The partisan battle over working moms continues. Mitt Romney and his supporters last week pounced on Democratic consultant Hilary Rosen for saying Romney's wife, Ann, didn't understand economic issues facing American women because she "never worked a day in her life." Team Romney said the acid remark, for which Rosen apologized, showed that Democrats had declared "war on moms" by suggesting that raising children isn't work. But MSNBC's Chris Hayes dug up video of the GOP presidential candidate saying in January that he wanted to require women who receive welfare to get a job — even if they have toddlers in the home — so they'll know the "dignity of work." Does this effectively kill Romney's argument that he's the one standing up for stay-at-home moms?
Yes, this makes Romney look two-faced: After the Republican Party drummed up "the totally fake controversy about 'stay-at-home moms'", this clip of Mitt Romney is "pretty devastating," says Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs. Romney stands up for his privileged wife's toil at home, but he sings a different tune when the mom in question is someone struggling to make ends meet. Apparently, Romney's GOP is "on the side of stay-at-home mothers, as long as they're rich."
"Romney: Poor mothers should be required to work outside the home"
It's the Democrats who are being hypocritical: Wait a minute, says Ethel C. Fenig at The American Thinker. Democrats, under former President Bill Clinton, were the ones who passed reform "encouraging welfare mothers to learn to earn, to transition from welfare to work." Many Democrats still think such policies are unfair, but bashing Romney over them is dirty pool. This just goes to show that the supposedly inclusive President Obama is fomenting cultural, class, race, and gender wars to get re-elected.
"The Democrats' war on women continues"
Both sides should just cut it out: The bottom line is that Hilary Rosen and Mitt Romney agree on this one, says Brett LoGiurato at Business Insider. Way back in 1994, then-Senate candidate Romney said times had changed since the '60s so "now mom and dad both have to work." Romney wasn't attacking anyone the way Rosen was, "but they both recognized that it's a different era, an era that has shifted more and more women out of the home." It looks like Republicans and Democrats need a new talking point.
"SURPRISE! Mitt Romney is a total flip flopper on the issue of working mothers"
