CHARLOTTE -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urged women to run for office and reelect Democrats at a forum Tuesday, while ignoring questions about the Democratic Party’s "war on women."
The event, "Unconventional Women," was hosted by Political Parity, a group funded by Swanee Hunt, former ambassador to Australia under President Bill Clinton.
"First of all, the best thing you can do to advance political parity for women is reelect Barack Obama," Pelosi told an audience of Democratic delegates and women’s advocates.
Given the White House’s own behavior, however, it is unclear how such an action would aid women.
As previously reported by the Free Beacon, female White House employees earned a median annual salary of $60,000 in 2011, which was about 18 percent less than the median salary for male employees ($71,000). Pelosi pays the women on her staff $26,606 less per year on average than male staffers.
Pelosi declared women must double their numbers in Congress by 2020. Achieving that goal, she said, would require improving childcare options for women.
"If we want to unleash the full power of women, we have to have affordable childcare," she said.
Pelosi also accused Republicans of behaving uncivilly, describing their tactics as "endless money, suppressing the vote, and poisoning the debate."
Her comments came on the heels of the California Democratic Party chairman, John Burton, incendiary comparison of Republicans to Joseph Goebbels, the head of Nazi propaganda under Adolf Hitler.
"They lie and they don't care if people think they lie … Joseph Goebbels—it's the big lie, you keep repeating it—a bold-faced lie and he doesn't care that it was a lie. That was Goebbels, the big lie," Burton said of Republicans on Monday.
Pelosi also returned to one of her favorite hobby-horses: money in politics. She called for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that allowed unlimited political spending from individuals, corporations, and unions.
"We have to make sure we have a government of the many, not a government of the money," said Pelosi, who was the 12th richest member of Congress in 2011 with an estimated net worth of $35 million.
Introducing Pelosi, former ambassador Hunt called the former speaker of the House, "a model for women all over the world."
When approached by the Free Beacon for questions, Pelosi turned and continued shaking hands with supporters before being whisked away by her security detail.