week, "I happen to believe that all moms are working moms," we apparently missed the asterisk that read, "Unless you're poor, in which case, those moms should get real jobs."
Here are a few questions for the political world to ponder: why should Hilary Rosen's observation generate a national controversy, while Romney's policy positions go overlooked? Or put another way, which of the two statements is more insulting to moms? Which of the two is more condescending?
Why does Romney believe moms with private-equity riches are dignified and should have a choice about working outside the home, while moms who need public assistance lack dignity and should have no choice?
Or more to the point, why will Romney and Republicans continue to say "all moms are working moms" without the fear that voters will laugh in their face?
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The Romney campaign and the candidate himself have sun to new lows of insidious and perverse behavior with this manufactured incident. Mitt Romney is willing to sell out his own wife and force her to become some sort of conservative martyr and caricature just to score a few political points in his increasingly desperate and frantic bid to gain power over this country. It should frighten every voter that Mitt was so willing to use his own wife in such a way. What would he do to the rest of us? Romney is dangerous... http://www.sunstateactivist.org
The man has sold his conscience to a cult church, stays safely in the soft cradle of insulating luxury, and has given his brain over to rudderless talking points. Real people's concerns or feelings cannot get past such barriers. Mitt Romney is a disassociated personality who is letting money and religion decide who he is politically. Is it working?
And once in the White House, does anyone believe this man will suddenly grow a mind or nads of his own? If not, who then will be running the nation "with" him?
I know nothing about the Mormon church and what they stand for, but I plan to learn all I can about them. It's clear they must not have a problem with their members lying, because that is all Mitt Romney does, and he has no guilt or problem with lying. I remember Rachel doing a segment on her show about Mitt and his lying ways.
I've been wondering all along what the Mormon position on lying is. It seems they have no problem with it. You could say the same about right wing christians except they are not really Christians just pretend christians.
"And once in the White House, does anyone believe this man will suddenly grow a mind or nads of his own? If not, who then will be running the nation "with" him?"
That would be Grover Norquist and Karl Rove. Romney is nothing but a puppet for them. Remember recently when Norquist said it didn't make any difference who got elected, as long as it was a republican and he could pick up a pen and sign stuff? That's why it really doesn't matter much to them what the guy thinks; he doesn't need to actually think. He will be at their beck and call and if we don't wake up and vote heavily DEM in all elections, their coup will be complete.
The comments regarding wondering about how the Mormon Church looks upon "lying" got me wondering too. So, for the hell of it, I googled. I found this:
http://exmormon.org/d6/drupal/fourteen
I know nothing about this site, but it purports to be written by someone who either is now or has been a believer in the Mormon Faith. Whether or not it is true, I can't say. But it does put things in perspective as to how a person who declares himself to be "severely" (ha) religious can lie over and over again -- beause it "feels good." !?!
R-money had his own open mic moment, in which Ann Romney got in on the act. Via TPM:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/15/11216845-romney-offers-policy-details-at-closed-door-fundraiser?fb_ref=.T4uSdxTPr58.like&fb_source=home_oneline
It should be quite obvious why Mittens draws the distinction between 'stay at home' moms of the 'middle class' (like Mrs. Average Middle Class Quarter Billionare RMoney) and 'stay at home moms' of the peon classes. Mrs. Mittens has had a real job that involved acquiring and maintaining managerial skills! She has had to supervise nannies and housekeepers and maids and cooks and all those other peons in their employment.
But, but, Hillary Rosen is a (gasp!) lesbian. . .
And she's a Demoncrat (thanks, Pat Robertson) and she visited the White House 45 times, and perhaps the Mayans were right, after all.
Separate item, but it was
hearteningto see Benni Nutenyahoo and Joe LIEberman together this morning on the early CBS news. Criticizing the United States for negotiating with the Iranians. Of course, President McCrap got his ususal weekend tv talking head appearance to also criticize Obama and tell us how we need more wars.Does anyone else see the
neoconreasons why we need to make sure that RMoney does not get the chance to restart the neocon agenda of war, more war, and nothing but war?So let's see here... the Democrat 'war on women' is one Democrat woman saying that a woman married to a multi-millionaire isn't exactly an authority on the real-life concerns of everyday women.
The Republican war on women is Republicans in state legislature across the country passing anti-abortion, anti-contraception, and in one case even repealing equal pay, legislation...
Well clearly they're both equal in this regard! /sarcasm
Funny how little the male aspect of child production and rearing is coming into play here. For every woman who can't stay at home and raise her kids like Ann Romney is a man who isn't paying the bills like Mitt Romney.
If the Republicans want the traditional family back, maybe the fathers of these kids should be held as accountable as women under Republican rule, where if men produce progeny then they will support those kids at the same standard a married man still living at home would support them. Right now it falls unequally on the shoulders of the mothers. That is why it is a war on women, because so little verbiage is given to the other equally responsible half of child production, the men.
Just another double Republican standard, married moms can stay at home and raise kids but single moms can't, married men support their families but men not married to the mothers of their children have yet to be pulled into this discussion of "single moms on welfare should work". When does the male responsibility get discussed with the same furor as moms on welfare?
