The news, both on the rightwing and leftwing channels, these last few days has been preoccupied with either attacking or defending a rather unexceptional statement by Mitt Romney, that 47% of the voters are addicted to the government teat and the cult of victimhood, and it is not worthwhile to seek their votes.
I would not have even wagered that the Left found this statement objectionable, except that they seem to object to all true statements just on principle.
I am flabbergasted: I honestly thought they would be pleased, and would have parades to celebrate the day when all men were beholden to the government. Everything for the state, nothing outside the state: that is the motto and the operating principle of the Left.
Don’t the communally-minded collectivists rejoice to hear the news that the collective has grown ever greater and stronger? Where is the insult?
What part of the obviously true and truly obvious statement does anyone have any objection to?
It astonishes me that commentators and pundits whose opinion I otherwise respect also find the statement objectionable or coldhearted or somehow ungood in some unspecified way. Some think it needs explaining or explaining away: others were actually, for some reason unclear to me, offended by it.
I don’t get it.
Why is anyone discussing Mitt Romney’s comment instead of discussing attacks by the Jihad against British, German and America embassies in embassy attacks Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Yemen?
That I do get: it is a sign of severe and radical civilizational decline. It is the Romans in the final days bickering and gossiping about the latest trivial scandal among the Patricians while the Goths are putting ladders up against the walls of the Eternal City.
Well, just for one thing, it is not in fact true. It appears that Romney intended to refer to those who do not pay income taxes; well, many of those people vote Republican. (Possibly fewer than before Romney’s speech, but that remains to be seen.) You seem to be assuming (as does Romney) that people vote their pocketbooks, strictly, as though they were Marxian classes; but that’s not true.
A fair point. I think Romney conflated “Those who do not pay taxes” with “Obama’s solid base”, which is not quite accurate. But I think it was close enough for an off-the-cuff remark to potential donors. The thrust of his statements was “I can’t win his base, I need to win the center, so give me money.”
But, I don’t think that’s what the kerfluffle is about. I think it is much more about the statement that those who receive any government support do not take personal responsibility for their lives, or that they believe they are victims. A person who receives food stamps while working their way through college, for instance, probably feels that they are taking personal responsibility for their life as a whole.
It’s the weight of bureaucracy that’s crushing us. Not the parasites. Not the poor. Regardless of Mitt’s remarks about 47% and Ramesh Ponnuru’s denial that there is a tipping point, there is a real place within any runaway budget where the liabilities become more than the assets.
Within the voters, there is self-interest, especially as economic darkness is looming. How many jobs are in the public sector, within the bureaucracies? Will you vote for the reasonable, adult, belt-tightening Leader who will end your sweet sinecure? Will you?
Mitt was ham-fisted in his speech, if not wrong. When we were a strong nation, we could be extravagant with the poor. We still could be but for every poor person, we hired 100 people to minister to them. For every handout to special interests, we created fifty new regulations and thousands to write even more and create more positions of oversight.
A mighty ox gives no heed to the fleas on its back. It’s the cruel burden of the political yoke that breaks his strength at the last.
Well, there’s the fact that many of the benefits that are given out by the government are given to retired old people, who tend to be the main voters in American elections. So, he was directly insulting the people who vote for him. Then there’s the fact that it was his own party who instituted the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is why the “47%” thing exists. So, he is directly blaming a Republican method of poverty relief for his problems.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/09/19/mitt-romney-surprising-facts-pay-no-income-tax/
That breaks it down pretty well. Whatever you think of the welfare state, Romney chose one of the worst slogans and fact patterns possible to make his case, and insulted a very significant portion of his own voter base. There are intelligent and thoughtful arguments against welfare spending of the kind this government does, but Mitt Romney did not make them.
Explain to me how it was an insult? Is your complaint that a comment made in private to donors and supporters about where to concentrate efforts to get out the vote did not correctly differentiate, with the precision of a sociologist, between those who pay no taxes because they are retired and those who pay no taxes because they are welfare cheats and those who will not vote Republican come hell or high water because they are ideologically committed to the welfare state?
