By
now, pretty much everybody knows what Hillary
Rosen thinks about Ann Romney, what Ann
Romney thinks about raising children, what
Barak Obama thinks about Ann Romney raising children, and what Sarah Palin thinks about grizzly bears. Less clear in all of the hubbub is whether or not there
is still a Republican War on Women and whether or not Democrats have now
entered said war on the side of those who hate stay-at-home-moms. Meanwhile,
Americans are pretending
to be disgusted by all of the “cheap partisan dialogue” that is not cheap
partisan dialogue at all, but rather expensive political theater of the sort
that Americans really love. Need proof? Ann Romney now has more
Twitter followers than Justin Bieber. Republicans, especially, seem to be enjoying putting Democrats on the defensive on women’s issues for once. It has only been five weeks—and a political lifetime—since the Republicans themselves were in the awkward position of trying to defend one of their media stars for calling a pro-contraception law student a “prostitute” and suggesting that she post sex videos to the Internet.
In a world where major news items must be limited to 140 characters, distinctions tend to get lost in the shuffle. This has produced a sort of equality-of-outrage mentality that lumps the several recent media events into a tweetable equation: Rush/Newt/Rick/Mitt/Republicans hate women and think that law students are prostitutes, but HillaryRosen/HillaryClinton/ Obama/Democrats hate stay-at-home moms—so it’s all kind of equal and we can focus on who has the best hair. This is how we play the “equality game.”
Let us assume for a moment, however, that there really is a rough equality between March’s fiasco and April’s—that calling women who don’t work outside the home “women who don’t work” is comparable to calling women who use contraception “prostitutes.” Let us also assume that Hillary Rosen’s position in the Democratic Party is roughly comparable to Rush Limbaugh’s position in the Republican Party (i.e. both are media commentators and neither is affiliated with any particular candidate or campaign). Even if all of these factors are equivalent, the responses of the actual candidates were miles apart, and this difference tells us something crucial about the current state of our two party system.
When news of Rosen’s faux pas broke, the Obama team moved quickly and decisively to repudiate the comment. Campaign manager Jim “No Relation” Messina took to Twitter within minutes to say that Rosen’s comments “were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize.” David Axelrod, Obama Communications Director, followed up with “Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen's comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive.” And within a day, Obama himself went on TV and rejected both the idea that stay-at-home moms don’t work and the practice of criticizing a candidate’s spouse. Rosen could not have been more repudiated.
And what did Governor Romney say when asked to comment on Rush Limbaugh’s patently offensive statements about women who use contraception” Here it is: “I’ll just say this, which is, it’s not the language I would have used. I’m focusing on the issues I think are significant in the country today, and that’s why I’m here talking about jobs and Ohio.” In other words, “Rush will be Rush.” This is not a repudiation; it is barely even not an endorsement.
Now, I am not naïve. I maintain no illusions that Romney is a woman-hating moral coward or that Obama is a courageous idealist willing to defend SAHMs at any cost. Both men gave carefully crafted statements that reflected their respective political realities. Obama had the luxury to take the moral high ground because the far left—the sorts of people who would agree with Hillary Rosen—are not a significant political force in his party or in the general election. Romney could not repudiate a clearly irresponsible statement because a large number of the voters he is currently courting agree with Limbaugh and would be outraged by an attack on their hero. This tells us that one side is clearly more beholden to, and less willing (or able) to police, its own wack jobs. And that is a big problem.
As someone who usually hangs out near the political center, I find the Romney response terrifying--not because of what it says about Romney per se, but because of what it says about the political context in which any Republican candidate must now operate. Are there irresponsible people on both the left and the right? Yes, absolutely. Are there people with silly, stupid, insensitive ideas on both sides? Of course. But when a liberal pundit implied that stay-at-home moms don't work, the Democratic administration immediately condemned the remark in the strongest terms possible. In a very comparable situation, the presumptive Republican nominee bent over backwards to accommodate both the offense and the offender--not because he wanted to, I will gladly concede, but because he had to. And it is the reason that he had to that scares me the most.
In in the current historical moment, one of the major political parties is demonstrably more dependent on its crazy people than the other one is, and this has definite implications for how they will and do govern.
