“Atop The Class Structure”: Does Boca Raton Mitt Romney Dislike America?
The most incisive reaction to Mitt Romney’s disparaging comments about 47 percent of us came from a conservative friend who e-mailed: “If I were you, I’d wonder why Romney hates America so much.”
A bit strong, perhaps. But the more you think about what Romney said, the more you wonder how he really feels about the country he wants to lead.
What kind of nation are we if nearly half of us are lazy, self-indulgent moochers who will never be persuaded to mend our ways? “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney said, thus writing off a huge share of our citizenry.
From his perch high atop the class structure, Romney offered an analysis of political motivations that even Marxists would regard as excessively materialistic. He speaks as if hardworking parents who seek government help to provide health care for their kids are irresponsible, that students who get government aid to attend community colleges are not trying to “care for their lives.” Has he never spoken with busboys and waitresses, hospital workers and janitors who make too little to pay income taxes but work their hearts out to “take personal responsibility”?
In defending himself on Fox News on Tuesday, Romney only deepened his difficulty. “I think a society based upon a government-centered nation where government plays a larger and larger role, redistributes money, that’s the wrong course for America,” he said.
Put aside that if President Obama wanted a “government-centered nation,” the stock market wouldn’t have doubled, making many in Romney’s Boca Raton, Fla., audience richer. In his impatience with those he accuses of casting themselves as “victims,” Romney misses the real story of government in the lives of most Americans. So often, we combine our own exertions with a little assistance along the way — the GI Bill, student loans, Social Security survivors’ benefits, public education — to become self-sufficient and independent.
And Romney said not a word about all the redistribution upward in a tax code that favors investment over labor income. That’s why Romney pays federal taxes at a much lower rate than do many in middle class — and why, given his stress on the importance of paying income taxes, he might usefully release a few more of his own tax returns.
Romney’s comments, which were caught in a video obtained and published online by Mother Jones magazine, have been widely compared to Obama’s private 2008 comment about working-class people who “cling to guns or religion.” I disliked that line, and as a churchgoing supporter of gun control, I always bristle at the too-easy conflation some liberals make of “God” and “guns.” But Obama’s defenders have been correct in noting that he got a big thing right that Romney got wrong: Most of Obama’s observations were empathetic toward blue-collar Americans who “feel so betrayed by government.” His whole point was the need to reach out to, not write off, a constituency that had not embraced him.
Many have already written wisely about how Romney’s original statement got the facts wrong, notably about how many Americans actually pay federal taxes and how a large share of those who don’t are retired.
But here’s the most important point Romney got wrong: Among the wealthy nations, it’s difficult to find one where people work harder than the United States. In a 2005 New Yorker article (written before the downturn), James Surowiecki noted that, compared with Europeans, “more people work in America, and since they work so many more hours, Americans create more wealth.” Yes, the riches enjoyed by the folks at that Boca Raton fundraiser were made possible in significant part by the strenuous efforts of proud, self-sufficient people, including many in the 47 percent.
Romney misses something else about America: We do believe in a certain amount of “redistribution” toward those in need. We have always rejected what one of our leaders called a “destructive mind-set,” which he defined as “the idea that if government would only get out of our way, all our problems would be solved,” an approach with “no nobler purpose than ‘Leave us alone.’ ”
That would be George W. Bush in 1999, as my colleague Michael Gerson reminded us the other day. Bush added: “Yet this is not who we are as Americans. We have always found our better selves in sympathy and generosity, both in our lives and in our laws. . . . Our national character shines in our compassion.”
Yes, it does, even if the Boca Raton Mitt Romney seems not to appreciate that about us, either.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 19, 2012
“Mitt’s Moochers”: The Dangerous Lie His Funders Love To Hear
Mitt Romney got some unwanted attention early this year when he flatly stated, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” When challenged on this remark he assured Americans that the safety net for the very poor was a given, safe from any budget and tax code tinkering in Washington. This was a sinister explanation since Romney’s tax and spending plan — or as much of it as can be deciphered — calls for further tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of social services that he claimed were safe.
Now, we see that it’s not just the “very poor” who don’t merit Romney’s “concern.” At the now-infamous $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Florida, Romney wrote off the concerns of the 47 percent of Americans who don’t owe federal income taxes, saying that half of Americans are “dependent on government,” “believe that they are the victims,” and have the gall to “believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”
That 47 percent includes families and individuals with low incomes — about 23 percent of taxpayers, according to the Tax Policy Center. It also includes those for whom tax credits for children and working families have eliminated tax burdens — about 7 percent. It also includes seniors who have left the workforce — about 10 percent. Over half of the 47 percent pay federal payroll taxes. All are subject to state and local taxes, many of which, like sales taxes, are more regressive than federal taxes. (And if we ever see more Romney tax returns, we may find some years when the Romney’s were in that entitled 47 percent.)