Explain to me in simple words, without assuming that I buy into the elliptical, lunatic worldview of the Left, where the insult is to say that those dependent on government should not be expected to vote for smaller government? Explain how it is different from anyone on the Left expressing despondency or grim resolve when they say that interest groups should be expected to vote in their economic interests?
First of all, not claiming perfect accuracy here. I may be misinformed on what was said. Someone could be directly lying to me.
So, I will simply repost his own statement, with the “47%” replaced with the people he is actually talking about:
“There are (the elderly, the working poor, college students, and people below the poverty line) of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are (the elderly, the working poor, college students, and people below the poverty line) 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 they will vote for this president no matter what … These are people who pay no income tax … My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
He has said that groups that do vote for him are not people he is concerned with. He has said that retired people on social security, college people on loans, and people below the poverty line are not the people he worries about, even though plenty of them vote for him.
Furthermore, it is simply not accurate politically:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/where-do-the-47-percent-live/
His own electoral majority is concentrated in the ten states with the fewest payers of the federal income tax. The people that most support him are the ones he said he is not concerned with.
they will vote for this president no matter what … These are people who pay no income tax … My job is not to worry about those people
I do sort of wonder what was in the ellipses.
The IRS reports that 47% of tax filers pay little or no federal income tax. To construe that these are all people devoted to dependency is overstating matters. There are plenty of rich people who also advocate dependency on the State, “the one thing to which we all belong.” (In fact, there are big corporations who are dependent on the government dole.) So it is not clear that in talking about the 47% Romney is necessarily talking about eople who find themselves dependent on a Ponzi scheme for their retirement, et al. are necessarily in favor of their own dependency. He only said that there are 47% who would vote for Obama if he were a yellow dog, so there is no gain to be had from wooing them.
The 47% is also misconstrued. The IRS counts taxes by household, not individual. The lower half (47%) is largely composed of single people, often single mothers with children; the upper half is largely composed of married couples. In fact, the %joint returns increases steadily as one moves up the quintiles of the income brackets. That is why many middle-income folks are astonished to learn that they are rich. They are married and their spouses also work. Add two middle incomes together and, hey presto!, you have a ‘disappearing middle class.’ Given that, a ratio of 106:47 sounds different from 53:47.
Regarding whether Republicans are responsible for the EIT, what of it? To paraphrase G.K.Chesterton, “It is the function of Democrats to continue making mistakes. It is the function of Republicans to ensure that these mistakes are never corrected.”
Where’s the insult? I guess there’s none if you don’t feel you are in the 53% who have not been broadly described as spoiled parasites, but if you think you have, that’s pretty insulting.
The 47% are the people who are committed to voting for Obama, the mathematical mirror image of a very similar percentage committed to voting for Romney. Romney strongly implies that the only reason for voting for Obama is because you are a self-interested spoiled parasite.
If Obama were to describe Romney’s 47% as Nietzsche-wannabe robber barons, I dare say the rightward half of the country might feel insulted here and there.
It is also very politically inept, and arguably further insulting, to be told “My job is not to worry about those people.” Under what circumstances is it EVER a president’s job to not worry about half the country? Even if he genuinely believed half the country to be deeply contemptible (which he seems to), if he wants to be president, shouldn’t he want to make them less contemptible rather than writing them off?
To write off five or ten percent of the country, perhaps — though still risky, to my mind, and of dubious responsibility — but half of it?
“He has said that retired people on social security, college people on loans, and people below the poverty line are not the people he worries about, even though plenty of them vote for him.”
That is not what he said; he said he won’t waste campaign efforts on “47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what.” Meaning those people who blindly follow a leader based on principles of entitlement. Romney is right-mindedly talking about the campaign in terms of values and first principles; but the general critic of Romney insitigates and perpetuates an argument of class warfare, which is a deflection away from arguments of logic and principles.
