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A Little Does of Economic Reality and Moral Clarity
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 5:04 pm
by _Droopy
Only Journalists Offended by Romney’s “47 Percent”
Posted By Daniel Flynn On September 20, 2012 @ 12:45 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage
EBT Nation has spoken. Its citizens, the ones who will bother to show up to the polls on November 6, have decided to vote themselves more of Mitt Romney’s money. The inhabitants of Section 8ville second the motion.
The Republican nominee may be aghast that so many strangers enjoy so much of his money. Why are the sponging strangers, and the class-war Hessians of the Fourth Estate, so shocked that Romney has written off their votes?
“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president, no matter what,” an out-of-focus Mitt Romney says on a four-month-old surreptitiously-obtained grainy video. “All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement, and the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.” The presidential candidate tells donors that his job is to convince the unbribed undecideds to cast their ballots for him.
Obama campaign manager Jim Messina found Romney’s comments “shocking.” He shouldn’t have. With more flash, makers-versus-takers rhetoric has been a staple of Republican presidential stump speeches for several generations. Why the feigned outrage over something so pedestrian?
In 1976, Ronald Reagan colorfully invoked a Cadillac-driving Chicago woman receiving food stamps, relying on Medicaid, and collecting more than six-figures in welfare money under her numerous aliases. Buffalo congressman Jack Kemp, a candidate for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination, repeatedly warned that the social safety net had become a hammock. Texas Senator Phil Gramm ran for president eight years later incessantly reminding voters, when he wasn’t invoking the ink-stained fingers of his printer friend Dickey Flatt, that there were more people riding in the wagon than pulling the wagon.
They weren’t wrong, just premature.
A record-high 89 million Americans do not participate in the labor force, with the three percent drop under the Obama administration nudging the rate—63.5 percent—to its lowest level since the Great Depression. People who have given up on work haven’t given up on a paycheck. A record 46 million Americans rely on food stamps, up 44 percent since the president took office. The 8.8 million Americans accepting Social Security disability checks, spiking nearly 1.5 million since inauguration day, is also a record.
Romney’s argument that income tax hikes aren’t as unpopular as they once were because fewer people actually pay income taxes meshes with the numbers. The Tax Policy Center reports that 46 percent of Americans, a number too close for coincidence to Romney’s 47 percent, pay no federal income tax. With more than one in three workers not working, one in twenty workers on disability, and more than one in seven Americans depending on food stamps, an electoral tipping point may be near where so many voters depend on government that the party of government can count on Election Day majorities.
And if the grim statistics don’t convince, remember the jubilation of Peggy Joseph over a potential Obama victory during the 2008 campaign? “I never thought this day would ever happen,” the Sarasota voter explained. “I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage. If I help him, he’s going to help me.’
Surely in conveying how handouts corrupt Americans Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” story has nothing on Miss Peggy’s YouTube clip, right?
Romney asked for Mother Jones to release his remarks in full, which the magazine promised to do until it acknowledged that the remarks weren’t captured in full. Mother Jones claims the camera “inadvertently turned off” while recording Romney before being turned back on. Romney could credibly claim to have been taken out of context. But with the context of Peggy Joseph, and record numbers of Americans asking what their country can do for them rather than what they can do for their country, Romney’s remarks work parsed as well as they do in full. Everyone, save for journalists, seems to understand the context.
It’s not necessarily that Romney’s media detractors find his off-the-record remarks off putting. They find conservatism off putting. Living in deep-blue cities, working alongside partisan crusaders, and educated by an ideologically-narrow professorate, the scribes find uncontroversial remarks so foreign because they’ve been marinated in environments so foreign to their fellow Americans.
Who, really, is out of touch here?
Re: A Little Does of Economic Reality and Moral Clarity
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 5:15 pm
by _bcspace
Romney asked for Mother Jones to release his remarks in full, which the magazine promised to do until it acknowledged that the remarks weren’t captured in full
No matter. Romney is getting very good play from this.
Re: A Little Does of Economic Reality and Moral Clarity
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 5:45 pm
by _Quasimodo
bcspace wrote:Romney asked for Mother Jones to release his remarks in full, which the magazine promised to do until it acknowledged that the remarks weren’t captured in full
No matter. Romney is getting very good play from this.
You're priceless, bc! No matter how bad things get for Mitt, you always seem to find some obscure quote, poll or thought that tries to a shine a good light on his terminal disasters (plural).
Even though Mitt's political friends (Pawlenty and others) and the Republican media have abandoned him, he will always know that he has one last, true friend.
Re: A Little Does of Economic Reality and Moral Clarity
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 8:55 pm
by _krose
I don't think the comments were offensive -- just incredibly, irretrievably, mind-numbingly stupid. As is this article.
