Daring to Ask the Now Unaskable...

Daring to ask the now unaskable - do you think Ann Romney's finger is on the pulse of American moms? Does she connect with challenges typical moms face raising a family on an average family income? Can Ann relate to the economic sacrifices necessary when an average income couple opts - as my awesome niece has - for the wife to be ceo/cfo/coo of mom inc (as in INCredible!!) rather than a $$-generating career? 


Since Mitt considers Ann his #1 adviser re: "mama grizzley" issues, they are questions worth a ponder...

Off Limits!

With so many divisive volleys zinging back & forth between the various political factions, am awed & moved by the almost universal response to beittling comments made by a democratic talking head (she doesn't work for the dnc or the president's reelection campaign) about Ann Romney. 


From David Axelrod to mom-of-two Michelle Obama, dems decried the negative slam. My circle of friends includes a bevy of full-time moms, so especially loved what Ann said Mitt always tells her - "Your job is a forever job that's going to bring forever happiness." Well said!


UPDATE:  geeze - even when i post something sunny, get my hand smacked for being political! a few friends tsk-tsked me for giving legs to what they consider a non-story. i see their point - the strategist simply said that ann romney "never worked a day in her life ... never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing" which is more an observation that ann's not a typical soccer mom than the brazen slam it's been painted as. and i hope they get MY point, which is i'm happy that people from all parties praised ann's choice to be a full-time mom!!!

GOP's Female Surrogates

Amanda Terkle has a spot-on article on the problems facing Mitt Romney when it comes to some - most? - of the females his campaign has lined up as surrogates for their candidate.

To whit: the designated surrogates have often voted or spoken out against bills that benefited women (such as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill President Obama signed into law) while voting for or advocating ones that undercut their best interests (such as the Blunt Amendment). Quite the challenge for the GOP's presumptive candidate!

Pointing out that the campaign has been doing barrel loops to prove he does NOT have a problem with women voters, his staff has brought out a galaxy of female supporters, from his wife, Ann, to rising Republican super stars to longtime members of Congress. Today, the campaign sent out statements from Reps. Mary Bono Mack (CA) & McMorris Rodgers (WA) that pinned women's jobs losses on the president's - oops! both ladies voted AGAINST the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act PLUS the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act. Last month put WI state Sen. Alberta Darling & conservative activist Bay Buchanan in the spotlight; uh oh - Darling co-sponsored legislation repealing Wisconsin's 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act, while Buchanan has famously railed AGAINST, with past statements claiming the movement for more equality hurts women (she blamed, at least in part, feminism for the high number of divorces, single-parent households & teen suicides).

And then there was SC Governor Nikki Haley, who apparently never got the campaign's update about the new tack, because there she was on Fox News two nights ago, saying, "There is no war on women. Women are doing well" while her candidate was blasting the president for the high number of jobs lost by women on his watch.

Today, Romney continued to drive home his charge that under President Obama's "failed economic policies" women account for 92% of all job losses. Interesting thing about those numbers - upon questioning, the campaign tagged the period cited as ending in 2009 - just as the president was sworn in.

Talk about chutzpah!

Of note - government figures show about 3.4 million men have lost jobs since the economy tanked (under President Geo. W. Bush) compared to 1.8 lost by women since the start of the Great Recession.

How many months until November??

Echoes Comments I Made to John Yesterday...

A job too big for a surrogate

By MAGGIE HABERMAN |

4/11/12 11:18 AM EDT

Ruth Marcus has a tough but crisp piece today about Mitt Romney's comments about his wife Ann — widely seen as one of the campaign's biggest assets — "reporting" to him about what women voters are interested in — and a declaration that there may be limits to her appeal with women voters:

Note to candidate: Women aren’t a foreign country. You don’t need an interpreter to talk to them. Even if you’re not fluent in their language, they might appreciate if you gave it a try.

As if to emphasize their candidate’s unfamiliarity with the territory of gender, the Romney campaign then released a fuzzy-wuzzy video, titled “Family” and starring, of course, Ann Romney, reminiscing over grainy film and vintage snapshots.

“I hate to say it but often I had more than five sons,” Ann recalls. “I had six sons, and he would be as mischievous and as naughty as the other boys. He’d come home and” — here Romney makes the sound of a building blowing up — “everything would just explode again.”

Somehow I doubt that Ann Romney, circa 1982, having finally managed to get her five boys under control, was all that happy about their father coming home only to “get them all riled up again.” Somehow I doubt that beleaguered moms, circa 2012, listen to her story and think, “Oh, Mitt is so much more fun than I thought.” Rather, I suspect, they wonder whether he should have been doing more to lend a hand.