Or would that see a drop in Republican votes for Mitt who seems to want to placate every conservative opinion out there...
Also 30 sec barb on CNN=1 and 1/2 hour rant on Rush. It's exactly the same.
So the sorry media who last week allow themselves to be used by the Romney campaign ought to be ashame of themselves. Now let the media ask the question from the Romney campaign are only rich women ( the 1% like his wife) who stay at home working Moms. The other Moms need to lean the dignity of work, after all they are not working. People understand that this is more about the policies Mitt Romney supports. The Republicans have a War on Women and Mitt Romney supports all they are doing. From getting rid of Planned Parenthood, to denying women access to contraception, to redefining rape in order to limit women access to healthcare, to all the radical anti-women legislation the Republican Governors have sign. And God help us all if that Paul Ryan budget is ever pass. Women will not be fool. We do not want to go back to the nineteen fifties, we do not want to re-fight battles we thought we had already won, but if we have to we will. And November 6th we will show Republicans that this is a war they shouldn't have started.
Wealthy stay at home mom's = dignified hard working women.Poor stay at home mom's = lazy undignified women.According to Romney that is.
The question to Ann Romney should be: how much help did you have, i.e., maids and nannies, while you were a stay at home mom?
Motherhood is work. But, stay at home moms versus working moms are two different things and don't deserve to be in the category. My sister was a working mom - not only did she have to worry about her job, she had to worry about getting her two sons off to school, making them lunch, take time off work to get to school activities, get home, make dinner, do the laundry, make sure the boys had their homework done, clean house, do the grocery shopping, and on and on and on. So, how much of that did Ann Romney do, and how much did the hired help do?
Personally, if she had nannies/maids/whatnot, then she just needs to step away from the "I'm being attacked by a Democrat" stance she and her husband have taken in order to further his campaign, because no matter how hard she worked as a mother, working mothers will always have one up on her because they're holding down two full time jobs.
I only have one question, did your sister not have a husband? I worked while my sons were growing up too, but my dear husband did the grocery shopping and cooking and helped with the kids home work, lunches etc. He was working from home which made it a little easier, but even after he started to work outside the home he sitll did the cooking because he got home before me. He also knew what a vacuum cleaner was for and how to use it. Now I have two grown sons who know it is ok for a man to cook, clean house and do his own laundry.
I am one of six children. Back in the sixties (before "women's lib") my Dad would come home from work, put down his briefcase and put on an apron and help finish cooking supper. Then we all took turns doing the dishes and then, quite often my Dad put his suitcoat back on and went to a church or Boy Scout committee meeting. And two nights a week my Mom taught Home Economics at the Community College.
What I leaned from growing up in that home was that there was not "men's work" and "women's work". There was work. And we were all invited and expected to help as we were able. Thanks, Dad & Mom.
Because (didn't you know) a rich man's platinum and diamond sperm give a woman a sparkling patina of moral superiority, that's why.
here is what i thought about seeing ann romney on the nra stage saying she was standing there for all moms:
standing on the stage of an nra event
the nra had a representative standing behind florida gov. jeb bush as he signed the stand your ground law
the stand your ground law is what let zimmerman go free and he would still be free but for the national outrage over his killing of trayvon martin
trayvon martin has a mom
are you standing on that stage representing her?
The difference dear friends is that Mr Romney doesn't mind paying for his own wife to stay at home with his children but he does not want his tax dollars to pay for a poor mother to stay at home with hers. This is the same selfish attitude the Republicans have about most issues. That being said I think there are a lot of young mother's that would go back to work if day care was available and they could find a job. In the long run if we educated our children properly so they had skills and then provided day care for children of the working poor (unwed mothers or not) we might even find that in the long run it cost less to do that.
The jobs available for welfare to work moms are typically low paying and require the sacrifice of some, if not all, of the benefits that were available under TANF or SNAP once the "dignity restored" mom begins earning. She is not any better off financially, and is sometimes worse off, depending on the employment she is practically forced to accept as a condition of her SNAP benefits job training or readiness program. She is required to apply and interview for work - jobs are posted at the local Dep't of Social Services if she can't find one on her own - and must accept whatever valid offer is made once the die is cast and it is determined that she is a candidate for work (i.e. neither disabled, mentally incompetent or addicted). For moms with the ability and intelligence, it would be better to go to school (not some gov't sponsored mcjob program) rather than work at dead end, low paying, beneath their talent jobs just to "pay back" the taxpayers who supported them with benefits. These mcjobs do not provide dignity, they actually rob poor moms of what little they have.
You make a great point, so many rant against the "welfare" in this country but do little or nothing to try and improve the lives of these people so they can truly be contributing members of society. In many cases all the system does is punish them for their "sins" like the fact they got pregnant because no one taught them about birth control or birth control was not available.