“Romney strongly implies that the only reason for voting for Obama is because you are a self-interested spoiled parasite.”
I’m not hearing this contempt. It’s logically sound to delineate opposing values and to articulate a campaign strategy based upon this delineation. Obama believes that a President’s job is to protect and grow entitlements at the expense of Constitutional negative rights. If you fundamentally believe that Obama’s positions and strategies are altruistic, honest, charitable and compassionate, that they help the poor, have historically helped the poor, and have proven themselves to be a healthy superstructure upon which future America will thrive, then no argument that Romney can make, or that any conservative can make, will dissuade your position. But nowhere in this video do I see or suspect a contempt for the disenfranchised; perhaps a contempt for false values, but even then I would be stretching the face value statements.
If the “My job is not to worry about these people” remark applied to his campaigning, then yes, it is sensible and I withdraw my remarks about it. I still perceive a massive contempt for “these people,” though.
If Obama were to describe Romney’s 47% as Nietzsche-wannabe robber barons
Actually, Nietzsche lives on the left these days.
“Das Kriterium der Wahrheit liegt in der Steigerung des Machtgefühls.”
– Will to Power #534
(‘The criterion of truth resides in the heightening of the feeling of power.’ Or truth is whatever makes you feel empowered. If it feels good, do it. The Nietzschean triumph of the will, in which I WANT overpowers logic and reason, is entirely in line with the cult of dependency on the open-handed lord.)
The category, “Those Who Are Paying No Income Taxes”, is not a fixed, permanent condition: people move in and out of “The 47%” over the course of their lives. Thus, the elderly may have paid income tax over an entire life, but Grandma is now in her eighties and her husband is dead. Let us say, she pays no income tax this year, although she paid for fifty productive years in the past. A businessman may be engaged in large capital improvements; a chef opens a new restaurant and pays for a new kitchen, a theatre owner upgrades to a digital projector. They meet payrolls but show no profit this year. A start-up runs in the red for the first two years. A home-builder shows a loss due to the Obama economy.
One special category of “capital improvement” is education for advanced degrees. A medical student amasses debt as he studies for his degree, a talented physicist pursues a PhD. Eventually, he will be making millions doing quantitative work on Wall Street, but, for now, he pays no income tax.
And then, there are the people who have made a mess of their lives, through bad decisions, or bad circumstances. There are the blind, the insane, the disabled, the ill.
If I wanted to insult these people, I would adopt a Rich Uncle Moneybags persona and go to an enclave of wealthy donors and say about retired grandma, or hard-pressed businessman or ambitious student, paraphrasing Romney, “[ They] are dependent upon government, [they] believe that they are victims, [they] believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, [they] believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it… And so my job is not to worry about them. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Now, the fact that the income tax burden is borne, at the present time, by about half of the electorate is a valid observation, indicating that we are near the limit on redistributive spending. Perhaps we should not embark on grandiose schemes to provide 30 year old law students with government contraception. It is also valid for a politician to target undecideds and not the opposition’s core. But Romney seems to have conflated these two truths, in a way that casts some doubt on his intelligence and on his insight into the financially struggling half of the electorate. His remarks confirm the Democrat narrative. To quote the late Duke of Enghien, “[This] was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.”
My prayer for this election cycle is that the American people come to understand the character of the two candidates. In one week, we learn that Romney is stupid (at times) and out-of-touch. And we see the other candidate, rush to Vegas to hobnob with Jay-Z, abolish the First Amendment and lie shamelessly, as mobs drag an American diplomat through the streets.
I’ve read on Breitbart and several other sites that the mob in the video was attempting to save Ambassador Stephens (who no one recognized) and cheered because he was alive. They then took him to a hospital where he died. It was several hours before the hospital realized it was the US ambassador.
