Romney on abortion — 2 ads.

Romney's ad:



Obama's response:



That sounds terrible:

“If Roe v. Wade was overturned, Congress passed a federal ban on all abortions, and it came to your desk – would you sign it? ‘Yes’, or ‘no?’”

“Let me say it: I’d be delighted to sign that bill.”

Ban all abortions? Including abortions that would save the life of the mother? Did Romney really say that? The Weekly Standard prints whole context:

QUESTIONER: Hello, my name is AJ. I'm from Millstone, New Jersey. I would all of the candidates to give an answer on this. If hypothetically, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the Congress passed a federal ban on all abortions and it came to your desk, would you sign it? Yes or no?

COOPER: Mayor Giuliani?

GIULIANI: If Congress passed a ban on all abortions throughout the United States?

COOPER: If Roe v. Wade was overturned and Congress passed a federal ban on all abortions and it came to your desk, would you sign it, yes or no?

GIULIANI: I probably would not sign it. I would leave it to the states to make that decision.

(APPLAUSE)

I think that that -- the problem with Roe against Wade is that it took the decision away from the states. If Roe against Wade were overturned because it was poorly decided, if the justices decide that, it would them go back to the states, and it would seem to me that that would be the answer.

The answer is that each state would make a different decision. I don't believe, in the circumstance that you asked before, that it should be criminalized. I think that would be a mistake unless we're talking about partial birth abortion or late-term abortion.

I think you should have parental consent. I think we should have access to adoptions instead of abortion. But, ultimately, I think these decisions should be made on a state-by-state basis.

COOPER: Governor Romney?

ROMNEY: I agree with Senator Thompson, which is we should overturn Roe v. Wade and return these issues to the states.

ROMNEY: I would welcome a circumstance where there was such a consensus in this country that we said, we don't want to have abortion in this country at all, period. That would be wonderful. I'd be delighted.

COOPER: The question is: Would you sign that bill?

ROMNEY: Let me say it. I'd be delighted to sign that bill. But that's not where we are. That's not where America is today. Where America is is ready to overturn Roe v. Wade and return to the states that authority. But if the Congress got there, we had that kind of consensus in that country, terrific.

That is kind of a weird answer by Romney, and I don't blame the Obama campaign for pulling out that quote. I can see why, fighting for the Republican nomination and pushed and cornered like that, he said "I'd be delighted to sign that bill." Notice that the idea is that we'd be in some hypothetical other America, and if we had arrived there, it would be terrific and delightful, but that's not where we are, so there's no immediate prospect of seeing that bill.

The Romney campaign wants to say, it's not a realistic present-day threat — which is true — and it's not what Romney is really talking about when not pushed and cornered by the formidable Anderson Cooper — which is also true. When free to put his policy in his words, Romney prefers to leave the matter to the state legislatures. Of course, that involves overturning Roe v. Wade, which he's open about. It's an anti-abortion position, though not as anti-abortion as the way it comes out in Obama's ad.

Bottom line: Those who are considering voting for Romney ought to understand exactly how anti-abortion Romney is, but it's up to Romney, not Obama to do that precision work.

"Binders full of women."

Lots more here. Binders full!



ADDED: "Big Bird, binders, and Seamus key tenets of Democratic plans for the future..."

"I expect that later this century we'll see a growing trend around the world of many couples deciding in advance to simply not have children."

"Hopefully this will occur via mutual agreement for the man to have a vasectomy early on."

Not everyone has to agonize over choosing life priorities, and I think it's likely more and more will choose to skip mom-ism altogether,... maybe for economic reasons, and maybe because we'll have more talk about women asking themselves, "Do I really want to raise kids?".  "If I love kids, would I rather free myself to work with lots of them in other settings?"  

Oh, what could go wrong?!

That's one of the early comments on an article over at The Nation, by Jessica Valenti, "I'm Not a 'Mother First,'" which begins:

Last week, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said it was better for children to have a parent at home. “To have one parent to stay closely connected and at home during those early years of education can be very very important,” he said. It’s not hard to imagine which parent he’s talking about.

Romney’s statement didn’t elicit much in the way of outrage, a sign that American women have one more hurdle to overcome on the way to equality: the sexism of mom-ism. It’s no longer enough that women love their children. To be a truly committed parent, women are expected to be mothers above all else—we’re “moms first.”

To make her point, Valenti must reject Romney's use of the sex-neutral word "parent." Why not take it seriously? What does she do when her standard template doesn't fit? Just force it on anyway. Why weren't American women outraged at the sexism of Romney's statement? Because it wasn't sexist! It was putting children first.

And let's get some respect for the men who take the role of at-home spouse in the single-earner family (or who modify their work life to be the parent spending the most time "closely connected and at home"). Valenti mentions fathers in only one paragraph:

Fathers are never expected to subsume their identity into parenthood the way that mothers are. If President Obama were to tell us that he is 'father-in-chief' first, America would balk. How could a man be an effective president if he put the needs of his children above the needs of his country?

Women aren't expected to subsume their identity into parenthood anymore either. It is a choice, and a woman who makes that choice is at least as likely to be disrespected as to be praised.

And maybe President Obama should have waited until his girls were older before he immersed himself in the overwhelming duties of running for and serving as President. For some reason he had to jump in when he did, despite his and his daughters' youth. We were just about to get the first woman President, so the time was ripe.

ADDED: Hillary Clinton would have been a better President. Where's the outrage about that?

"Romney Photo Spurs Domestic Abuse Incident."

"Suspicious that his live-in girlfriend was planning an affair, a Tennessee man confronted the woman after spotting a photo of an unknown guy on her Facebook page..."

Lowell Turpin, 40, “angrily demanded to know who the male was,” reported Anderson County Sheriff’s Department investigators.