But seriously, re: Rosen. Ya gotta know what she meant and she should have taken that message to the bone. Old lady Romney? If she'd birthed a whole squad of 10 sons instead of just half of one... never worked a day in her pampered life and working? It was work she _wanted— to do, _enjoyed— doing -- career work she could easily fob off on a personal assistant if she was having a "spell of the vapors," eh? Her old man hides millions of dollars off shore in numbered accounts and "likes to fire people." It would be a miracle if she had an empathy or even the remotest sympathy for the trials and travails of real working women. Rosen should not have apologized to Mrs. Romney... she should have doubled down on her charge. Leave it to slimeball repugnicans to turn an expression of truthful candor into an "attack on Motherhood." No... Ann Romney never worked a day in her tinkerbell 1%er life!
It truly makes me ill how they have tried to make this ONE comment from a pundit all about how Democrats "really feel". POLICY POLICY POLICY. Specifically Republican policies are the issue with women. A comment is nothing more then an opinion. A policy is a law that has teeth.
Romney has NO IDEA what he's supposed to think and say half the time. I really do think when he speaks unscripted and is allowed to talk on his own long enough, the real Romney comes through. It's not women he has issue with. It's everyone who isn't wealthy. They just aren't smart enough nor do they work hard enough in his mind to deserve any respect from him.
Thanks, Rachel for keeping this narrative going. This is very crucial -- shining a light on the hypocrisy that is the Republican party and it's defacto leader -- Mitt Romney.
golly gee whiz; I thought welfare mom's were doing the samething as Ann R. taking care of their kids; I must of missed that wealthy scenerio double standard message when it came out.
When will the media have the guts to tell politicians tell politicians like Romney who lie about everything including what they had for breakfast; that they are LIARS; the media constantly feed into this crap, and enable politicians to do it.
You're missing the point. This was Romney's way of nursing them off of Welfare. They were not traditional legitimate stay at home moms where the husband was the breadwinner and paying into society and not milking the system from taking from the welfare program (usually on a permanent basis, even from generation to generation). He used the word "dignity" to show there was disfunction going on which caused them to be in the horrible mess where they had to rely on Welfare. The healthy legitimate stay at home moms are in a totally different catagory fortunately. So this logic at first seems to hold water, but in reality Romney is simply offering a solution to help fix perpetual welfare recipients many who abuse the system from gerneration to generation.
The whole flap is about the meaning of the word "work." Rosen obiously meant work for pay outside the home. She made that very clear if one reads the whole statement that she made. Because of the propensity of the Republicans and the media to take words out of context and to distort anything that they think will make them look like they are for what they are really against, Rosen should perhaps have been more careful to chose her words, but none of us should allow the Republicans or the media to distort what any of us say.
There is also the problem that much of the work that women do is never paid for or if it is, it is not considered as valuable as say manipulating the value of stocks on Wall Street. Cooking dinner takes experience, knowledge and skill. How much skill does it really take to speculate on the commodity exchange? Many of the credit swaps that got us into this economic mess were done by machine.
I for one really appreciate Mitt saying my mom didn't have dignity. All she did was raise five kids (she had six, but one died in infancy) on my dad's airplane mechanic salary. If my mom were still alive she'd smack ol' Mitt silly. Well, sillIER.
My mom was stay at home. My dad worked his butt off to keep us in housing, food and clothes. As a result, we didn't see much of him. My mom was a stabilizing force in our lives. She was extremely insulted (and infuriated) one day when another mother, who worked outside the home(this was during the 80's) made a snide comment about stay at home moms being lazy and not contributing to society. She came home and spent the entire afternoon writing down her various job careers and pay scale: Nanny; Plumber; Carpenter; Electrician; Therapist; Teacher; Pest control; Accountant; House Cleaner; Jail Guard(for when us kids had to be grounded for an infraction against house rules). She figured out the yearly salaries for each profession and showed it to my dad when he got home. He studied it for a moment, then said, "it's not pretty, but add to it "Elite Dating service and if you learned how to drive, Chuaffer." Then he gave her a big hug, saying, "Thank You for saving me a quarter of a million dollars every year - now if we can just get someone to pay you for everything you do, I could retire!"
My mom didn't get upset over snide comments directed at stay at home moms again - she just made copies of her list and handed them out to both men and women who said such things then walked away. So stay at home moms - make your own lists and tell people that in reality - You don't get paid enough! And Kudos for your career choice!
NeedMoreCoffee - to answer your question, "...who then will be running the nation "with" him (Romney)?" of course we all should know that it will be the Koch Brothers' Syndicate using the ALEC agenda. Mitt Romney will serve as their puppet.
Pay attention to what's happening in the states where the 2010 Midterms gave the executive offices to the GOP/TP. It also ushered in a GOP/TP majority into many of their legislative bodies. Join these with what's happening in the US House of Representatives and, also, note the 5/4 GOP/TP US Supreme Court rulings of late.
For me, it is evident who will be running this country if Romney were to become President of the United States. Based upon all of the GOP/TP 2010 campaigning, the bills that these entities have written into law, their suggested state and federal constitution amendments and so much more, Romney, as president will help to change this country from a democratic Republic to a fascist, autocratic, plutocratic one-party dictatorship for years to come!