I’m unclear on why there were no US troops protecting the ambassador and why we seemed completely unprepared for a terrorist attack that struck not only the embassy but the safe house that other embassy personnel were moved to.
Part of the reason may be that President Obama had not been attending his daily intel briefings for a week or two before the event. Critics believe he was concentrating on his reelection campaign, an impression not alleviated when he flew to Las Vegas the next day.
The President cannot be responsible for the day-to-day management of the State Department. If he gave orders to move ambassadors and troops around he’d be accused of micromanagement, and rightly so. By all means blame the President for lack of a coherent foreign policy in the Middle East, but the defenses of individual embassies are not rightly his thuktun.
No, sorry. If the President gets to take credit for the actions of his men under his watch, then he takes the blame for their negligence. The lack of defense is part and parcel of the general incompetence regarding foreign policy.
I am not suggesting his job is to set the daily duty roster for each embassy. I am suggesting his job is to set the tone, and to lead.
You are right.
It appears that one mob (or militia) attacked the US compound and set fire to the main building. Ambassador Stevens was overcome by smoke and lost touch with the rest of the Americans, who withdrew to a safe house.
A second group of Libyans found the ambassador, but did not identify him as such. They cheered “Allahu akbar” when they discovered that he was still alive and carried their unidentified American to a hospital, where he later died.
Later a third militia attacked the “safe house”.
This seems chaotic and it is. Benghazi now has a number of heavily armed militias in mutual rivalry. Ambassador Stevens had worked closely with many of them to topple Ghadaffi and Ambassador Stevens courageously requested that there be only a very light US military presence.
Years ago, a Syrian scholar told me the Arab dictators as like dams, holding back the floodwaters. Mayhem ensues when the dams are toppled. “Democracy is messy.”
Unfortunately, you are merely inventing those meanings and projecting them on Mr Romney.
He was not my first choice for candidate, but I am aghast that you, and apparently everyone else in the nation, feels the need and the right merely to treat his words like a Rorschach blot.
His comment, in effect, was that people tend not to vote against their financial self interest: the culture of dependency and the cult of victimhood are ideologically wedded to the collectivist program. Who, living in the deepest cave in Siberia for the past century and a half, is unaware of this?
What I do not see is the insult or the outrage involved in this statement. I do not even understand how anyone finds it interesting. It is like commenting that it is wet when it is raining.
I have also heard that the mainstream media doctored the tape. No sober man can doubt that the mainstream media is a de facto arm of the Democrat National Committee, and has no hesitations about lying, deceiving, spreading propaganda, rumor, spiking stories, and doing all else in their power, even in the face of failing sales and falling credibility, to support their ideological vision.
1. The 47% and the people who are opposed to him are not the same demographic group.
2. He said that they were the same demographic group.
I get the feeling that we both are reading the exact same quote and interpreting it in a different way, which in my experience is rarely a sign that online debate will clarify the issue quickly.
(1) and (2) are precisely my point. Unless there was some selective editing welding together separate comments on the tax base and comments on the voter base.
3. No, but there is a large overlap between the two groups, large enough so that his comment is neither outrageous nor even interesting. Only the most nitpicking of lawyer would regard it as a worthwhile comment to point out technical inaccuracies in a casual comment made in a private conversation as if the comment had been made in a legal document with every nuance of accuracy triple checked and avowed solemnly to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.
As it stands, the comment is merely common sense and obvious truth. People on the dole who vote for smaller government are voting against their self interest.
What I do not see is the insult or the outrage involved in this statement. I do not even understand how anyone finds it interesting. It is like commenting that it is wet when it is raining.
His comment, in effect, was that people tend not to vote against their financial self interest: the culture of dependency and the cult of victimhood are ideologically wedded to the collectivist program. Who, living in the deepest cave in Siberia for the past century and a half, is unaware of this?
