Tell it like it is and let the chips fall where they may. Turn it into a teaching lesson!
Tom Sowell is right when he writes: "Why lose to a lie because you didn't bother to explain the truth?"
Romney needs to confront Obama's trash talk that Romney will tax the poor to enhance the wealth of the rich. It is a patently ludicrous charge and should be answered and Obama exposed for what he is - a lying fraud.
If dependents think they benefit from a cow with endless udders they are stupid. The Titanic sank and so will big government. If Obama believes redistribution is the answer then when does he stop? Obama needs to challenge and explain, in greater detail, just what he means by this frightening statement and what are the government mechanisms for carrying it out? More un-elected czars and czarinas?
A growing economy will float all ships. Ah, but not all ships float at the same level and that is where redistribution comes in but we have to have everything determined by the fairness doctrine - whatever that nonsense means. (See , 1a and 1b below.)
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Like Romney said, his comment about 47% of the voters being in Obama's camp may have been inelegantly stated but Obama's snide response was even more revealing.
Obama replied he learned, after becoming president, you have to care about all the people so how has he implemented this lesson. He has cynically and petulantly niched our society into Wall Street Types, The Middle Class, the Fat Cats, the rich, the racially motivated, the top 1%, those who did not build that and his list of variants is endless. His divide and conquer, politics of envy is evidence of his style of leadership.
Romney spoke the truth in a blunt manner and the press attacked him because he called a spade a spade.
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Stratfor's George Friedman. (See 2 below.)
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Squirrely Democrats and Obamaites! (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Rush: Secret Video is 'Golden Opportunity' for Romney
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday declared that Mitt Romney has a “golden opportunity” to embrace what some observers have seen as embarrassing comments about 47 percent of Americans who are receiving government benefits and start educating voters about conservatism.
“They're trying to fill the narrative that Republicans don't care; that Republicans are cold-hearted, mean-spirited, extremist bastards that don't care about the poor. That's what they're trying to say that Romney's comments prove,” said Limbaugh on his radio program. “That's why Romney has to get out there, take this by the horns, turn it into a positive, and go right for those people since they're now listening. Especially if they think they've been insulted — even better!”
The Romney campaign has spent much of the week thus far responding to a political maelstrom created by the emergence of a video in which the candidate told a group of Florida donors that almost half of American voters "believe that they are victims." Romney did not disavow the comments but said they were made during a question-and-answer session that was indicative of his campaign's effort to "focus on the people in the middle."
Rather than distance himself from the comments, Limbaugh said that Romney and his political team should aggressively defend them.
“I've spoken to Mitt Romney a number of times, and I don't believe he's written them off, despite how it sounds. But if he has, it's time to forget that. If he has written 'em off, this is an opportunity to educate 'em,” said Limbaugh. “This is an opportunity to inspire 'em. This is an opportunity to tell them, if he's Mitt Romney, what he wants for them. This is it. It's sitting there on a silver platter. It is right there. It's ready for the taking.”
But Limbaugh adds that the Romney campaign must have consultants who are “fearless” and will allow him to speak unfettered. “These consultants! These people put shackles on these guys and try to get 'em to make sure they don't make a mistake when they go out and speak, and look what happens,” he said.
While Romney has taken fire for his comments, Limbaugh said that President Obama has written off America’s hard-working middle class.
“The Obama campaign has written off ‘white, working-class voters.’ He's written 'em off,” insisted Limbaugh. “Now, there's no tape of Obama saying so. But there's a column of one of Obama's supporters saying that that's what the campaign's doing. And it's been buttressed a couple of other times, and it's clearly factually correct when you watch the Obama campaign. He's declared war on anybody making over $200,000 a year.”
He said that the president has been attacking successful Americans. “Obama's out attempting to stigmatize anybody that has succeeded and is calling them the enemy,” he said. “Where's the outrage over that?”
1a) Romney's Campaign Needs Turnaround Artist
One of Romney's great skills is the ability to turn around failing enterprises. He did it with private firms while he ran Bain Capital; he did it for an indebted Massachusetts and he did it for the Olympics. He needs to do it for his campaign now.
Neil Newhouse, Romney's pollster, attempted to soothe worried Republicans last week by stressing that the race remains extremely close. But the fact that Romney's pollster isn't worried is itself worrying. By rights, Romney should be 10 points ahead. They seem to think the bad economy will automatically win this race for the Republican.