Crystal Gray, 38, “replied that it was a picture of Mitt Romney.”

Despite being informed that the man on Gray’s wall was the presumptive Republican presidential candidate (and not some hunky, severely conservative sidepiece), Turpin apparently was not placated....

"Class warfare" and "the war on women" — 2 wars or 2 fronts in the same war?

A question that came to mind as I was reading this comment, from Yashu, on last night's "Rosengate" post:

What happened was, in their efforts to attack Romney, the Dems suffered a strategery malfunction. Crossed wires caused a short circuit.

Crossed wires: i.e. two separate tactical strands of the Obama 2012 campaign against Romney momentarily met in Rosen's soundbite and short-circuited.

1. GOP "war on women" (Dem pandering to women)
2. Class warfare (spurring resentment of Romney's wealth)

Rosen was predictably going along on #1 (that's the meme the Dems are pushing now, #2 will come to the forefront later). But because they had to defend themselves against Romney's counterattack (Obama's economy hurting women), for a moment #2 came to the fore: i.e., Ann Romney's a rich bitch who's never worked a day in her life, so what does she know about the economy or jobs?

Short circuit. Because the "rich bitch" was tacit, implicit; what was explicit, what everyone heard out loud was: stay-at-home mom never worked a day in her life, so what does she know about the economy or jobs?

A stupid sneering insult to stay-at-home moms, i.e. a large number of women. Short circuit.

Do Democrats need to be careful to fight these 2 wars separately, or is there a way that the 2 wars could be merged successfully? Rosen merely lost a battle. That doesn't mean her side has lost the war or that it is not capable of a war on 2 fronts. You might not want them to win, but that doesn't matter for the purposes of this discussion. Whichever side you are on, you will want to understand this.



Here's something I found that was written before Rosengate. (I need a better word than "Rosengate." What would be the equivalent of "-gate" that would signify not a scandal, but a battle. Maybe: -incourt. Rosenincourt/Rosincourt?) Anyway, this is from a website I've never noticed before called policymic, and the author is John Giokaris:

During the weakest post-recession recovery in history, there’s very little material to accentuate the positive with, so the Democrats are trying to make up for it by dividing the American public with class warfare and trying to convince women they need dependency on government for protection.

See the connection between the 2 wars? In the merger of these wars, there is a coherent left-wing vision of government, and the stay-at-home wife is a threat to this vision. In the "war on women," women are threatened and beleaguered. They are victims, and they can't make it one their own. The left would like you to see that only the government can competently and reliably serve the needs of women.

The traditional vision would have each woman ally with one man and form a single economic unit that would be effectively and efficiently structured, with one spouse leaving the house each day to engage in commercial activity and the other spouse looking after things in the home. The married couple takes care itself, including its emotional and sexual needs, which are the very thing that produces offspring, and the love and economic support flows naturally to the next generation, which is trained to follow the same effective and efficient structure.

The left-wing response is to reject that traditional vision, but how? The rejection is the 2-front war. Women should perceive the traditional married-life model as a big threat. It's retrograde and subordinating. It's a throwback to the bad old days when women lacked choices. Anyone promoting the traditional married-life model will be re-framed as someone who will destroy the advances that have been made for women — even if they are only saying women have a choice, and the traditional model is actually a great choice, a choice you should consider, a choice that works best if you can find a good husband.

There's the central battleground: Do women have a choice? The left has loved the word "choice" when it comes to childbearing. Indeed, in the "war on women" battlefront, they want to say their opponents aim to take away the choice that is birth control and abortion, the choice whether to become pregnant or to go through with a pregnancy. But a different choice comes into play here: Should women choose the traditional marriage structure to protect their economic needs? It's a great option if you can get it, so the left would like to say: You can't get it. That's a choice that is no choice. Only rich people can afford that luxury. Only a 1 percenter can keep a wife at home. The right-wing candidate is very rich, and his rich-bitch wife doesn't know what she's talking about. They'd like to deprive all the other women of the protection they really need, which must come from the government.

In this left-wing framework in which the vast majority of women need the government structure around them, women are not supposed to identify with Ann Romney . The left would like to alienate her from you by portraying the economically supportive husband as something only available to the rich. President Obama would like you to think that even he, as a Harvard Law School graduate, could not keep a wife at home with their 2 children. It's an economic solution that works for so few people that it's no choice at all.

How does the other side fight this 2-front war? It's obvious now, isn't it? They need to show that the traditional household division of labor is viable and advantageous to many people, even those of modest wealth. I'd like to see that battle fought. Personally, I think many women have been fooled over the years into working terribly hard for too little reward. I also think — and I'm very non-retrograde here — that many men can do well as the stay-at-home spouse. (And I support same-sex marriages and think these nontraditional couples can prosper using a traditional division of labor.)

I would love to hear a very open and fact-based discussion of household economics. Let's do the math and take everything into account, including the tax advantages for the 1-earner family, the costs of going to work (clothes, transportation, eating out, etc.), and the many expense that can be avoided if someone is at home doing household work. There's a lot of propaganda in this 2-front war for the minds of women (and men). Let's keep our wits about us as we make our personal life decisions and our political decisions.

"Romney fundraising appeal off Rosengate..."

It's the turning point in the presidential race... strangely, and yet not surprisingly. The trajectory changes right here. Today.

Because it's all about the women. Everything is all about women.

ADDED: Dialogue at Meadhouse:

MEADE: Why Rosengate? What's the scandal?

ALTHOUSE: The scandal is: They let the mask slip. They let it show.

As we'd talked about earlier: The Democrats don't really believe anything. They're just working on various voting blocs. They started this "war on women" theme, but it was a means to an end. Women were out there, so numerous, so richly exploitable. The campaign made its move. And then... the slip.