I have also heard that the mainstream media doctored the tape. No sober man can doubt that the mainstream media is a de facto arm of the Democrat National Committee, and has no hesitations about lying, deceiving, spreading propaganda, rumor, spiking stories, and doing all else in their power, even in the face of failing sales and falling credibility, to support their ideological vision.
Precisely.
So a retiree might look at the debt racked up by the president and realize that the coming inflation will rob the retired more than anyone else. A medical student might realize that his prospects are dim under government-run medicine. An unemployed or underemployed worker might trace the poor recovery to the political misallocation of “stimulus” money. The struggling, small businessman might note how much of his potential profits are going to mandates and regulation.
These are all people in the 47% who might pay little income tax, but whose economic interest is not aligned with the present administration. Until the alternative candidate announces, ” And so my job is not to worry about them.”
Please tell me you are not serious.
Again, the only way this discussion has any legs is when the persons in it, in this case you, make a strained effort to put the worst possible misinterpretation on the wording.
It has been, what, four days or more? Is there nothing else the Obama campaign can discuss but this? Why are you helping them do it?
Am I the only one who sees how trivial this is? It was not tantamount to an announcement that Rich Uncle Pennybags and his Plutocrat friends with their top hats and cigars should stuff Oliver Twist and other widows and orphans into the stew pot and offer them up as a feast to Mammon.
It was a perfectly reasonable and absolutely unexceptional comment that the class of permanent cult-of-victimology government dependents were never going to vote against Obama. The figure of 47% was being used as a shorthand or a metaphor for this class: it is not worth your time, nor mine, nor the media’s to argue that the figure should be 46%, or that it technically, if taken literally, applies to your enlightened retiree, medical student, or unemployed or underemployed worker. Do you think each and every member of these categories of persons are devout Obama supporters?
Is you argument that he did not express the idea with sufficient clarity and technical precision to identify the class of voters who are unlikely to vote Republican? If so, the argument is frivolous, and you owe an apology to every medieval schoolman who ever argued about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. (not that any real schoolmen ever argued that. I too am using a metaphor in an off the cuff comment.)
This business of “technical precision” and income tax reminds me of my own tax returns. Each year my accountants present me with a tome thicker and heavier than an illustrated edition of Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend”. They assure me that all the details about my holdings, my royalties, my off-shore bank holdings, my Chinese factories, my shell corporations and their mysterious manoeuvres are all “technically precise” as I riffle through, signing at every gaily coloured sticker. I thought I was the last person to know anything about the 47% who pay no income tax. My wife and I often ask each other, “What do the simple folk do?”. We even make a little song about it.
So I consulted an economist, a Mr Edward Lotterman who writes
What was that? Most people don’t stay put in this category. And who are “most” of the 47%? Retirees, post-graduate students and the underemployed. More or less the same three groups I imagined. Three groups whose self-interest should make them vote against the present administration.
I admit I made a lucky guess. I certainly don’t meet the lower orders except when uptown on a spree in the Harlem nightclubs. Other members of the Petroleum Club and the Union League often tease me about being so naive as to pay income taxes. “The trick”, Uncle Ebenezer tells me, “is to grow value without throwing off much taxable income. Try to be more like that Mitt Romney chap; he has structured his earnings so they are mostly capital appreciation, not income. A sound fellow.”
This raises another fascinating question. Harry Reid says that he was told (probably by this deeply corrupt administration) that in some recent years, Governor Romney paid no income tax. None at all. If Romney were in the 47% that paid no tax, would Romney therefore be in Obama’s base of unpersuadables?
So yes, my complaint is that Romney expressed himself with much imprecision when he identified Obama’s base with the 47% who are liable for no taxes in a given year. I do expect a president to be able to talk about broad categories of people, such as Muslims or the French or intellectuals or the wealthy, and be able to make distinctions about the various elements within each group.
