Excuse Me Ann, But Where's The Beef?

From the very get-go, the idea that a wife has to get up on a podium and talk about what a loving man her husband of forty-something years is in order to “humanize” him was, to me, just creepy. Doesn’t it seem a teeny bit Stepford wife-ish? 

In the first place, the speech – well, did she write it, or did Mitt’s speech writer? I’m going for the latter. But in the second place – what did she tell us? Really. What did she say that was new, or relevant, or that would make a single solitary one of us who might not already have our minds made up suddenly decide, well, gee whiz, Mr. Romney is such a nice man, and Mrs. Romney speaks so earnestly about all of the rest of us mothers, wives, daughters and sisters whom she so totally identifies with (really?) that I guess I’ll just vote for him to be president of the country. 

Her job, or her speech’s job, as I understand it, in addition to humanizing her husband, was to make him appeal to women voters. Call me a cynic, but it’s kind of like the wife of the car dealer coming up to me after I’ve walked away from his spiel to tell me what a great guy he is and that’s why I should buy the car from him. I mean, really – what’s wrong with this picture? Since when do women need another woman to sell her husband to them?  Women are intuitive by nature. We listen to our instincts. So believe me when I say, I did not need Ann Romney to tell me all the reasons I should or should not like her husband.

In spite of the fact that the Republicans seem to think the women of this country don’t have the ability to make up their own minds, my thinking is, if we aren’t already in love with Mr. Romney, there’s probably a good reason.  A few of them, in fact.

And I have to tell you, I don’t need to listen to too many pablum-flavored speeches like the one Ann Romney made to recognize when issues that matter to me are not being addressed. And she said not a single word about issues that matter to me. She didn’t mention health care and her husband’s promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act. She didn’t mention women’s reproductive rights.  Not one word was said about Romney’s plan to defund Planned Parenthood, or about his stance on abortion (or, even more frightening, Paul Ryan’s stance). She never mentioned his plans to slash such programs as Head Start and Pell Grants. She didn’t apologize for her husband’s egregious and false assertion that the Obama administration removed the work requirement for Welfare. And she didn’t address the still unanswered questions of whether or not he supports equal pay for women. 

So, I’m still waiting, Ann. Give me a reason, just one good reason, why I should want your husband to be president of this country. Because I haven’t heard it yet.