Yesterday afternoon Ann Romney, wife of the GOP presidential candidate, Tweeted this:
It was in reaction to something a Decmoratic strategist named Hilary Rosen said about Mrs. Romney having “never worked a day in her life.” Specifically, Rosen was questioning Ann Romney’s ability to relate to the financial struggles of women who are forced to work full time outside the home in order to make ends meet. “This is not about Ann Romney,” Rosen told CNN. “This is about the waitress at a diner someplace in Nevada who has two kids whose day-care funding is being cut off because of the Romney-Ryan budget and she doesn’t know what to do.”
Ann Romney responded with, “I know what it’s like to struggle. Maybe I have’t struggled as much financially as some people have. I can tell you and promise you that I’ve had struggles in my life.”
Now, as most people know, political arguments are, generally, contrived bullshit. One side makes a mistake (as Rosen did) and says something stupid, and the other side jumps all over it. By the time we’ve hit November, this will have happened, oh, 8,654,321 times.
But here’s the thing …
In this case, Ann Romney is off. Way off. When normal people talk about raising their kids, it’s almost always a debate of finances—Can I stay home with my children, or do I need to take a job to pay the bills? The Romneys, on the other hand, are loaded. Beyond loaded. The “difficult” choice Ann Romney faced was whether to have a nanny, or not have a nanny. Hell, she could have hired two nannies. Three. Five. Ten. That she chose to raise the tykes on her own is fantastic. But does a wealthy person deserve credit for not handing her kids off so she can play tennis and shop at boutiques?
Hardly.