As conservative writer Reihan Salam points out in the National Review, policies like the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit — responsible for much of this tax relief for working families — were conservative ideas meant to reduce the “dependency” that Romney so reviles, by “encourag[ing] people get on the first rungs of the jobs ladder, and to become less dependent over time.”
Romney was telling the well-heeled guests at this fundraising dinner that these people — middle-class parents, low-income workers, the unemployed, the elderly — aren’t interested in working hard despite the fact that most of them report to the IRS each year that they work quite a lot. This isn’t just tin-eared politics. Like Romney’s comments on the “very poor,” it represents a profound misunderstanding of how Americans’ lives work and how his policies would affect those lives.
But even talking about the “47 percent versus the 53 percent” belies the fact that nobody in America is free from at least some government “dependency.” We all rely on roads, hospitals, schools, firefighters, police officers, and our military — even Mitt Romney and his $50,000-a-plate friends. Romney himself has relied on the government’s safety net for businesses, securing a federal bailout for Bain & Company. Nobody succeeds without some help from a stable, functional government. That’s what President Obama was saying when his “you didn’t build that” comments were taken out of context.
Romney was clearly telling his funders a fantasy story that they love to hear. But that story is a lie, and we shouldn’t accept it from someone who could become a president representing 100 percent of the American people.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Hufffington Post Blog, September 19, 2012
“Mitt’s Snake-Bit Season”: The Worst Run Of Disasters This Side Of The Mayan Calendar
Our topic for today is: When Bad Things Happen to Mitt Romney.
Really, it’s been the worst run of disasters this side of the Mayan calendar. The Republicans’ woes started last Friday, when Ann and Mitt filmed a TV interview in which they entertained the kind of personal questions that most candidates learned to avoid after Bill Clinton did that boxers-versus-briefs thing. Asked what he wears to bed, Mitt said: “I think the best answer is: as little as possible.”
Euww.
Then, over the weekend, Romney aides began spilling their guts about how other staffers had screwed up the Republicans’ bounce-free convention. In an attempt to change the conversation, the campaign announced that it had just realized the nation wants Romney to say what he’d actually do as president. Voters “are eager to hear more details about policies to turn our economy around,” said an adviser, Ed Gillespie.
In search of just such specificity, the scoop-hungry Christian Broadcasting Network asked Paul Ryan if he would continue refusing to identify exactly what tax loopholes the Romney administration would close in order to turn our economy around.
“Yes,” said Ryan, who then veered into a disquisition about something that once happened to Tip O’Neill.
You may be wondering whatever became of Ryan, who was such a big sensation when Romney first picked him as a running mate. Since Tampa, he seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, resurfacing every now and then to put up another ad for re-election to his House seat in Wisconsin.
It’s not all that unusual for a vice-presidential candidate to go low-profile. And it is totally not true that Mitt Romney strapped Paul Ryan to the top of a car and drove him to Canada. Stop spreading rumors!
Next, Mother Jones published that video of the fund-raiser in Boca Raton in which Romney said that 47 percent of the country is composed of moochers who want to confiscate the earnings of hard-working stockbrokers and spend it on caviar and dialysis treatments.
“So my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney decreed, undoubtedly more in sorrow than in anger.
Then, Republican Senate candidates in tight races began distancing themselves from the top of the ticket.
Ann Romney suggested Mitt was “taken out of context,” in what was undoubtedly meant as a helpful comment.
“All of us make mistakes,” said President Obama, in what probably wasn’t.
“Obviously inarticulate,” decreed Paul Ryan, popping up from a gopher hole somewhere in Nevada.
The fund-raiser, a $50,000-a-pop sit-down dinner, was hosted by Marc Leder, a financier who The New York Post reported as having a “wild party” last summer in the Hamptons “where guests cavorted nude in the pool” while “scantily dressed Russians danced on platforms.” You cannot blame Romney for that. If presidential candidates had to avoid all multimillionaires who held parties with naked guests and Russians on platforms, there would be no money for misleading TV commercials.
The video was a reminder of how ghastly this business of running for president can be. The guests seemed more interested in the breadbasket than the candidate. Romney was blathering away in the manner of somebody trying to stay awake during the 12th hour of a cross-country drive.