On rereading your post, I begin to dimly understand your point. Romney is a victim of political correctness. He wanted to make a valid point about the culture of entitlement fostered by the administration. But, he cannot speak of “the permanent underclass” or of “welfare queens”. Romney knows that such phrases have been expunged from the latest version of Newspeak. They are racist.
But how can he form a coherent sentence about the culture of dependency without any words for the class of dependents? As you say, he speaks of “The 47%” as a metaphor. His audience of well-heeled donors are meant to exclude themselves, even when they have arranged their affairs so as to pay little or no taxes. They also must exclude retirees, the underemployed young (back in their parents’ homes staring up at the faded Obama posters), struggling small businesses, scholars pursuing advanced degrees, the genuinely disabled and the incarcerated. The audience must tacitly understand that people who briefly pass through this 47% stage in the course of long, productive lives – these people are also excluded.
I was so literal-minded as to miss the metaphor.
It is interesting to look at the demography of Obama’s core support. His support is overwhelming among blacks, but he also has a strong lead among Hispanics. He wins among atheists and the unmarried. So, a black, atheist, lesbian professor of Queer Studies would be the core Obama voter.
He seems to be losing among the Jews and Catholics, however, who supported him last time. Maybe the insults to Israel and the blatant and inane assault on religious freedom has shocked some pinkos out of their complacent spiral of self destructive nihilism. No one in the Culture of Death is loyal to its every precept and dogma. Most people helping the Beast of the Apocalypse agree only with part of the program of the Beast, and think it will not turn its vast and stinking jaws on them.
And where would the venture capitalists and takeover tycoons be without the privilaged access to easy money provided by federal bank?
And the contractors, defense and civilian, and the millions on the civil service rolls?
All the unionized teachers, firemen, and millions of soldiers and their support staff be without the easy money provided by Federal Bank?
The fact is the modern usury-based financial system has corrupted the entire State and there is none who is not on the Govt teat.
“And where would the venture capitalists and takeover tycoons be without the privilaged access to easy money provided by federal bank?”
I don’t know what this comment has to do with the topic of discussion. As a lover of the free market, I abhor the socialistic and fascistic incest between the federal regulators, the banks, and large businesses and large business donors. The huge contributions huge business make to the federal government are bribes and protection racket money to ensure that taxpayer’s money continues to flow into the coffers of these worthless plutocrats.
All the tea party guys, everyone offended by the bailouts and the government takeover of General Motors, are in FAVOR of the free market and constitutional government and AGAINST this Mussolini-style cronyism. While I doubt Mitt Romney is the guy to defend those values, I hope Paul Ryan is.
But you seem to think that Mitt Romney’s comment is an insult to the poor, and must be answered by returning an insult to the rich.
I don’t see the insult. It is a man talking about whether or not campaign resources should be spent on attempting to win over his rival’s base.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/publiccatholic/2012/09/the-real-welfare-queens-the-overbearing-election-buying-congress-owning-almighty-money-men/
“I would not have even wagered that the Left found this statement objectionable, except that they seem to object to all true statements just on principle.”
No, the “Left” you refer to are people who object to any all statements by REPUBLICANS on principle, even if they would otherwise have agreed. If a Republican said that two and two is four, they would insist it was five. As Shea keeps saying, it is a matter of loyalty to the tribe, period.
What we need is for a Republican to say “DON’T jump off a skyscraper”, and watch the lefties start climbing.
Sadly, the Republicans, or some of them, are saying “don’t jump off the skyscraper” meaning the 16 trillion dollar debt and rising. And the Dems are climbing, and taking our children and grandchildren and (by now) greatgrandchildren with them.
To pay off the debt, that is, just to be broke again, every household would have to cough up $205000.
And what did we get for this massive public spending? Where are the Obama Dam Projects, the moonbase, the gigantic six mile tall statue of Obama the Lightworker? If you think we do not have the engineering skills to build a tower that high, consider that if you piled up $100 dollar bills of the national debt, it would extend far higher.
