Hilary Rosen, a Democratic operative with SKD Knickerbocker, touched off a Twitter storm tonight after she went on CNN and said that Ann Romney has "never worked a day in her life." 
 
 The statement was tweeted and retweeted, with a number of people condemning the statement as an attack on the candidate's wife, who was a stay-at-home mom who also raised the couple's five boys, and who has suffered from MS and breast cancer. 
 
 Ann Romney, who is widely praised as her husband's most effective surrogate, took to Twitter herself for her first-ever post, saying, "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work." 
 
 (See also: 10 things about Hillary Rosen) 
 
 A number of people leapt to her defense, and President Obama's campaign manager Jim Messina and top adviser David Axelrod tweeted out disavowals of a statement that seemed insensitive to stay-at-home moms and sounded like a devaluation of what Ann Romney's life was like. 
 
 “I could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize,” Messina tweeted. 
 
 "Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen's comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive," Axelrod tweeted. 
 
 Rosen's firm also employs Anita Dunn, former White House communications director, and worked on the Obama campaign in 2008. Her critics on Twitter described her as an "Obama adviser," just a bit of a stretch in description, but not enough of one for some critics, especially after Democrats have hit Republicans for guilt by association with people like Rush Limbaugh for months. 
 
 Regardless, Rosen doubled down — tweeting back at Ann Romney, "I am raising children too. But most young American women HAVE to BOTH earn a living AND raise children. You know that don't u?" 
 
 Earlier, she tweeted in her own defense, "When I said @AC360 Ann Romney never worked I meant she never had to care for her kids AND earn a paycheck like MOST American women! # Truth" 
 
 And she went further in a Huffington Post blog item, saying Mitt Romney has to stop hiding behind his wife's "skirt," and condemned the "faux outrage" from the right. 
 
 Ann Romney, according to Dylan Byers, will be on Fox News tomorrow morning, giving the issue fresh life. And Ann Romney is known for giving strong interviews. Her husband is also guaranteed to be asked about it — and if the perception is she is being unfairly attacked, he will have won the cycle, and potentially many more to come. For Romney, who polls show facing a large gender gap with women and who has been trying to move away from social issues conversations, it could help him. 
 
 The flip side is that Rosen's comments are now getting oxygen beyond the Twitterverse (and the CNN-verse), letting Democrats underscore, without doing much to push it out themselves, the notion that Ann Romney, whose husband was a success in business, may not have had a life similar to some swing voters' lives, despite how hard she worked raising her kids. 
 
 Also worth noting — Messina's line that family should be "off limits." Given the criticisms that Michele Obama has received over the years, it seems likely that Rosen's comment will be highlighted by Democrats if something comes up in the future. 
 
 UPDATE: Rosen appears to have rewritten her Huffington Post blog post last night; the line about Romney hiding behind his wife's skirt is no longer there, and now the column mirrors one that ran on CNN's website. ||||| 7 years ago 
 
 (CNN) - Democratic Strategist Hilary Rosen generated instant bipartisan criticism Wednesday night for her statement that Ann Romney has "actually never worked a day in her life." 
 
 The reaction on Twitter from high level politicos was instant and virtually unanimous: Rosen had gone too far. 
 
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 Rosen: Ann Romney and working moms 
 
 Rosen's comment also prompted Ann Romney herself to make her twitter debut. 
 
 "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys," Romney tweeted. "Believe me, it was hard work." 
 
 Rosen, also a CNN political contributor and a working mother, made her comments on CNN's "AC360." 
 
 "What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country, saying, 'Well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues, and when I listen to my wife, that's what I'm hearing.' Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life," Rosen said. 
 
 "She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing, in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future," Rosen continued, adding that Romney "just seems so old fashioned when it comes to women." 
 
 Her comments drew instant criticism on Twitter from campaign advisers on both sides of the aisle, as well as one of Romney's sons. 
 
 Josh Romney posted that his mother "is one of the smartest, hardest working woman I know. Could have done anything with her life, chose to raise me." 
 
 The senior adviser to President Barack Obama's reelection bid also took to Twitter to distance the campaign from the comments. 
 
 "Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen's comments about Ann Romney," David Axelrod wrote. "They were inappropriate and offensive." 
 
 Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter posted, "Families must be off limits on campaigns, and I personally believe stay at home moms work harder than most of us do." 
 
 Several press aides to Romney's campaign - Andrea Saul, Ryan Williams, and Amanda Henneberg - posted links tying Obama to Rosen, such as her appointment as a DNC adviser and her appearance at a White House event. 
 
 Romney campaign strategist Eric Fehrnstrom wrote: "Obama adviser Hilary Rosen goes on #CNN to debut their new "kill Ann" strategy, and in the process insults hard-working moms." 
 
