The war of political words over Ann Romney’s stay-at-home work status lit up the Twitterverse on Saturday, with the top strategists for both President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney indulging in an angry exchange of tweets.
Romney senior advisor Eric Fehrnstrom kicked off the “debate” when he took talk show host and Obama donor Bill Maher to task for a crass comment about Ann Romney, the wife of the likely GOP nominee. Fehrstrom tweeted: “Obama SuperPac donor Bill Maher says Ann Romney ‘has never gotten her ass out of the house to work,’” and that such comments “are not easily dismissed” because Maher is a $1 million donor to the PAC.
That touched off a string of rapid-fire tweets from Obama political strategist David Axelrod, who sputtered off a list of grievances against the Romney camp. Among them:
“Texas billionaire Harold Simmons pledges $36m to GOP, and calls Obama ‘the most dangerous American alive.’ Silence from Mitt,” which was followed by, “So until you have the guts to stand up to one of your own, you can take your studied outrage and stick it in ... your Swiss bank!”
Axelrod even faulted the Romney campaign for a statement by Foster Friess, a major donor behind Rick Santorum’s failed presidential campaign this year. He tweeted, “Foster Friess, who gave Santo Super $1.7M, hearts Romney, saying he hopes POTUS’s ‘teleprompters are bulletproof.’ Mitt? Silent.”
Maher’s comments referred to this week’s controversy over Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen’s remark that Ann Romney, the mother of five now-grown sons, had “never worked a day in her life.”
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