On Tuesday, moving to tamp down criticism that he was a conversational disaster area, Romney told Fox’s Neil Cavuto: “Well, we were, of course, talking about a campaign and how he’s going to get close to half the votes. I’m going to get half the vote, approximately. I hope — I want to get 50.1 percent or more.”
With that out of the way, Romney explained that his real point had not been to criticize people who don’t pay income taxes, but merely to point out that he wanted them to make more money. “I think people would like to be paying taxes,” added the quarter-billionaire whose own eagerness to be part of the solution is a matter of public record.
How did he let things slip out of control? Maybe the answer lies back with that Ann-and-Mitt interview, which was on “Live With Kelly and Michael.” Asked about his preferences when it came to heroines of low-end reality TV shows, the future presidential candidate enthusiastically announced: “I’m kind of a Snooki fan. Look how tiny she’s gotten. She’s lost weight and she’s energetic. I mean, just her sparkplug personality is kind of fun.”
It could be worse. He could have announced that he enjoys spending his free hours watching “Hoarders” marathons. But, still, it’s weird that Mitt Romney appears to think a lot about Snooki. Is it possible that while he’s being dragged around from one fund-raiser to the next, he spends his spare time watching “Jersey Shore” reruns in the limo?
That would explain so much.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 19, 2012
“Fingerprints Of The Right Wing Media”: Mitt Romney Campaigns As The Fox News Candidate
Note to Mitt Romney: This is what happens when you run for president on the back of Fox News and embrace the dark anti-Obama conspiracies that fuel the right-wing media.
On Monday, the Republican nominee was forced to hold a rare, late-night press availibility to respond to Mother Jones’ report on a video of Romney taken surreptitiously at a closed-door Florida campaign fundraiser in May where the candidate tells donors that “there are 47 percent who are with [President Obama], 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.”
The notion that Obama voters are lazy victims who rely on the government for sustenance from birth to death represents Romney’s open embrace of Fox News and the same insulting allegation that it, along with other right-wing talkers, has been making for the last four years. Here, the Republican’s long-standing caricature of the lazy welfare recipient gets dramatically expanded to include tens of millions of Americans who vote Democratic and who apparently worship big government and disdain hard work.
The sweeping generalization Romney uses to denigrate so many voters, and the fact he did it behind closed doors while speaking to wealthy donors, is what turned the comments into a significant campaign news event. Writing off nearly half the electorate as selfish dependents who refuse to take responsibilities for their own lives isn’t usually how White House candidates frame their campaigns.
What’s telling though is how, once again, the fingerprints of Fox News and the right-wing media are all over the Romney campaign and its latest misstep.
Fact: Fox and friends have been railing for years about how Obama is purposefully making more people dependent on the government (an “entitlement state“) so he can turn that dependency into votes. Obama, according to the fevered rhetoric from the far-right swamp, wants to radically extend the reach of the government in an effort to extract voter loyalty. “He’d rather you be a slave and be economically dependent upon him,” is how Fox favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL) put it.
Remember Glenn Beck’s unhinged comparison to Obama as drug-dealer-in-chief?
If he’s not a socialist, if he’s not a Marxist, then he must be a heroin dealer. I believe our new president is pushing a much more powerful version of heroin, and he is getting people strung out.
Meanwhile, discussing welfare work requirement reform this summer (and while completely misrepresenting the changes the Obama administration implemented at the behest of Republican governors), Fox contributor Laura Ingraham claimed the changes were designed to be a “push for election turnout.” Explained Ingraham: “Give more free stuff to people and hope that they come to the polls.”
And of course Rush Limbaugh has been relentlessly promoting the unsavory talking point, claiming the Democratic president doesn’t “want people leaving the welfare rolls” because “those are voters that are getting away.”
All of this strange right-wing media rhetoric has apparently soaked in and has been embraced by the Romney campaign. In fact, just last week, an unnamed Romney adviser complained to National Review that the reason the media are allegedly rooting for Obama is because “the more Washington DC controls our economy, the more important inside-the-beltway publications are and the more money they make.”
Again, with this twisted notion that the (socialist!) Obama administration is trying to control people’s lives by expanding the size of government, and that Americans who receive government services automatically support Democrats. (No unemployment recipient has ever voted Republican?) Indeed, the Atlantic mapped out where Romney’s 47 percent of no-income-tax-paying voters live, and it turns out “those people are disproportionately in red states — that is, states that tend to vote Republican.”