 Eric Erickson, a CNN political contributor and editor of a conservative website, appeared on the same panel as Rosen, and tweeted, "If raising 5 sons through breast cancer and MS isn't a real job, I'm not sure what is." 
 
 The comment drew criticism from a Republican member of Congress, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, who posted, "Wrong. Being a mom is a full-time job." 
 
 Rosen explained her comments in a post on the social networking site. 
 
 "When I said @AC360 Ann Romney never worked I meant she never had to care for her kids AND earn a paycheck like MOST American women! #Truth," she wrote. 
 
 She later posted a direct comment to Romney. 
 
 "Please know, I admire you. But your husband shouldn't say you are his expert on women and the economy." 
 
 Also see: 
 
 Romney on Santorum: 'This has been a good day for me' 
 
 Louisiana governor endorses Romney 
 
 Crossroads GPS to drop $1.7 million against Obama ||||| My Twitter feed was on fire after an appearance last night on CNN's AC360, where I said that I thought it was wrong for Mitt Romney to be using his wife as his guide to women's economic struggles when she "had never worked a day in her life." Oh my, you should read the tweets and the hate mail I got after that. The accusations were flying. I don't know what it means to be a mom (I have 2 children). I obviously don't value the work that a mother does and how hard it is (the hardest job I have ever had); and I absolutely hate anyone who doesn't have the same views as I do (hate is a strong word). 
 
 Spare me the faux anger from the right who view the issue of women's rights and advancement as a way to score political points. When it comes to supporting policies that would actually help women, their silence has been deafening. I don't need lectures from the RNC on supporting women and fighting to increase opportunities for women; I've been doing it my whole career. If they want to attack me and distract the public's attention away from their nominee's woeful record, it just demonstrates how much they just don't get it. 
 
 My favorite tweet was from someone who said that Republicans like Ann Romney so much more than Mitt that by attacking her (which I didn't), I got people to defend him in a way they never would. 
 
 That last one I can actually understand. 
 
 Now let's be clear on one thing. I have no judgements about women who work outside the home vs. women who work in the home raising a family. I admire women who can stay home and raise their kids full-time. I even envy them sometimes. It is a wonderful luxury to have the choice. But let's stipulate that it is NOT a choice that most women have in America today. 
 
 Why does this even matter? It matters purely because Mitt Romney put the issue of his wife's views squarely on the table. 
 
 As Ruth Marcus noted in her column yesterday in the Washington Post, Romney, when asked last week about the gender gap, twice said he wished his wife could take the question. 
 
 "My wife has the occasion, as you know, to campaign on her own and also with me," Romney told newspaper editors, "and she reports to me regularly that the issue women care about most is the economy." 
 
 So it begs the question, is Ann Romney Mitt's touchstone for women who are struggling economically or not? Nothing in Ann Romney's history as we have heard it -- hardworking mom she may have been -- leads me to believe that Mitt has chosen the right expert to get feedback on this problem he professes to be so concerned about. 
 
 I have nothing against Ann Romney. She seems like a nice lady who has raised nice boys, struggled with illness, and handles its long-term effects with grace and dignity. I admire her grit in talking about her illness publicly. 
 
 What is more important to me and 57% of current women voters is her husband saying he supports women's economic issue because they are the only issues that matter to us and then he fails on even those. 
 
 Let's put aside for a moment his views on women's health issues -- such as his pledge to repeal funding for Planned Parenthood or repeal title X -- which provides important health services for poor women, and true anecdotes (such as when he was a Bishop in his church, he actually went to a congregant's hospital room and told a young single mother who had just given birth that she was shaming the church and should give her baby away). Let's put those issues of respect and health dignity away. 
 
 Let's just focus on his economic record on behalf of women. When Romney ran Bain Capital, less than 10% of the senior workforce were women. And he said in his 1994 Senate race that it was because he had trouble finding qualified women to be executives. Is there a woman alive who believes that? I personally believe that women hate the way our health issues were made a political football by the Republicans in the last several months. But I am pragmatic enough to believe that the economic issues do matter greatly to women and men alike. But the only way that Mitt Romney will succeed in closing the wide gender gap between him and President Obama is if he stops pretending that it doesn't exist. 
 
 Follow Hilary Rosen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hilaryr
– Democratic operative Hilary Rosen set off a Twitter tempest yesterday when she said on CNN that Ann Romney has "actually never worked a day in her life," making her a poor adviser on women's economic issues. The backlash was fierce, Politico reports. Ann Romney joined Twitter to respond, using her first tweet to say, "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work." But the condemnation was bipartisan; Obama campaign director Jim Messina said he "could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly," while David Axelrod said he was "disappointed" by her comments. But Rosen hasn't backed down. "Spare me the faux anger," she wrote on the Huffington Post. She explained that she had nothing against stay-at-home moms, but "that is NOT a choice that most women have in America today."