It isn't as if voters are unaware that the economy stinks. Consider that the morning after the Democratic convention, the dismal jobs report did not prevent Democrats from getting a bigger bounce than Republicans received. Three and a half years of miserably high unemployment, slow growth, increasing poverty, falling labor force participation, record-setting food stamp dependence and an average 5 percent decline in household income has not persuaded most voters to support Mitt Romney.
On the contrary, the Gallup job approval rating for Obama topped 50 percent after the jobs report for the first time since 2010. Job approval tends to be a good predictor of an incumbent's share of the vote. By contrast, George H.W. Bush, the last incumbent to lose reelection, stood at 39 percent approval at this stage in 1992. And Bush's economy wasn't nearly as dismal.
The Romney campaign has failed to make the case that Obama is responsible for the economy, whereas Clinton/Obama have made a spurious, but perhaps effective, argument that Republicans got us "into this mess" and will pursue policies that will be no better and may be worse.
The Democrats argue that Republicans want only to help their rich friends, not the middle class.
Romney needs an aggressive and bold response. After shooting down the lie that Romney and Ryan plan to increase taxes, they might begin by explaining how the 2008 financial crisis came about -- namely that both parties, mostly the Democrats, insisted that banks give mortgages to people who couldn't afford them. As Peter Wallison of AEI has noted, 74 percent of the bad loans were on the books of Fannie, Freddie and other quasi-government entities. When the crash came, it nearly sank our entire banking system. Voters may believe that Republicans favor the rich. But they also believe that Democrats are the party of giveaways. It was the Democrats' insistence on forcing private banks to make uneconomic loans that led to collapse.
Second, though Obama ridicules tax cuts, they have been responsible for bursts of economic growth every time they've been enacted. They worked for Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton and, yes, even for George W. Bush. The economy created 8 million jobs under Bush, and the unemployment rate averaged 5.3 percent. By contrast, there is no example of a nation or a state spending itself into prosperity. If that were possible, Greece would be lending Germany money, California would be in the black and Illinois would be a jobs hub.
Third, the signature policies of the Obama term -- Obamacare and Dodd/Frank -- combined with uncertainty about what Washington will do, are crushing the private sector. The Economist magazine has dubbed the 2300-page behemoth "Dodd/Frankenstein" because it vests so much unreviewable authority in bureaucrats, and drowns financial and other institutions in red tape. "Only 93 of the 400 rule-making requirements" had been completed as of February of this year, the magazine noted, two years after the bill's passage.
After Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, private sector job creation, which had been growing, slumped. A Chamber of Commerce survey found that 73 percent of employers cited Obamacare as an obstacle to hiring new workers. Not only does the law impose billions of new taxes and mandates, but, like Dodd/Frank, it vests so much authority in the federal bureaucracy that employers have no idea what to expect and cannot plan. Even if an employer were able to wade through the bill's 2700 pages, he would still emerge confused as to what the law demands. Obamacare creates 159 new agencies, bureaus and boards, and has generated 12,000 pages of regulations -- so far. It does include new hiring, though -- thousands of new IRS employees.
Obama is failing because his policies are wrongheaded and destructive. Uncertainty has kept capital on the sidelines. Obama has frozen employers into a defensive crouch. That is the case Romney has not yet made.
1b)Government Dependency Rises As Number of Taxpayers Declines
The leak of a video featuring former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) has sparked debate about government dependency and the number of people in the United States who do not pay federal income tax.
In the video, Romney refers to b 47 percentb of Americans and says that they are b dependent upon governmentb and b pay no income tax.b While these groups are not necessarily one in the same, there is overlap between the two, and the percentages on government dependency and non-tax-paying are very similar.
It is true that nearly half of all tax filersb those who are filing an income form with the IRSb pay no federal income tax. It's also true that millions of Americans receive direct government support in a host of ways, including income, food, housing, medical care, school lunches, and more.
In 2009, 47 percent of all tax filers paid no federal individual income taxes, and in 2011 that figure was 46 percent. This raises a crucial question, as Heritageb s Alison Fraser points out: b Should nearly 50 percent of Americans really be exempt from funding the most basic constitutional functions of governmentb along with education, food stamps, energy, welfare, foreign aid, veteransb benefits, housing, and so forth?b
It stands to reason that those who have skin in the gameb who are helping to pay for all of the government programsb will be more concerned about reining in out-of-control government spending, because they see their taxes going up and the countryb s credit rating going down.
