In her dissection of Hilary Rosen’s non-apologetic apology on CNN last evening, Dana Loesch calls it like it is:

This is a distraction that [the Barack Obama] campaign is forcing on the American people to avoid his record on the issues.

Let’s be frank: the Democrats’s “war on women” was the canard deflecting from the President’s abysmal failures and tanking approval rating. Rosen took it a step too far when she inarticulately targeted mothers.

This is not about stay-at-home moms verses working moms …

Unfortunately, Rosen did not apologize for alleging that Republicans created the phrase and baselessly blamed Democrats for its use. We were the first to tell you that Debbie Wasserman Schultz used the phrase back in March (after Rosen was brought on to advise the DNC Chair), Nancy Pelosi has used it, and the DSCC has been fundraising off the phrase [Stop the Republican War on Women!].

You have to wonder about the source of this handy “war on women” claim.

Digging into the bowels of the internet, we find that it goes back to at least the 1980s:

In 1988, here in my home state of New Hampshire, a “proposal to prod New Hampshire mothers on welfare into the work force more quickly” was deemed by Sara Dustin — a welfare mother who founded the “advocacy group” (aka lobbyist), Parents for Justice — as a “kind of a war on women and children.” “What we’re doing is withdrawing public resources from the raising of children,” she added.

The state’s proposal was then under review by federal officials who would have to decide whether or not to approve it. If implemented, the new law “would prod welfare parents — most of them women — into jobs when their youngest children reached age 3 [instead of when the youngest child turned 6].” Parents who did not comply would lose their benefits; money meant for their children would not be affected.

The plan did not come to fruition until 1996, when Democratic President Bill Clinton signed the “historic overhaul” of America’s welfare system.

Dustin, then a Democratic candidate for county commissioner, quit her lobbying job at Parents for Justice, claiming the new law — which would “create a new state-run network of aid” — would “increase other social problems, such as teenage pregnancy and unwed mothers.” She continued: “The consequences of these social policies or lack of it at the turn of the century was neglect, poor health, stealing, violence and physical danger for the children . . .”

In August 1995, upon the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed a women’s right to vote, Democratic female lawmakers blamed Republicans for waging a “war on women”. Donna St. George reported for Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service:

. . . Democratic female lawmakers are accusing their Republican colleagues — of both genders — of waging “a war on women on the 75th anniversary of the women’s vote.”

The lawmakers [which included Nancy Pelosi and Lynn Woolsey in the House and Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer in the Senate] cited a string of policies that benefit women that are on the Republican chopping block: family planning services, domestic violence programs, abortion rights and nutrition progams.

You have to wonder how you can square the following with a “Republican War on Women”.

Also in August 1995, an editorial in the Philadelphia Daily News reported (emphasis added):

Along about now, some people must be scratching their heads and wondering, “When did I vote to declare war on women?”

Synopses of the “Contract with America” last fall obscured key parts of the real battle plan. Now the attack has come from all directions, and anti-women forces have retaken positions previously secured.

Once again, Congress is ready to take back the barest minimum of control from poor women. The U.S. House voted to return to the cruel policy under which even women who became pregnant by rape or incest could not have abortions paid for with Medicaid.

Republicans fended off a mutiny to pass a bill that would undo a Clinton administration policy requiring states to fund such abortions.

Some claimed it was a “states’ rights” issue, but Republican women weren’t fooled. They passionately opposed their own party’s cruel ploy to further victimize the victims — women already denied the choice of whether to have sex or not.

Setting aside the clairvoyant “Republican women weren’t fooled” part, the takeaway here is that Republicans in the House blocked the legislation at issue.

And what would a post about claims of “war on women” be without the usual communist brethren checking in?

In April 1996, NOW staged a march in San Francisco for “affirmative action, abortion rights and gay rights while protesting ‘ultra-right wing’ politicians.” The Washington Post reported:

“An extremist ultra-right wing has taken control of one of the two major centrist political parties. They are racist, they are sexist, they are homophobic,” author Gloria Steinem told the crowd at the “Fight the Right” rally sponsored by the National Organization for Women.

About 15,000 marchers, including actor Danny Glover and Rainbow Coalition leader Jesse L. Jackson, protested racism, violence against women and what they called a war on women in poverty.

By now you get the drift. The left uses the same memes over and over and over ad nauseum.

One more example.

In July 1996, Human Service Employees Registration and Voter Education Fund (Human SERVE), founded in 1983 by Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, complained that “only 1.3 million welfare mothers” had been added to the voter rolls the year prior, instead of a promised “more than 5 million”. Cloward and Piven had stood behind President Clinton on May 20, 1993, when he signed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The law went into effect in 1995.

You do recall, I’m sure, the 1992 registration efforts Project Vote’s Illinois front man, Barack Obama, used to implement the Cloward-Piven strategy to register people to vote when they showed up at welfare agencies nationwide to apply for public assistance (i.e. to collect AFDC, food stamps, Medicaid or at disability agencies). Welfare agencies registered more than 100,000 new voters a month.

This plan worked just fine until SERVE discovered in March 1996 that: “The Christian Right, with considerable effect, is signing up congregants in church auditoriums.”

All the screaming begins, you see, when leftist tactics are “copied” by non-leftists.

Jeff Jacoby wrote at the Boston Globe:

For SERVE and its allies in the big-government left . . . registering welfare mothers is not about expanding democracy. It is about expanding their own budgets and influence. Its tactics are cynical, but they work.

The left’s tactics are always self-serving. Threaten to take control of union members’ dues away from union leaders, and give members the option whether or not the dues will be deducted from their paychecks and handed over to said union leadership, and the union bigwigs literally flip out — as they did in Wisconsin. They MUST HAVE those dues to further the pay-to-play payouts to Democratic politicians.

Things can occasionally go wrong when the left loses control of the message. Take the “Republican War on Women”, for example, and insert an Obamabot blabbermouth like Hilary Rosen into the equation to carry the White House’s water. The messaging went all wonky when Rosen attacked Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, by discounting the contributions to society made by a dedicated and devoted stay-at-home-mom.

You have to give the Romney war room credit for the stroke of brilliance that followed. It’s about time Republicans figured out how to fight back — quick and hard!