All the money is gone. All the money in the world. It’s all been spent. We spent it all. Do you really think a generation as feckless as this, as wasteful, as ruinously profligate, will actually vote themselves no more free pie?
Listen to the caterwauling of everyone on the government dole, and how pompously and with what outrage they defend their particular slice of the public pie.
And the only thing the opposition can do is play ‘tu quoque’ and point out (completely correctly) that the biggest receivers of public largess are large businesses who make large campaign contributions in an incestuous relationship known as “crony” capitalism. As if that were an answer. The crony capitalists (who vote Democrat anyway, by the way) are not members of the productive half, the shrinking half, of the society. They are in the 47%, not in the 53%.
What kind of intestine-shaped knots of lard do these people have in their skulls to think that an “tu quoque” attack on the corporate welfare dependency is the proper and logical answer to a complaint about the culture of dependency?
Do they no longer teach logic in schools?
And apart from that, all I propose to say is VOTE HALLORAN! Send a REAL heathen to Washington!
(www.halloran.org)
The pure artificiality and dishonesty of the “47% scandal” is made plain when one considers that a) Obama’s foreign policy was revealed to be in complete shambles following the attacks on the embassies and the deaths of embassy personnel, and b) the supposedly offending clip of Romney is four months old. The clip was clearly held in reserve as a “hail mary” torpedo — yes, held. For a moment when the media (all of them in the tank for Obama, to the last) needed to DISTRACT® the American voter from the fact that Obama’s record is terrible. Obama has nothing to stand on in this election besides, “It’s Bush’s fault,” and, “Mitt Romney is a dirty evil greedy businessman.” Nothing. That’s his whole platform. he can’t run on anything else because he has nothing else.
That 47% of Americans will buy this as a perfectly sound and reasonable platform, and will go to the polls and gleefully pull the lever for Obama and the Democrats — lemmings?! — is so utterly unremarkable that it staggers me any adult could find offense in Romney having merely observed what is true. My goodness, let’s please not have Romney begin observing more truth. I mean, my God, the horror of it. That the sky is blue, that water is wet, and that donkey shit still stinks even (or especially?) when that donkey is a Democrat! Yeegads! What will that criminal Romney say next?? Cover your ears, gentle souls!
Not that the media would let us notice Obama’s serial failures, of course. I look forward very much to the debate questions from our betters in the press: Mr. Romney, have you stopped beating your wife yet?!? Now, Mr. President, sir, on a scale of awesomeness from 1 to 10 don’t you think you’re a 20? Yes, we in the impartial, steely-eyed media agree with you very much, sir! And here is a pair of our thrill-moistened panties for your collection, just to prove it!
Put more plainly: the “47% scandal” is not a scandal, it is a farce. 100% distilled nonsense. A ginned-up smoke-and-mirrors event orchestrated entirely by a media which have utterly abandoned neutrality yet cling viciously to the facade of same, as if that somehow protects their naked tushies from hanging out from behind the curtain. Nope, we see ‘em. Or at least some of us do. But is it enough to stave off an Obama win?
Personally, I have a hunch a majority of us aren’t completely convinced that Obama’s failures deserve four more years in which to fail better. I believe fully that come November 7, 2012, the media — stunned, unbelieving, demoralized, apoplectic, suicidal — will be staring at a jubilant Romney victory party and contemplating the utter wreck of their miserable media existence. All except for FOX, the evil satanic emblem of all things rotten and heinous in the world. FOX will be partying with the Romney camp.
Of course, then the real work begins. Romney actually has to do something about the mess in Washington D.C. and Obamacare and the budget and all the rest of it. He may or may not be up to the task. I like to think he is. We already know Obama is not. Because for four years Obama has done everything backwards: wrong policies informed by the wrong ideas which are themselves informed by theories that do not reflect facts or the way the world really works.
I say, no thanks. And I am willing to bet money that a majority of Americans will have also said “no thanks” come the final tally on November 7.