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| Photo of Ann Romney at the Reagan Dinner in Des Moines on October 27, 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
And the Romney Gaffe Train just keeps on rolling.
Ann Romney has been riding high on the "War on Moms" idiocy being pushed by Republicans ever since
Hillary Rosen criticized Ann Romney for weighing in on labor issues when "she has never worked a day in her life." Since then, she and the GOP have been pretending that Rosen's criticism was an attack on her being a stay-at-home-mother, instead of questioning her authority on workplace-related political issues, and taking every possible chance to remind people that she and Mitt squeezed out five kids, because Republicans love large families with lots of kids (as long as they aren't poor black families, mind you).
In her latest "I'm a Mom" interview, Ann started espousing the greatness that is her, and attempted to translate that into a knowledge of how the rest of the country exists, a sore spot for the Romney clan. Sure enough, instead of just keeping the point short and simple, Ann kept rattling in and blurted out this little gem:
“My hats off to the men in this room too that are raising kids — I love that, and I love the fact that there are also women out there that don’t have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids.”
Ignoring the ludicrous implication that Ann Romney just LOVES the idea that some women are forced by economic hardship to both work full time and raise their children, one has to wonder if her LOVE of full-time employed men and women raising their children extends to single parents, whom the GOP has been attacking lately both verbally and politically, going as far as to propose legislation that would categorize single-parent households as a form of child abuse. Maybe she's just in LOVE with the romantic notion of a devoted parent having to work full-time in order to support their family while also raising it, but that more or less underlines the fact that the reason she might LOVE such a romanticized ideal of the working parent is that she's never actually had to be one herself.
How could somebody say such a ludicrous thing, that the LOVE the idea that people are working twice as hard to make ends meet? By the same logic, you might respond to criticism about having never suffered through chemotherapy yourself by saying that you LOVE that there are people out there fighting cancer. That can't be right, can it? Maybe we can give Ann the benefit of the doubt and just assume that she isn't really pandering to her husband's political base with every breath she takes. Then again, considering her track record of gaffes and unfortunate quotes, it's easier to assume that Ann is just as emotionally unattached as Mitt is to the real world that the majority of Americans live in.
The entire "War on Moms," of course, is a huge fabrication. The Republicans have spent months fighting back against the "War on Women" they were accused of waging, and accusation backed by their continued attempts to roll back abortion rights by demanding vaginal ultrasounds for potential patients, prevent medical coverage of contraception, and block legislation designed to ensure equal pay in the workforce. Their attempt to push the label back on the Dems in a classic "I'm Rubber/You're Glue" defense failed miserable
The key human element that the Romneys seem to be missing is humility. Any person with an ounce or two of humility or self awareness would know how to handle the growing implications that they are too rich to be in touch with Middle America. When confronted with this "Class Gap," Ann, for example, could have answered questions about their wealth as a barrier between them and Middle America by admitting that yes, they are extremely wealthy, but that they still have the same concerns about the government's policies that middle and lower class families have, and even though they haven't faced the same struggles as others having during this lengthy recession, they are still aware of these problems and want to solve them. Instead, she blurts out the inane rationalization "You know, we can be poor in spirit. I don't even consider myself as wealthy, which is an interesting thing. It can be here today and gone tomorrow." You can also be poor in basic comprehension of how you sound to others, which seems to be a malady shared by both Ann and Mitt, as they continue to whine to a population caught in stagnating wages and plummeting real estate values about hard it is to be so wealthy that you forget how many homes you own and need to have a costly elevator installed in your garage to accommodate your wife's fleet of Cadillacs. Life can be so hard, can't it?
Instead, they and other Republicans keep attempting to claim victim status, arguing that
rich people are a minority being persecuted and discriminated against by the Occupy Movement and news coverage focusing on the wealthy. This defense must have sounded completely rational when it was brainstormed around a big conference table by people with six and seven-figure salaries, but it ignores the fact that persecution and discrimination are typically power-based actions leveled against the powerless by the powerful, so claiming that a minority of the population that owns a majority of the nation's wealth and resources is being victimized rings a bit hollow, especially when heard by people who have actually had to struggle against institutionalized persecution and discrimination throughout their lives.
Maybe that's why Ann LOVES working mothers and doesn't consider herself rich: because like Rosen pointed out, she hasn't had to work a single day in her life, and has no idea how hard it is to work full time and raise a family when money isn't an endless commodity for you.
Ann Romney Talks Motherhood, 'Emotionally Draining' Campaign:
'via Blog this'
Since we are only days away from the 2012 Presidential Elections, I'm feeling rather motivated to actually answer this question. The last four years haven't been especially easy for anybody not in the top 10% (you know, the people who own the country, it seems), but I think it's fair to answer the question on an individual bases, considering that the question is meant to motivate my individual vote.
