Maureen Dowd critiques Ann Romney for “overplaying her hand” and for the Right seizing on the DNC’s inadvertent slam on the value of stay-at-home moms. When I initially wrote about this topic, I suggested that this was really just a political gaffe, and that surely Hilary Rosen didn’t mean to imply that raising kids isn’t work.
Yet if the Mrs. Romney and the Right can be blamed for trying to capitalize on the idea of a phony “War on Stay-at-Home-Moms” then surely Dowd should recognize that the idea of a “War on Women,” the idea pushed by the DNC, is just as phony. And the laughable idea that Dowd advances in her own column—that the GOP somehow is threatening women’s access to contraception—takes the prize for the phoniest idea of all.
It’s tempting to try to set the record straight—opposing the idea of forcing all employers to provide insurance that gives away free birth control has nothing to do with one’s believe about the legality or morality of birth control—it’s about the fundamental idea of a limited government! But Dowd and those who advance this concept aren’t confused about the record or what’s at stake with this issue.
They know that it’s a full-blown lie to suggest that anyone is actually trying to make birth control illegal or harder to access. It’s pure political opportunism. They think they can distract voters from the real issues (runaway government spending, our anemic economic recovery, government’s take-over of health care, our counter-productive energy policy, etc.) by pretending that somehow those on the Right seek to outlaw contraception.
Dowd should at least avoid parroting embarrassingly phony political lines when expressing her phony outrage.