On the other hand, if you are on the receiving end of government benefits, that is likely to color your perception of how taxpayersb money should be spent. According to the Heritage Foundation's 2012 Index of Dependence on Government, 63.7 million Americans, or about one in five, is receiving direct government support from Social Security, welfare, or Pell Grantsb and that is at its highest level ever.
These individuals are very likely to be receiving additional benefits from other government programs such as Medicare or Medicaid, food stamps, etc., and the total share of Americans receiving benefits is likely to be even higher when considering benefits available on everything from housing to school lunches.The Wall Street Journal found that in 2011, 49 percent of Americans lived in a household where at least one member of the family received a government benefit.
Heritage has been publishing the Index of Dependence on Government for the past 10 years, and the Center for Data Analysis offered a preview yesterday of what next yearb s report will look like, as it updates with the most recent data becoming available for 2011.
The outlook is grim: Government dependency is jumping for the fourth year in a row, and the Index has risen more than 31 percent in that time.
This is bad news for three reasons. First, the economy is so weak that people are going to the government for help. This is a stark repudiation of President Obama's big-spending, "spread the wealth around" approach, because "giving everyone a shot" does not work unless the b shotb comes at the expense of the taxpayers.
Second, the nation canb t afford to continue increasing spending on these programs, as President Obama has proposed in each of his budgets. Federal spending is explodingb and it is already an eye-popping reality that 70.5 percent of federal spending goes to dependency-creating programs. We are spending more on dependency-creating programs while an ever-shrinking number of taxpayers are paying for them.
But third, and most importantly, itb s bad for Americans. TheAmerican Dream is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, through independenceb not dependence on government. Government dependency erodes human dignity and civil society.
These programs were originally designed to help those who fall on hard times and need a safety net. Public policy should head back in that direction. The welfare reform of 1996 helped lift recipients out of poverty and back into jobs by requiring, among other things, that they work. President Obama has undone that requirement. And there are dozens more anti-poverty programs that should be revamped to help those who are able toward self-sufficiency.
At the same time, we must address the looming entitlements crisis: 78 million baby boomers are heading into retirement, and many of them will be entirely dependent on Social Security and Medicare for their income and health care. This dependency is a huge driver of future budget deficits.
We cannot continue on a course of unlimited government spending when fewer and fewer taxpayers are paying for that spending. That is the financial fact. But we also cannot sustain the American Dream on this courseb and that is a fact that is intensely personal for every American.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1b)Government Dependency Rises As Number of Taxpayers Declines
In the video, Romney refers to b 47 percentb of Americans and says that they are b dependent upon governmentb and b pay no income tax.b While these groups are not necessarily one in the same, there is overlap between the two, and the percentages on government dependency and non-tax-paying are very similar.
It is true that nearly half of all tax filersb those who are filing an income form with the IRSb pay no federal income tax. It's also true that millions of Americans receive direct government support in a host of ways, including income, food, housing, medical care, school lunches, and more.
In 2009, 47 percent of all tax filers paid no federal individual income taxes, and in 2011 that figure was 46 percent. This raises a crucial question, as Heritageb s Alison Fraser points out: b Should nearly 50 percent of Americans really be exempt from funding the most basic constitutional functions of governmentb along with education, food stamps, energy, welfare, foreign aid, veteransb benefits, housing, and so forth?b
It stands to reason that those who have skin in the gameb who are helping to pay for all of the government programsb will be more concerned about reining in out-of-control government spending, because they see their taxes going up and the countryb s credit rating going down.
On the other hand, if you are on the receiving end of government benefits, that is likely to color your perception of how taxpayersb money should be spent. According to the Heritage Foundation's 2012 Index of Dependence on Government, 63.7 million Americans, or about one in five, is receiving direct government support from Social Security, welfare, or Pell Grantsb and that is at its highest level ever.
These individuals are very likely to be receiving additional benefits from other government programs such as Medicare or Medicaid, food stamps, etc., and the total share of Americans receiving benefits is likely to be even higher when considering benefits available on everything from housing to school lunches.The Wall Street Journal found that in 2011, 49 percent of Americans lived in a household where at least one member of the family received a government benefit.
