Hilary Rosen’s Romney crack is Santorum’s revenge

Rick Santorum may be out of the GOP presidential race, but Democratic strategist and talking-head Hilary Rosen has given him a consolation prize. Rosen’s now-notorious crack that Ann Romney has “never worked a day in her life� offers seeming vindication for Santorum’s argument that liberals and feminists are engaged in a misogynistic crusade to make working outside the home the only marker of social value and self-respect.

The quote is from Santorum’s book, “It Takes a Family,� in which he also assails parents (read women) who provide their households with a second income: “In far too many families with young children, both parents are working when, if they took an honest look at the budget, they might confess that both of them don’t need to, or at least may not need to work as much as they do.� He might have been thinking of the high-achieving double-income couples in D.C. who create the buyer’s market for nannies.

Challenged about his book during his now-defunct campaign, Santorum disingenuously argued that his only point was that men as well as women should resist the notion that “the only thing that’s affirming, the only thing that really counts, is what you do at work.� Rosen’s comment about Ann Romney seems to reflect just that view, which is criticized even by women who choose to work outside the home. No wonder President Obama’s aides are trashing Rosen.

Look for Rosen’s comment to be added to the Republicans’ greatest hits of out-of-it Democratic remarks, right next to the president’s claim that small-town Americans “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.�

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