Though everyone is talking about Democratic strategist and Obama confidant Hilary Rosen's insolent remarks about Ann Romney, I want to discuss them, too, because they reveal her leftist mindset.
Rosen didn't misspeak; she spoke deliberately and with passion. And when given a chance to retract or soften her remarks, she doubled down -- at least initially.
Her comments came in a segment on CNN with Anderson Cooper. Cooper pointed out that in the current economy, "women are seeing jobs come back much more slowly than men are," and he asked Rosen, essentially, whether there was anything wrong with the Romney campaign's highlighting that fact and "reaching out to women on an issue that they care about, on the economy."
"Guess what?" asked Rosen. "His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and why we worry about their future."
Though Rosen's next comment hasn't received as much attention, it exposes liberal thinking. She said: "There's something much more fundamental about Mitt Romney, because he seems so old-fashioned when it comes to women. And I think that comes across. ... He just doesn't really see us as equal."
Ann Romney responded in her newly launched Twitter account, "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work."
Back on CNN the next day, Rosen protested that she loves stay-at-home moms. "This is not about Ann Romney," she said. "This is about the waitress in 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."
Rosen's remarks, taken together, tell us that like many of today's leftists, she sees America not as a melting pot, but as a Balkanized land of categorized groups, warring against one another. She sees people as blacks, women or gays, not as individuals.
From Rosen's leftist perspective, Republicans don't care about these groups but consider them inferior; "he just doesn't really see us as equal."
As usual with leftists, she's projecting. Who's not seeing women as equals, Ms. Rosen? Deny it as you now must, but you are the one dissing stay-at-home moms, diminishing their role and its worth and dignity, and implying they are somehow inferior.
That's not the way conservative women see it; they respect women whether they stay at home or work. As Ann Romney told Martha MacCallum on Fox News Channel: "My career choice was to be a mother. ... We need to respect choices that women make." She said that Mitt had always told her that her job was more important because it would make a permanent difference.
But we must understand that Rosen's comments also transcend her opinion of stay-at-home moms. She's articulating the narrow, intolerant leftist view that if you are a member of a particular group, you must adopt the attitudes of the left, or you won't measure up. If you are black, a woman or gay and don't subscribe to liberalism and embrace its hostile identity politics, you are not an authentic black person, woman or gay person. If you are a pro-life woman, you can't fully identify with real women.
Rosen's view that the "Romney-Ryan" budget victimizes waitresses further displays the left's habit of seeing everything through the prism of identity politics. Like President Obama, she places people in economic classes, too -- the haves and the have-nots -- and the only solution they offer the "have-nots" is government assistance, not the hope of advancement through greater opportunity.
Ann Romney served up a delicious smack-down on this argument, as well, saying that she's been on the campaign trail for a year and what women are talking about are "jobs and ... the legacy of debt that we're leaving our children." She gave no quarter to Rosen's implication that the Romneys' wealth makes them insensitive to the less fortunate -- again mouthing the noxious view that unless you're part of a group, you can't relate to that group. "Mitt and I have compassion for people that are struggling, and that's why we're running."
Sorry to break it to Ms. Rosen, but the question isn't whether a president is poor -- none of them is; Obama's not -- but whether he would implement pro-growth and anti-debt policies.
Truth be told, conservatives, generally speaking, have more compassion than those leftists who relegate people to dehumanizing groups. Compassion is a very human phenomenon, not sterile political advocacy ostensibly on behalf of categories of people ripe for political exploitation.
The left's manufactured GOP "war on women" is backfiring. Thank you, Hilary Rosen, and thank you, Ann Romney.