Heritage has been publishing the Index of Dependence on Government for the past 10 years, and the Center for Data Analysis offered a preview yesterday of what next yearb s report will look like, as it updates with the most recent data becoming available for 2011.
The outlook is grim: Government dependency is jumping for the fourth year in a row, and the Index has risen more than 31 percent in that time.
This is bad news for three reasons. First, the economy is so weak that people are going to the government for help. This is a stark repudiation of President Obama's big-spending, "spread the wealth around" approach, because "giving everyone a shot" does not work unless the b shotb comes at the expense of the taxpayers.
Second, the nation canb t afford to continue increasing spending on these programs, as President Obama has proposed in each of his budgets. Federal spending is explodingb and it is already an eye-popping reality that 70.5 percent of federal spending goes to dependency-creating programs. We are spending more on dependency-creating programs while an ever-shrinking number of taxpayers are paying for them.
But third, and most importantly, itb s bad for Americans. TheAmerican Dream is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, through independenceb not dependence on government. Government dependency erodes human dignity and civil society.
These programs were originally designed to help those who fall on hard times and need a safety net. Public policy should head back in that direction. The welfare reform of 1996 helped lift recipients out of poverty and back into jobs by requiring, among other things, that they work. President Obama has undone that requirement. And there are dozens more anti-poverty programs that should be revamped to help those who are able toward self-sufficiency.
At the same time, we must address the looming entitlements crisis: 78 million baby boomers are heading into retirement, and many of them will be entirely dependent on Social Security and Medicare for their income and health care. This dependency is a huge driver of future budget deficits.
We cannot continue on a course of unlimited government spending when fewer and fewer taxpayers are paying for that spending. That is the financial fact. But we also cannot sustain the American Dream on this courseb and that is a fact that is intensely personal for every American.
2)War And Bluff: Iran, Israel, and the United States
By George Friedman
For the past several months, the Israelis have been threatening to attack Iranian nuclear sites as the United States has pursued a complex policy of avoiding complete opposition to such strikes while making clear it doesn't feel such strikes are necessary. At the same time, the United States has carried out maneuvers meant to demonstrate its ability to prevent the Iranian counter to an attack -- namely blocking the Strait of Hormuz. While these maneuvers were under way, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said no "redline" exists that once crossed by Iran would compel an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The Israeli government has long contended that Tehran eventually will reach the point where it will be too costly for outsiders to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
The Israeli and American positions are intimately connected, but the precise nature of the connection is less clear. Israel publicly casts itself as eager to strike Iran but restrained by the United States, though unable to guarantee it will respect American wishes if Israel sees an existential threat emanating from Iran. The United States publicly decries Iran as a threat to Israel and to other countries in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, but expresses reservations about military action out of fears that Iran would respond to a strike by destabilizing the region and because it does not believe the Iranian nuclear program is as advanced as the Israelis say it is.
The Israelis and the Americans publicly hold the same view of Iran. But their public views on how to proceed diverge. The Israelis have less tolerance for risk than the Americans, who have less tolerance for the global consequences of an attack. Their disagreement on the issue pivots around the status of the Iranian nuclear program. All of this lies on the surface; let us now examine the deeper structure of the issue.
Behind the Rhetoric
From the Iranian point of view, a nuclear program has been extremely valuable. Having one has brought Iran prestige in the Islamic world and has given it a level of useful global political credibility. As with North Korea, having a nuclear program has allowed Iran to sit as an equal with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, creating a psychological atmosphere in which Iran's willingness merely to talk to the Americans, British, French, Russians, Chinese and Germans represented a concession. Though it has positioned the Iranians extremely well politically, the nuclear program also has triggeredsanctions that have caused Iran substantial pain. But Iran has prepared for sanctions for years, building a range of corporate, banking and security mechanisms to evade their most devastating impact. Having countries like Russia and China unwilling to see Iran crushed has helped. Iran can survive sanctions.
While a nuclear program has given Iran political leverage, actually acquiring nuclear weapons would increase the risk of military action against Iran. A failed military action would benefit Iran, proving its power. By contrast, a successful attack that dramatically delayed or destroyed Iran's nuclear capability would be a serious reversal. The Stuxnet episode, assuming it was an Israeli or U.S. attempt to undermine Iran's program using cyberwarfare, is instructive in this regard. Although the United States hailed Stuxnet as a major success, it hardly stopped the Iranian program, if the Israelis are to be believed. In that sense, it was a failure.
