Rosen cancels her appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’

Hilary Rosen, the Democratic consultant who created a political firestorm with her comments about Ann Romney, on Friday canceled a planned appearance on “Meet the Press.”

I deeply apologize again to work-in-home moms, Mrs Romney & the POTUS. Not going on #MTP this weekend. I’m going to be a mom who stays home

— Hilary Rosen (@hilaryr) April 13, 2012

The talk show teased an appearance by Rosen — who said Wednesday that Romney “hadn’t worked a day in her life” — on its website and on the “Today” show Friday morning but confirmed later in the day Rosen had canceled her appearance.

Democrats initially expressed outrage that Rosen would appear on the show, prolonging a story that has become a headache for an Obama reelection team that saw momentum with female voters reversed earlier this week when Republicans pounced on her comments.

{mosads}Earlier, upon hearing the news that she was going on the show, one former Obama aide had a few choice words for Rosen.
“I think it comes dangerously close to giving this
silly story legs through the next week,” the former aide said. “This is
not good. Not good at all.”

Later Friday afternoon, Rosen issued a statement on the cancellation posted to MSNBC’s website:

“I thank [“Meet the Press” host] David [Gregory] and the folks at MTP for offering me the chance to
participate in the Roundtable.  It will be an important
political discussion, as it always is on Meet the Press.  But I have
said enough and while I have unfortunately made the Producer’s job
tougher today, I don’t have anything more to say.  I apologized to Mrs.
Romney and work-in-home moms for mistakenly giving the impression that I
do not think their work is valuable.  Of course it is. I will instead
spend the weekend trying to explain to my kids the value of admitting a
mistake and moving on.”

Rosen apologized for her remarks Thursday after they were widely condemned by figures on both sides of the political aisle, including President Obama.

“I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended,” Rosen said in a statement. “Let’s declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance.

“Let’s put the faux ‘war against stay-at-home moms’ to rest once and for all. As a mom I know that raising children is the hardest job there is. As a pundit, I know my words on CNN last night were poorly chosen,” Rosen added.

But Rosen was more defiant in her television appearance on CNN earlier in the day, where she did not explicitly apologize and was somewhat dismissive of the controversy.

“The Republicans slammed [me] and came at this pretty quickly. People who know me know that I didn’t intend that. But my words were not very good, you know, [and] if they want to play politics with it, that’s fine,” Rosen said.

— This story was originally posted at 10:55 a.m. and has been updated.