Mitt Romney’s Secret Speech
I made this prediction to friends as soon as I saw the video. Romney’s comment has backfired in ways he never expected. Here is what he said:
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what … who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that 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…..And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Guess what.
It isn’t gone. A new wave of polls in swing states is showing that people who worked their whole lives hoping to have a socialized safety net don’t trust Romney to take care of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The reason Mitt Romney made the comments in a private setting because he knew for a fact that what he is saying is anathema to most people. Romney’s comments cannot be spun to anyone who has a three digit IQ. He defined the lower end of the socio-economic scale, the elderly, low-income workers, retirees and low-income veterans. Or, as Jon Stewart says, “Romney’s constituency”. Romney believes that any government dispensation is Socialism and therefore is horrific.
The 47% who receive help don’t feel the way. Not everyone can work. There comes a time in every person’s life when it’s time to stop working. We have to create a society that allows us to be taken care of when we can’t care for ourselves. We have to create a place where impecunious Americans don’t die in the streets. Calling helpless people “dependents” and “victims” is class warfare and it clearly puts half the country in a box that Romney wants to label as hopeless and let’s face it, worthless. People sense that they know why he mentioned that he can’t worry about them; because he doesn’t care about them. They don’t count.
This is literally a war we fought once in the late 19th century of the robber barons. Theodore Roosevelt railed against the financiers who kept income inequality a pillar of their uber capitalism.
They will count at the polls this November.
