Maureen Dowd uses the phony 'mommy wars' to wage the real war on Romney's Mormonism

In her column, "Phony Mommy Wars," Maureen Dowd dismisses as 'piffle' Hilary Rosen's comment that Mitt Romney was foolish to say he depended on his wife's feedback about women's economic concerns because she 'actually never worked a day in her life.' But next, Dowd goes on to criticize Ann Romney for capitalizing on the attack and turning it to her husband's advantage.

Hello? Maureen! Remember all the mileage the left got out of Limbaugh's attack on Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student whose starting salary after graduation will approach $200K but who wants her Catholic university to pay to protect her from the consequences of her own sex life? That's what people _do_ when they're jockeying for political advantage; it's kind of like you snarking about the "wealthy Palm Beach donors who came in fancy cars to eat snapper," while they listened to Mitt, while failing to mention the many dozens of high-dollar fundraisers Obama has attended over the last year. Or your newspaper calling the 'mommy wars' phony while it legitimizes the phony 'war on women.'

Actually, I don't usually mind Dowd--her opinions are rarely a surprise but she's generally not overtly hateful and, occasionally, she'll make me laugh (as when she described Newt Gingrich as a 'crazed Chuckie doll.' I kind of like Newt, but when something's funny, it's funny...)

But, Dowd's partisan panties are clearly showing. In mocking Mitt's claim to have promoted welfare reform in Massachusetts by spending more on state-funded daycare so mothers could have the 'dignity of work' than it would have cost to just continue their welfare, Dowd asks the question "So the dignity of work only applies to poor moms?"

The subtext of this clumsy attempt at sarcasm is that women who stay home with their kids are all like Ann Romney--they can do it without fear or anxiety because a well-off husband can afford it, and the only other moms out there are either welfare moms or 'waitress moms.' It was a silly thing to say, but in spite of its casualness, the remark conveys remarkable ignorance about a big swath of stay-at-home moms--those who aren't poor but who are far from wealthy. The ones who thought long and hard about the material sacrifices their families would have to make, about the added pressure on their husbands, about the possibly permanent effects of the hiatus on their own career trajectories. Those parents are not only letting their children know how much they're valued, but are teaching them by example about frugality, self-reliance, and discipline. So are millions of other parents who would like to make it work with only one earner, but can't, and who still struggle valiantly to do it all.

One gets the sense Dowd doesn't know many of the stay-at-home moms of the sort I describe, but that's no excuse for misrepresenting the choice as the province only of the privileged, like Ann Romney, so she can then call her husband a hypocrite for trying to do something to disrupt the cycle of dependent parents bringing up dependent children. Not only is that transparent partisan hackery, it doesn't even make sense.

The cries by Dowd and others about how the Romney campaign is exploiting what is--I agree--pretty much a tempest in a teapot, are laughable given their determination to similarly exploit anything they can. No doubt we'll be in for that, from both sides, for another six months. But watch for her and her cronies to amp up the sneak attack on Romney's religion. It's already begun, actually, and I say 'sneak' attack because they won't risk a direct one; they'll supply 'information' that's damning and creepy. A little more than a month ago, I commented to a friend that there had been very little floated about Romney's Mormonism, and that I thought it was deliberate--that the Obama campaign (through its surrogates in the media) were leaving the topic alone until Mitt was safely the nominee. Only days later, this column came out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/dowd-is-elvis-a-mormon.html?ref=maureendowd

Not surprisingly, Dowd has worked the Mormon angle into the 'mommy wars' column, along with others. It won't be the last time. I am not a Mormon and don't know many Mormons and, frankly, even though I'm less than enthusiastic about him, I don't really care that Romney is one. If I thought he might be unduly influenced by it in a negative way as President, I would be concerned, but I don't.

I really hope I'm wrong, but I predict that a just-under-the-radar assault on him, because of it, is forthcoming, and it's going to be ugly. David Axelrod is no fool. He knows he can't run a positive campaign unless things dramatically improve soon, and those voters who aren't currently deceived by the spin aren't likely to fall under the spell. So to capture the undecideds and the waverers, it will be fear and smear. It's going to be a long six months...