Yeah, this ought to close the gender gap. His wife, Ann Romney has lately become Romney's "secret weapon" in dealing with the ever widening gender gap between him and President Obama.
She was out in front last week bashing CNN contributor Hilary Rosen last week. The whole Obama White House including Michelle Obama went into locked down defense mode although Ms. Rosen does not work for the Administration or it's campaign. Ms. Rosen's great crime was to point out that for all the talk about Ann Romney somehow bridging the gender divide-which is as much as 32 points in swing states-she doesn't necessarily understand the issues that the average woman faces either.
For sure the way Rosen put it, she did leave herself a little open to being misinterpreted as somehow believing that only women who work outside the home are worthy of respect. And, yes, the GOP started taking this and running with it, spinning it into the idea that Rosen was bashing moms-in fact she's a mom herself. Then some GOP bigwig started razzing Rosen because she has adopted kids where Ann Romney has her own. As usual we see the GOP approaching things on an elevated level.
The reality is, though that we all know very well what Hilary meant. She was not attacking mothers or even stay at home mothers, just pointing out that Ann Romney as a wealthy woman of privilege has never known economic want and maybe she can't identify with what most American women go through any better than her husband can.
In many ways, this idea the GOP has that if the candidate is doing poorly with women the answer is not to answer this problem on the level of a policy discussion, but to either take lots of photos with the candidate surrounded by actual women-GOP women, etc-or to have his wife hold his hand during campaign speeches. Rich Santorum's wife also was by his side constantly after all his bizarre opinions on contraception came to light-is a symptom of the whole problem. Somehow women care more about the candidate's wife than men do-why, she isn't going to be making policy. Indeed Mrs. Santorum came dangerously close to promising that though her husband thinks contraception "is wrong" he wouldn't do anything about it. She was kind of shrugging her shoulders and saying-"don't worry."
Now we have the optics of Romney and wife hosting Trump's lavish birthday party. This does little to close the gender gap or the larger empathy gap Romney faces with most voters-women or men.
"The birthday luncheon has already netted over $600,000 for the Romney campaign, a Trump spokesman tells CBS News, and the campaign has asked the businessman to “host a similar fundraiser when Romney secures the Republican presidential nomination.” “[T]ickets to that event would sell for $50,000 and 50 donors have already expressed interest in attending.”
http://thinkprogress.org/?mobile=nc
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