Indeed, the video offers an unintentional glimpse of Ann’s own frustrations. “It was hard to maneuver,” Ann notes. “I could do okay when I had the two. Three, not so bad. Four, it got to be a little much.” On the campaign trail with her husband, Ann often talks about the old days when she would be at home dealing with her rambunctious brood and Mitt would call from the road. “His consoling words were always the same: Ann, your job is more important than mine.”

This story is supposed to buttress Mitt’s bona fides as a supportive husband, and Ann is, no doubt, a more tolerant spouse than I am. But every time I hear that patronizing line, I imagine responding, “Great. If my job is more important, then you come home and do it and I’ll check into the nice room at the Four Seasons.”...

....How many of these younger and/or better-educated women are going to identify with Ann Romney’s father-knows-best description of life in chez Romney? I understand that the candidate badly needs humanizing but, especially for general-election purposes, it would be more powerful to combine the family story with examples, assuming they exist, about Workplace Mitt promoting women or adopting family-friendly policies.

That last point by Marcus is whether Romney's personal story will appeal to working women, and those under age 44, as polling suggests her husband is struggling with those groups. She no doubt humanizes her husband, and is one of his most effective surrogates. But as Marcus notes, at a certain point, the candidate will have to bridge the gap himself.

False Equivalency #1 - Bill Maher D.F.H. of DNC

bill maher has been labeled "de facto head of the dnc," just as rush limbaugh tagged same of republican party.

reality check - bill maher supports the president, but considers himself a liberterian, not a democrat. his viewership is light years away from the divine mr. l's. he's on weekly, for one hour, whereas rush is on radio 5 days a week, 3 hours each day. his show includes a brief monologue, an interview - often with someone with differing views - a panel discussion, then closes with "new rules." and he targets public figures, not private citizens

I KEEP WONDERING...

...what my Mom & her friends at Hannah Penn would think about the Republican Party's lack of outrage at the Divine Mr. L's three days of unrestrained, downright wanton attacks on the core character of a young woman, of an entire law school's female student body, because she dared to stand up for the importance of making hormone therapy (most commonly, but not exclusively, used for birth control) available to women, regardless of their financial situation.

I can't speak for the other women - some or most of whom might have been totally okay with what's become an attack on Sandra Fluke as a flunky of a conniving White House - but I know that Mom would have been horrified. To be honest, I can't imagine any woman raised in my birth faith NOT being shaken to her core with repulsion, in spite of their believes on birth control or premarital sex. What the Divine Mr. L. unleashed was an attack on innocence, in that he did everything he could to shred the reputation of every woman in the Georgetown University Law School in general, Sandra Fluke in particular. All this woman did was seek to have her voice heard. And for that, the most powerful voice in America has done everything possible to silence her's & annihilate her character.

With the exception of Ron Paul, the candidates have issued carefully caged comments that evade rather than condemn. Many on the Right consider his words & unprecedented 3-day attacks as no worse than those on the Left calling Michelle Bachmann a bimbo & bubblehead, or demeaning attacks on Sarah Palin, pointing out that such attacks go unchallenged by Progressives & go by the board without apology ~ ~ completely ignoring the numerous attacks that were issued.

I keep wondering what Mom & the ladies of Hannah Penn would do, and then I think to myself - thank god she never lived to see this day. My mother was a compassionate conservative, a term that the Divine Mr. L. & his ilk sneer at today.

Rush to Judgment??

Not very much - the only Republicans to clearly & decisively speak out against Rush Limbaugh's astonishing, 3-day long attack on Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, were Scott Brown & Carly Fiorino. From everyone else, we've heard uncomfortable silence, tepid words of discomfort, even flat-out fault shifting onto anyone else but Rush.

Having experienced this being played out since Wednesday's shocking broadcast, am left with the image of a bunch of testosterone-hyped social neanderthals who display a shocking lack of respect for women.

As for Rush, am gob-smacked with the acceptance of a shocking number of people & pundits who don't seem to realize that he:

• verbally abused a woman for facing down male authority figures bent on restraining her from voicing her personal belief in hormone-regulating drugs;
• his abuse continued over 3 days, despite pleas from others to stop;
• his mea culpa was issued - in print - only after his own well-being became vulnerable.

Rush Limbaugh's response - and that of a shocking number of enabling others - brings to mind the man who abuses his wife, apologizes only after she threatens to call the cops, then says, "What's your problem? I was big enough to apologize - that took a lot for me to do. Beating up others is how I show that I care. Accept what I'm offering & we can let everything go back the way it was."