Using nuclear weapons against Israel would be catastrophic to Iran. The principle of mutual assured destruction, which stabilized the U.S.-Soviet balance in the Cold War, would govern Iran's use of nuclear weapons. If Iran struck Israel, the damage would be massive, forcing the Iranians to assume that the Israelis and their allies (specifically, the United States) would launch a massive counterattack on Iran, annihilating large parts of Iran's population.
It is here that we get to the heart of the issue. While from a rational perspective the Iranians would be fools to launch such an attack, the Israeli position is that the Iranians are not rational actors and that their religious fanaticism makes any attempt to predict their actions pointless. Thus, the Iranians might well accept the annihilation of their country in order to destroy Israel in a sort of mega suicide bombing. The Israelis point to the Iranians' rhetoric as evidence of their fanaticism. Yet, as we know, political rhetoric is not always politically predictive. In addition, rhetoric aside, Iran has pursued a cautious foreign policy, pursuing its ends with covert rather than overt means. It has rarely taken reckless action, engaging instead in reckless rhetoric.
If the Israelis believe the Iranians are not deterred by the prospect of mutually assured destruction, then allowing them to develop nuclear weapons would be irrational. If they do see the Iranians as rational actors, then shaping the psychological environment in which Iran acquires nuclear weapons is a critical element of mutually assured destruction. Herein lies the root of the great Israeli debate that pits the Netanyahu government, which appears to regard Iran as irrational, against significant segments of the Israeli military and intelligence communities, which regard Iran as rational.
Avoiding Attaining a Weapon
Assuming the Iranians are rational actors, their optimal strategy lies not in acquiring nuclear weapons and certainly not in using them, but instead in having a credible weapons development program that permits them to be seen as significant international actors. Developing weapons without ever producing them gives Iran international political significance, albeit at the cost of sanctions of debatable impact. At the same time, it does not force anyone to act against them, thereby permitting outsiders to avoid incurring the uncertainties and risks of such action.
Up to this point, the Iranians have not even fielded a device for testing, let alone a deliverable weapon. For all their activity, either their technical limitations or a political decision has kept them from actually crossing the obvious redlines and left Israel trying to define some developmental redline.
Iran's approach has created a slowly unfolding crisis, reinforced by Israel's slowly rolling response. For its part, all of Israel's rhetoric -- and periodic threats of imminent attack -- has been going on for several years, but the Israelis have done little beyond some covert and cyber-attacks to block the Iranian nuclear program. Just as the gap between Iranian rhetoric and action has been telling, so, too, has the gap between Israeli rhetoric and reality. Both want to appear more fearsome than either is actually willing to act.
The Iranian strategy has been to maintain ambiguity on the status of its program, while making it appear that the program is capable of sudden success -- without ever achieving that success. The Israeli strategy has been to appear constantly on the verge of attack without ever attacking and to use the United States as its reason for withholding attacks, along with the studied ambiguity of the Iranian program. The United States, for its part, has been content playing the role of holding Israel back from an attack that Israel doesn't seem to want to launch.
The United States sees the crumbling of Iran's position in Syria as a major Iranian reversal and is content to see this play out alongside sanctions.
Underlying Israel's hesitancy about whether it will attack has been the question of whether it can pull off an attack. This is not a political question, but a military and technical one. Iran, after all, has been preparing for an attack on its nuclear facilities since their inception. Some scoff at Iranian preparations for attack. These are the same people who are most alarmed by supposed Iranian acumen in developing nuclear weapons. If a country can develop nuclear weapons, there is no reason it can't develop hardened and dispersed sites and create enough ambiguity to deprive Israeli and U.S. intelligence of confidence in their ability to determine what is where. I am reminded of the raid on Son Tay during the Vietnam War. The United States mounted an effort to rescue U.S. prisoners of war in North Vietnam only to discover that its intelligence on where the POWs were located was completely wrong. Any politician deciding whether to attack Iran would have Son Tay and a hundred other intelligence failures chasing around their brains, especially since a failed attack on Iran would be far worse than no attack.
