Sarah Palin followed in Rep. Michele Bachmann’s footsteps and took a swipe at Michelle Obama on Thursday, mocking her efforts to get mothers to breast-feed their children.
“No wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody, ‘You’d better breast-feed your baby,” she said at a Long Island appearance on Thursday, after slamming President Barack Obama for rising gas prices and other items — like milk — since he took office. “Yeah, you’d better, because the price of milk is so high right now.”
The comments come two days after Bachmann accused the first lady of trying to implement a “nanny state.”
“To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies? You wanna talk about the nanny state, I think you just got a new definition.”
Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican and tea party favorite, added that the first lady’s agenda is ““very consistent with where the hard left is coming from.”
“For them, government is the answer to every problem,” she said. “And so, government got us in this problem, and so they think government is going to get us out of the problem. Clearly, they’re wrong.”
Michelle Obama, who is overseeing an East Wing campaign to promote exercise and healthy eating among children, said last week that infants who are breast-fed longer “have a lower tendency to be obese” as they grow up, a claim supported by medical studies.
White House aides have said that Obama isn’t trying to push nursing as a rule; rather, they say, she is using breast-feeding as an example of simple, everyday steps parents can take to improve the health of their children.
“Breast-feeding is a very personal choice for every woman,” Kristina Schake, Michelle Obama’s communications director told POLITICO earlier this week. “We are trying to make it easier for those who choose to do it.”
