It is outrageous for a presidential candidate to brush off half of the American population as no-counts.
But that is exactly what Mitt Romney did a few months ago. In a just-released video, Romney slammed the 47 percent of Americans whom he claimed do not pay income taxes. He further defamed those people as not accepting responsibility for their lives and as expecting government to “take care” of them. They will, he said, “vote for the president no matter what,” as if that proves what food-stamp no-counts they are. These so-called freeloaders are, in Romney’s words, people who think of themselves as “victims who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
Romney then snidely dismissed them this way: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
It’s a bleak irony Romney made his remarks at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser at the home of a billionaire crony in Florida.
Does Romney mean the elderly who are getting Social Security payments and are living on fixed incomes?
Does he mean single-parent families (and even two-parent families) working in low-wage jobs who do not make enough money to afford health insurance, not to mention any “extras” and in some cases not enough to put enough nutritious food on the table?
Does he mean disabled people?
Does he mean the men and women who have served this country in wars and who receive veterans benefits as many seek jobs that are not there?
Does Romney mean the millions of people who make less than $20,000 per year in wages and still pay about 15 percent every week in payroll taxes?
Does he mean the people who spend a hefty share of their paltry wage incomes on sales taxes, fees and other forms of revenue to the government?
Those are exactly the kinds of people who would fall within Romney’s 47 percent. He and his right-wing cronies have been bellyaching for years about how the lower class and liberals have been fomenting class warfare. Talk about class warfare! If trashing half of the population of this country with blatant lies isn’t class warfare, what is?
Not all of us can afford to – or would want to – attend $50,000-a-plate dinners and listen to a smug candidate cut down the working poor and the shrinking middle class. This mean-spirited disdain for hard-working Americans has become the stock-in-trade of right-wing extremists, of Obama-haters.
At the National Republican Convention, Romney was presented as Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. Compassionate, Mr. Caring. Let’s stop and think: There is nothing nice, compassionate or caring about a candidate who would so outrageously dismiss, with such contempt, 47 percent of the American electorate – all based on slanderous remarks.
Romney must view his goal, the presidency, as a kind of glorified hobby, a pinnacle of personal achievement, because his remarks indicate he does not intend to represent all Americans in our ongoing search for a better country. He is anything but “democratic.” And by the way, we should demand Mitt show us how much income tax he paid on the millions he raked in and then stuffed so much of in off-shore banks.
Such snob arrogance can come only from a man concerned about one thing – himself and the wealthy elite who belong to his charmed insular world. Such a candidate does not deserve to be elected to anything.
