GOP’s new punching bag - Stephanie Cutter

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/22/why_does_the_right_hate_stephanie_cutter_so_much/

Top political aides on any presidential campaign are bound to end up in the line of fire on occasion. But no official on either side of the aisle has taken more heat this year from blogs and pundits than Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s deputy campaign director.

According to Google Trends, Cutter has been more searched than top Obama aides David Axelrod or David Plouffe, despite their relative seniority. Among the top searches for her are “married” and “husband,” Axelrod is mostly sought out by people looking for his Twitter handle. And while Axelrod and Plouffe catch plenty of flak from the right, unlike her male colleagues, Cutter’s attacks are often personal and vicious, occasionally with gendered undertones.

According to a Romney aide anonymously quoted by BuzzFeed this summer, Cutter is “some hack political adviser from Chicago who has nothing to point to in her own life.” The comment came during a row over Cutter’s factually accurate claim that Romney could have committed a felony by filing conflicting reports with two government agencies about when he left Bain Capital. Why the aide had to suggest Cutter’s life is pointless to respond to a factual claim is unclear.

Rush Limbaugh, meanwhile, has referred to Cutter with the brash mix of sexism and unrequited lust that only he can administer, alternately referring to her as “Obama’s chief campaign babe” or the “chief spokesbabe for Obama-Biden.” He’s also insulted her intelligence and suggested she’s just a pretty face for the campaign. “Stephanie Cutter is a puppet. The words in her mouth have been put there by Obama,” he said in July. More recently, his opinion of her seems to have soured: “The clueless and blind, lying hack, Stephanie Cutter. I don’t know how smart she is. I really don’t.”