Bring it on, Mr. Romney. Game on. Make it a fight. Make it a clear choice and see what happens. Play to win, Mr. Romney. Don’t play not to lose, and you may just win. Play not to lose, and you will lose. If avoiding losing means anything to you, Mr. Romney, throw long as they say in football, because this president has the media in his back pocket, plus the public sector unions, and the recipients of government largesse and patronage.
Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney committed what in Washington is called the ultimate gaffe: Accidentally telling the truth. Romney said what we all feel in our guts: that it is unacceptable that 47 percent of the population pays no federal income taxes, and keeps voting themselves the bennies, that everybody else has to pay for with their hard-earned tax dollars. Romney told the truth and he was pilloried for it by the media, and even those wolves in sheep’s clothing: the elite Republicans who hate the conservatives in the party, and would rather lose elections than have conservative principles triumph on Election Day.
Every sane person knows that the United States cannot return to fiscal sanity until something is done to curtail Entitlement programs, that is, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Those programs form the largest share of the federal budget and are unsustainable. Unlike cities and states that cannot print their own currency, the federal government allows the Federal Reserve through its bond-buying activities to print an endless stream of money. In the process, the dollar is devalued, and the federal government can “kick the proverbial can of fiscal reform down the road,” because it is able to benefit from lower borrowing costs, but continues to borrow altogether nonetheless.
The numbers don’t lie: A $16 trillion federal debt that translates into more than $50,000 per person liability is testament to our fiscal irresponsibility. That more than 47 million Americans are on food stamps illustrates our moral failure as a nation. Because we distribute EBT cards like water, we are spared from seeing and the recipients are spared from being seen on bread lines that existed in the so-called Great Depression of the 1930s.
Romney’s comment about the 47 percent was perfectly reasonable. In fact, it comes directly from his Mormon tradition. A dear LDS friend of mine told me that the Mormons believe in “taking care of their own.” In his words, he said Mormons believe that, “If you want to warm your hands by our fire, than you ought to cut some of the wood.”
Romney could have even been more on target. What he did not explicitly say and what he could and should now say is that the Entitlement Mentality produced by the modern welfare state is destroying the country. He should channel his inner Jack Kemp and say that the time is right to roll back the Entitlement Society, and advocate for the Opportunity Society. At this point, Romney can only gain by clearly advocating for his campaign theme: Believe In America. That’s how he can explain why he made his comment about the 47 percent, because he wants everyone – black, white, blue, red, brown, yellow – to have the freedom and opportunity to succeed in America, and he is the man to create that level playing field. Romney, make a clear distinction in this the last six weeks of the campaign. Doing anything less, and voters will think you are not worthy of enough of an alternative, and Obama will not be fired, and he deserves to be.
Romney should hammer President Obama on his recent comment that “If you want to be president, you have to work for everybody.” That is so far from the truth that it is staggering in its outrageousness, even for Obama.
Oh, yes, Obama works for everybody except if we exclude the people who pay federal income taxes. In Obama’s world those individuals are there only to produce revenue that can be transferred from the working class to the non-producing class that votes for the president and the Democrats.
On the David Letterman Show on CBS, where Obama made his comment about being president for everybody, he amazingly also specifically praised small business owners for helping to lift the country out of recession. Of course, Obama didn’t mention that not more than a two months ago, he scolded small business owners, saying, to paraphrase, if you run a successful small business, “you didn’t build that. Only government made that possible.” If you still watch David Letterman, you probably never even heard that Obama said that comment, so you think, wow, Obama is out there praising small business people!
Let’s talk about other Americans for which Obama is not the president: people who oppose abortion on demand and those living in small towns “clinging to their guns and religion.”
Let’s also recall that Obama and his party continually oppose school choice, sentencing black children, predominantly, to failing public schools, de facto, owned and operated by the teachers’ unions.
There are two types of people in this world when it comes to living a productive life, those who know the basics, and those who don’t even know that there are basics. I once had a conversation with a very sincere liberal who told me that government must do all the things that it does because so many people are ignorant, deprived, uneducated and have no chance of taking care of themselves without government doing things for them. This is why President Obama, whether he was born in the United States or not or has a birth certificate or not, is so far outside the pale of American tradition. He literally doesn’t believe in America or American values, and is in reality outwardly hostile to them and holds them in contempt. Obama represents the politics of resentment, the have-nots versus the haves. He literally believes, also to paraphrase, that “only government can alter the ruinous economic cycle of life.”
What happens in Washington with Obama, Pelosi, Kerry, and Reid, et al., is a nightmare for Americans. Run a tough campaign, Mitt, go after Obama, you were in sales, close, now.
