Is there a war on women? If so who started the war on women? Well according to the now infamous (and 35x visitor to the White House) Hilary Rosen, the Republicans are spreading it around – duh!
This morning on radio Glenn took another look at Rosen’s most recent CNN comments that have caused such a stir across the country, and turned the focus to a portion of her statement that no one is paying attention to.
Before attacking Ann Romney, here is what Rosen said:
“Well, first, can we just get rid of this word, “war on women”? The Obama campaign does not use it, President Obama does not use it — this is something that the Republicans are accusing people of using, but they’re actually the ones spreading it.”
Jonah Goldberg, who Glenn describes as “one of the brightest guys he knows,” wrote an article on National Review that claims Rosen’s statements are not entirely accurate.
For example, a fundraising email from non-other than Nancy Pelosi says this:
“We're close to an incredible milestone in the campaign to stop extremism. Contribute $3 before midnight. Together, we'll put an end to the Republicans unrelenting war on women, seniors and the middle class.”
“Sure, you can find one example,” Pat joked as Glenn started reading example number two.
"These guys are dangerous. They’ll do anything whether it’s waging a war on women or imploding our economy.’ That’s from James Carville," Glenn said.
Glenn reads another example from Goldberg’s National Review piece – this time from Donna Brazille:
"The right wing will do anything to destroy president Obama including waging war on women."
"Romney is the most radically anti-woman candidate in a generation," Glenn reads. "He supports banning all abortions, backs so called personhood, blah, blah, blah, wants to stop preventative services like cancer screenings for millions of women."
Where did that quote come from? It couldn’t be from anything associated with the White House, because, like Hilary Rosen told us, the ‘war on women’ is being spread by the Republicans. It’s just from the obscure website …BarackObama.com.
“But there is no war on women,” Pat said sarcastically. “It’s fabricated by the Republican Party.”
The logic is really astounding, as Glenn points out. “The Republicans are scaring the American people by saying that the Democrats are saying there's a war on women that the Republicans are waging, because the Republicans want to stop all cancer treatments and screenings for women.” Got that?
“I don't understand that logic,” Glenn said ..and it’s hard to imagine that anyone else does either.
“You want to talk about conspiracy theory,” Glenn joked, “that's pretty deep.”
Stu pointed out that if anyone can pull off that kind of logic, it’s Hilary Rosen. After all, unlike Ann Romney, she had one of the most difficult jobs in the country – making sure that the healthcare law had a good image. Granted, she failed at that.
“Only 72% of people think it’s unconstitutional,” Stu said. “You’ll remember the wonderful job she did helping PR during the BP oil spill for BP, and BP did really well through that.”
“The Democrats hired the worst PR person ever,” Glenn said.
Of course we don’t know that the Hilary Rosen from the BP spill is the same Hilary Rosen in this situation. “To be fair, they know several Hilary Rosens,” Stu joked.
“I mean, she works for the DNC,” Glenn started, “and the DNC has issued a refrigerator magnet. But what does it say?” he asked Stu.
“It says …stop the Republican war on women,” Stu answered.
To summarize the wisdom we've gotten from Hilary Rosen the last couple of days: Hilary Rosen says that Republicans are fabricating a war on women. Hilary Rosen does PR for the DNC. The DNC is selling a magnet that says "Stop the Republican War on Women." Hilary Rosen should probably stop telling Ann Romney how unqualified she is to speak on certain topics...
