Playing the Victim Is a Vote-Getter
Nobody in the “liberal” media is going to ask it, and certainly no one from the Obama camp will… but exactly how hard was being a stay-at-home mother for Ann Romney?
Did she clean the house or wash the dishes? Or even cook?
Almost certainly not. In 2010, for example, the Romneys reported have no fewer than four domestic servants, with reports of many more at other times.
Did she take care of the family finances, as many spouses do?
Incredibly unlikely, not with Romney’s fortune. She did probably not delve into finance any further than using credit cards, and probably did not even review the statements.
Did Ann Romeny have to take a second job not as a career choice, but as a means of keeping the family afloat? Did they ever have to worry about health care, or maintain family budgets and the like?
Of course not.
An “anonymous source” claims that the Romney family never used nannies or au pairs, though claiming this through an unnamed surrogate is hardly indicative of wanting to go on the record for such.
Still, even if Ann Romney had no help raising the kids, she would have been free of any other work that stay-at-home mothers are typically faced with.
This is not to say that it wasn’t work–five kids, I am sure, are a handful just by themselves. Nor am I knocking Ann Romney for taking advantage of their wealth to get help; I might have done the same thing. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But to insinuate that Ann Romney worked as hard, or even half as hard, and the majority of mothers today, is, frankly, an insult to all mothers who work their asses off and then some. To equivocate Ann Romney’s total financial security and use of a household staff to mothers who have to take on outside work to make ends meet and do all the household chores in addition to raising the kids is, frankly, something that would tick me off were I a mother of children in middle- or lower-class America. To claim their mantle and take on the role of exhausted mom victimized by that nasty Hilary Rosen, is, at a minimum, disingenuous.
But then, what about the GOP and Romney campaigns these days which is not?
yeay for bullshit 1950s cloth-coat Republican conservatism.
Reading digby I see the Romneys really had to scrape to get through BYU together, Willard had to actually part with some of his father’s AMC stock on occasion; I can only imagine the sacrifice.
As I was trying to tell my mom, both digby and elsewhere get into the fact that it’s not the personal narrative that’s relevant here, it’s the conservative Republican policies that are going to continue eviscerating this nation’s economic well-being, at least as far as the “99%” are concerned.
All we got for the Bush tax cuts was a $14T credit bubble:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CMDEBT
and a soon-to-be $11T national debt:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
not even counting the $5T there that’s inter-governmental holdings that need to be cashed out to cover the baby boom’s retirement over the next 30 years.
$5T over 30 years is $160B/yr! That’s about *half* the Bush tax cut revenue loss right there — and the other ~$160B/yr we’d have in revenue if we reinstated the Clinton rates would only get the deficit down to $1T/yr or so.
The Medicare tax is going to be need to be (at least) doubled to 6%. You Japanese guys political challenging doubling the consumption tax should put that into perspective — doubing a payroll tax is MUCH more painful than doubling a sales tax that only really covers a portion of a household’s outgo.
But if you make any moves towards limiting Medicare cost expansion, the republicans will scream DEATH PANELS.
But, as you know, I really can’t blame the republicans. They’re only fooling people who are willing to be fooled.
I just saw (at Wonkette) a GOP poster of an aproned woman holding a kid that says, Don’t Let Barack Obama & Democrats Insult Women, Moms Do Work. Apparently there’s a coffee mug for sale, too (for those morning hausfrau coffee klatches?). Marvelous! George W. Bush was so successful at fooling people into thinking he was a regular guy with his pseudo Texas character, but poor Romney, like Bush Sr., can’t hide the fact that they’re both Thurston Howell the 3rd.