While the Democratic National Committee was quick to distance itself today from marketing strategist Hilary Rosen, WND has found that Rosen held strategy meetings with top Obama aides Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod.
Rosen also sits on the board of a progressive organization described as the “idea factory” of the Obama administration.
Rosen is now under fire after she insulted Ann Romney and stay-at-home mothers, saying the wife of GOP candidate Mitt Romney never held a job.
“Guess what, his wife has actually never worked a day in her life,” Rosen said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about women’s issues.
Ann Romney took to Twitter to respond, writing, “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.”
Rosen is a partner at SKD Knickerbocker, the public relations and strategy firm of former White House communications director Anita Dunn. SKD handled Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Among those distancing themselves from Rosen is David Axelrod, who tweeted his disapproval: “Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive.”
WND has found that Rosen held five White House meetings, including a March 11, 2009, meeting with Jarrett and a March 12, 2009, meeting with Axelrod described as a “communications message meeting.”
Rosen’s meeting with Axelrod was reported by the Associated Press and CBS News in November 2009.
CBS News noted Axelrod’s White House meeting with Rosen and 18 other strategists demonstrated “the political element of the health care debate.”
Rosen, meanwhile, serves as political director and Washington editor-at large for the Huffington Post and also is a regular commentator for CNN.
She’s on the board of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The center is deeply involved in helping to influence White House policy under Obama.
Its founder, John Podesta, directed Obama’s 2009 transition into the White House.
Time magazine called CAP Obama’s “idea factory,” noting that “not since the Heritage Foundation helped guide Ronald Reagan’s transition in 1981 has a single outside group held so much sway.”
Time reported it is “difficult to overstate the influence in Obamaland of CAP.”
Rosen serves on the board of the George Soros-funded Human Rights Campaign Foundation and the Creative Coalition.
Already, the DNC has commented on Rosen’s remarks, with an official telling Politico, “Hilary Rosen is not an adviser to the DNC. Our contract for media services is exclusively with Anita Dunn.”
Rosen took to Twitter to further her remarks, writing, “When I said on [CNN] Ann Romney never worked I meant she never had to care for her kids AND earn a paycheck like MOST American women!”
Rosen later tweeted that Mitt Romney “now makes up false concern for women’s economic struggle” and “he should stop saying that she is his guide to women’s economic problems. She doesn’t have any.”
Rosen seemed to backtrack a bit when she posted an explanation at the Huffington Post.
“I have nothing against Ann Romney,” Rosen wrote. “She seems like a nice lady who has raised nice boys and struggled with illness and handles their long term effects with grace and dignity. …What is more important to me and 57 percent 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.”