No one who knows anything about the makeup of this country would ever conflate the group of people who don't pay federal income taxes (who are mostly Republican voters -- if they vote at all) with the group of people who intend to vote for Obama.
I suppose he may have been confused by the fact that both groups are in the upper 40s as a percentage of the population. Maybe. More likely, he does know better, and was merely pandering (as is his wont) to his audience of wealthy fools.
Re: A Little Does of Economic Reality and Moral Clarity
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 9:37 pm
by _EAllusion
I'm fairly certain Romney was pandering, though it says something about his wealthy audience that you could say such obviously ridiculous things and have it fly. I don't think his math is offensive so much as it is cray cray, but it does become offensive when he equates those who do not pay income tax to being shiftless moochers who will inevitably vote Democrat to secure their ability to take no responsibility in their lives. That is incredibly offensive. His dismissive attitude doesn't help. And, as have others pointed out, he's attacking a decent chunk of his own voters. Those people ostensibly support policies that will reduce progressive taxation and increase their tax burden in exchange for lower taxes on the wealthy.
Re: A Little Does of Economic Reality and Moral Clarity
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 9:41 pm
by _EAllusion
Unless the missing portion of the tape has a "just kidding guys" style caveat, it's hard to see how he could possibly be taken out of context here. The only context that could adjust the meeting is something setting the comments up as something he doesn't actually believe. That's further supported by no such argument forthcoming.
When Shirley Sherrod was taken out of context on Brietbart, what made it out of context was the fact that she was setting up a story about how she no longer believed the attitude she was sharing. That's how that sort of thing goes. It's hard to see how a Brietbart style hitjob is happening in this case. And one would think the Romney camp would be all over it if it was.
Re: A Little Does of Economic Reality and Moral Clarity
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:00 pm
by _EAllusion
Droopy is probably part of the chunk of people referred to in Romney's comments - a "taker" in his own lingo - and no one would seriously think that he's a dyed in the wool Obama voter seeking redistribution of wealth to his pocket. He just happens to make less money than you or I. The idea that people just vote their economic self-interest, especially in such a crude way, is silly and empirically false.
Re: A Little Does of Economic Reality and Moral Clarity
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:08 pm
by _Quasimodo
EAllusion wrote:I'm fairly certain Romney was pandering, though it says something about his wealthy audience that you could say such obviously ridiculous things and have it fly. I don't think his math is offensive so much as it is cray cray, but it does become offensive when he equates those who do not pay income tax to being shiftless moochers who will inevitably vote Democrat to secure their ability to take no responsibility in their lives. That is incredibly offensive. His dismissive attitude doesn't help. And, as have others pointed out, he's attacking a decent chunk of his own voters. Those people ostensibly support policies that will reduce progressive taxation and increase their tax burden in exchange for lower taxes on the wealthy.
I think I agree with all you've said. He was just saying what he thought his audience wanted to hear (after all they were paying $50,000 a plate. I might gush out some crap like that for those kind of bucks).
I would prefer potential Presidents not do that, though. The really disturbing thing is that he assumed that it would not be recorded. Not very wise. After George Allen lost his Senate bid for saying macaca on video, one would think that a wise and savvy politician would be more careful in a closed room. Digital video cameras are so easy to conceal these days.
All his mistakes (many recently) have been the result of foolish thoughtlessness. He has no business running for President.
Re: A Little Does of Economic Reality and Moral Clarity
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:22 pm
by _Droopy
EAllusion wrote:Droopy is probably part of the chunk of people referred to in Romney's comments - a "taker" in his own lingo -
And how do you figure this?
The idea that people just vote their economic self-interest, especially in such a crude way, is silly and empirically false.
If its empirically false, then I'm sure you can show that to be the case. However, history tells us that people do, in very many cases, vote for their own economic self interest, and the history of the welfare state, as well as private and public sector unionism, in this nation, in Britain, and in other countries, teaches us that human beings, once on a sufficient gravy train stocked with sufficient gravy, will behave like beasts to retain the state sanctioned and enforced ability to live at the expense of their fellow citizens (and even threaten the sustainability of an entire economy and the continuance of a civil, ordered, free society).
The entire community organizing movement was and is grounded in this very historical, political, and psychological reality.
But please continue to defend the welfare/redistributionist state and the vast oceans of Americans, from the underclass, to the working poor, to the middle class, who receive from their fellow citizens more than they contribute in taxes, and who are net consumers of the wealth of their neighbors.
That's what "libertarians" do best, right E?
Re: A Little Does of Economic Reality and Moral Clarity
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:33 pm
by _Droopy
deleted