This is the kind of fringe, conspiratorial rhetoric that campaigns usually leave to the periphery. And for good reason. But Mitt Romney is the Fox News candidate and apparently that means echoing every dark, incoherent attack that the talk channel can conjure up.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters, September 18, 2012
“It’s The 1 Percent, Stupid”: The Case Against Pitting The 47 Percent Vs The 99 Percent
The news of Mitt Romney’s remarks at a closed-door fundraiser that were leaked by Mother Jones has been dominating since it broke yesterday. The scandalous content appears plentiful enough to keep pundits and political junkies glued to Twitter for the remainder of the cycle. And let’s be clear: between Romney’s callous “wait-and see” approach to the Middle East peace process, his instrumental view of Latino voters and his parasitic characterization of those who are too poor to pay income tax, he painted a devastating picture of himself as a leader and a person.
The line from the video that is the source of the most fascination is when Romney claims that he cares not at all for the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes and freeload off the government, since they are sure to be Obama voters anyway. The statement is a window into the cynical and meanspirited worldview that would guide this candidate’s policies and priorities were he to win in November. This alone should give every voter pause, regardless of partisan affiliation.
But there’s a reason right-wing blogger and CNN contributor Erick Erickson’s first tweet after seeing the leaked tapes expressed joy:
Dammit! I’m just now seeing these Romney secret videos. We need that guy on the campaign trail!
A year ago this week, a small band of committed activists achieved a goal that had eluded the established political organizations and the progressive nonprofit sector: they successfully shifted the national conversation away from one about cuts and austerity to one about our nation’s yawning economic inequality. “The 99 percent versus the 1 percent” became the rallying cry for an reinvigorated movement, and Occupy Wall Street ushered in a new era where political fantasy gave way to economic reality in shaping the public discourse.
While the glory days of Occupy faded with winter, the movement left an indelible imprint on our collective consciousness: despite partisan claims to the contrary, most residents in this country have far more in common than we have that drives us apart.
(A big shout out to those committed activists who retook Zuccotti Park for the anniversary of Occupy. For more on this, see Nation reporting here.)
Panicked by the need to respond to the growing sense of outrage about a rigged system built by some of their architects, right-wing leaders cast about for a way to change the conversation back to their own advantage. It was this desire that drove Erick Erickson to start the “53 percent movement.” In launching his campaign, Erickson called the protesters “whiners,” and sought a new social division—one that pitted the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes against those he claimed were “free-loading” activists. Despite his entreaties and the cheerleading of the right-wing echo chamber, their manufactured meme could not compete with the much more resonant, organic and accurate 99 percent rallying cry.
Still, the mathematical and rhetorical trick has remained in the back pocket of a GOP desperate to change the subject back to their hobbyhorse of the deficit. They see their opportunity in the resurrection of the 47 percent argument, despite how the moment presented itself.
There is now, as there was then, much to take issue with in the 47 percent statistic. Those 47 percent of Americans live below the poverty line or are unemployed or are elderly, many of whom have paid taxes their entire life. Those 47 percent also almost certainly pay some form of taxes: be it payroll taxes, income taxes, state taxes, property tax or sales tax. And there is emerging an even more in-the-weeds debate about whether or not these 47 percent are actually more likely to vote for Romney or Obama, an answer we’ll never find because it’s different depending on how you count. It is tempting to jump on these arguments—passionate as we all are for getting the ever-dwindling facts out to our fellow Americans.
But doing so will cede the home field advantage to the GOP. This certainty accounts for Stuart Varney’s crowing that it’s about time we get back to talking about how “half of the population is living off of the other half” during Fox and Friends’s morning coverage of the tapes. It is the same reason that Brian Kilmeade on the same network stated unequivocally that Romney should be stumping on this issue all the time. If we’re spending time talking about what half the population does or does not get or do, we inevitably draw attention away from the fact that the GOP is running a candidate whose entire life experience and political vision is shaped by being part of the top tiny fraction of this country’s wealth at a time where most Americans are struggling to get by.
So, while the campaign can’t be happy about the GOP-patented guerrilla tactics now coming back to bite one of their own, early pronouncements that the election was won last night are premature and irresponsible. If Romney’s camp can weather this storm and find themselves washed up on the beaches of the 47 percent versus the 99 percent, they might have a chance of not getting voted off the Island. This election—and more important, the fight for economic opportunity—remains about the genuine struggles and solutions that benefit all but the most privileged in this country. Romney’s dismissal of half of those folks doesn’t change that fact.
A full timeline of the right’s campaign to move the 47 percent meme is provided here by Media Matters for America.
By: Ilyse Hogue, The Nation, September 18, 2012
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