For a candidate who is consciously trying to play it safe, Romney sure does make a lot of gaffes. He's like the QB who just wants to run out clock, but when he goes to take a knee...he throws a freakin' interception! (please excuse the sports metaphor).
As soon as Mother Jones released the latest campaign faux pas, it was obvious what would happen next. Umbrage was taken and battle lines were drawn. Meanwhile, another opportunity to tackle the real issues of our time slips out of reach.
My goal is to enter the belly of the beast and see if anything of real substance can be salvaged.
To begin, I am not shocked by Romney's statements. This 47% trope is not new, and many conservatives have communicated it in terms quite similar to the Governor's speech. So, do I concur with the thrust of Romney's assertions? Absolutely not.
Before I grab my pitchfork and join the mob, let me be fair to Mr. Romney for a moment. With an entitlement state of our size, it would be silly to deny the existence of some sort of entitlement culture. Exploring the relationship between irresponsibility/dependence in the populace and our increasingly extractive, parasitic state seems like a reasonable enough endeavor.
If this is Romney's takeaway point, well, fair enough. Political clientism is bad. Greece's "rousfeti"alone should put the fear of god in all nations.
However, Romney failed to articulate this general concern, and instead made some clearly erroneous claims. First of all, American welfare is cross-cultural. Government largesse does not flow directly to some monolithic Democratic-voting bloc. Hell, American welfare doesn't even really flow to the relatively poor.
Yes, entitlements pave the road to our fiscal cliff. But social security and medicare--entitlements for wealthy, old people--pose the greatest danger for a healthy, solvent tomorrow. What are bailouts if not welfare for big corporations and big labor? When the Fed gets all easy with the money supply, to whom are those extra dollars channeled?
Many different sub-groups receive government hand-outs, not just the 47% who don't pay income tax. The feeding of this frenzy is a bipartisan effort. Sorry, gov'nah!
Furthermore, voters are not mere feedholes--welfare check goes in, vote for me comes out, taadah! Believe it or not, they have a brain at their disposal. As Matt Welch, editor in chief at Reason magazine, points out, this vulgar economic determinism. Yes, Romney's electoral analysis was based on the materialist postulates of Marx.
This is misguided for many reasons. For one, human nature tells us that citizens underestimate how much they benefit from government programs. In general, people believe that their neighbors unjustly receive government succor. They tend to forget that time they went on unemployment or received a government-backed student loan.
Even if people could accurately surmise which party would better line their pockets, people won't check their ethical considerations outside the voting booth. Perhaps I could vote my neighbor's jacuzzi right into my backyard. But maybe that wouldn't be very ethical of me. And maybe I would vote with my conscious and not my insatiable desire to lounge in those warm, frothy bubbles.
Basically, ideas matter. Convictions matter. Frankly, Mitt Romney should reflect on his own convictions and decide if he truly favors a society of independent individuals. I'm afraid Mr. Romney merely prefers moocher-parasites who have a house with a view and will support his candidacy.
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