Dispersed sites reduce Israel's ability to strike hard at a target and to acquire a battle damage assessment that would tell Israel three things: first, whether the target had been destroyed when it was buried under rock and concrete; second, whether the target contained what Israel thought it contained; and third, whether the strike had missed a backup site that replicated the one it destroyed. Assuming the Israelis figured out that another attack was needed, could their air force mount a second air campaign lasting days or weeks? They have a small air force and the distances involved are great.
Meanwhile, deploying special operations forces to so many targets so close to Tehran and so far from Iran's borders would be risky, to say the least. Some sort of exotic attack, for example one using nuclear weapons to generate electromagnetic pulses to paralyze the region, is conceivable -- but given the size of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem-Haifa triangle, it is hard to imagine Israel wanting to set such a precedent. If the Israelis have managed to develop a new weapons technology unknown to anyone, all conventional analyses are off. But if the Israelis had an ultra-secret miracle weapon, postponing its use might compromise its secrecy. I suspect that if they had such a weapon, they would have used it by now.
The battlefield challenges posed by the Iranians are daunting, and a strike becomes even less appealing considering that the Iranians have not yet detonated a device and are far from a weapon. The Americans emphasize these points, but they are happy to use the Israeli threats to build pressure on the Iranians. The United States wants to undermine Iranian credibility in the region by making Iran seem vulnerable. The twin forces of Israeli rhetoric and sanctions help make Iran look embattled. The reversal in Syria enhances this sense. Naval maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz add to the sense that the United States is prepared to neutralize Iranian counters to an Israeli airstrike, making the threat Israel poses and the weakness of Iran appear larger.
When we step back and view the picture as a whole, we see Iran using its nuclear program for political reasons but being meticulous not to make itself appear unambiguously close to success. We see the Israelis talking as if they were threatened but acting as if they were in no rush to address the supposed threat. And we see the Americans acting as if they are restraining Israel, paradoxically appearing to be Iran's protector even though they are using the Israeli threat to increase Iranian insecurity. For their part, the Russians initially supported Iran in a bid to bog down the United States in another Middle East crisis. But given Iran's reversal in Syria, the Russians are clearly reconsidering their Middle East strategy and even whether they actually have a strategy in the first place. Meanwhile, the Chinese want to continue buying Iranian oil unnoticed.
It is the U.S.-Israeli byplay that is most fascinating. On the surface, Israel is driving U.S. policy. On closer examination, the reverse is true. Israel has bluffed an attack for years and never acted. Perhaps now it will act, but the risks of failure are substantial. If Israel really wants to act, this is not obvious. Speeches by politicians do not constitute clear guidelines. If the Israelis want to get the United States to participate in the attack, rhetoric won't work. Washington wants to proceed by increasing pressure to isolate Iran. Simply getting rid of a nuclear program not clearly intended to produce a device is not U.S. policy. Containing Iran without being drawn into a war is. To this end, Israeli rhetoric is useful.
Rather than seeing Netanyahu as trying to force the United States into an attack, it is more useful to see Netanyahu's rhetoric as valuable to U.S. strategy. Israel and the United States remain geopolitically aligned. Israel's bellicosity is not meant to signal an imminent attack, but to support the U.S. agenda of isolating and maintaining pressure on Iran. That would indicate more speeches from Netanyahu and greater fear of war. But speeches and emotions aside, intensifying psychological pressure on Iran is more likely than war.
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3)SigRomney's "Secret Video" and the Dem Politics of "Squirrel!"
By Michelle Malkin
Democrats need to change their party mascot from the donkey to the squirrel. They divert the media's and the electorate's short attention spans with fleeting, fuzzy objects -- like the main canine character in the animated Pixar movie "Up," who was easily distracted from his main thoughts and serious duties by every last little moving trifle.
Embassy attacks? Quick, find a squirrel! Warnings ignored? Squirrel! American troops killed by long-plotting jihadis exploiting security weaknesses? Squirrel! First Amendment sabotage by White House officials in the name of political correctness? Squirrel! Chronic joblessness, high gas prices, exploding dependency? Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!
As Election Day draws nearer, the Obama campaign and its surrogates in the Fourth Estate have infested the political arena with an army of tactical and rhetorical rodentia. One week, it's GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney's high school hijinks. The next, it's a heinous smear about Romney killing a steelworker's cancer-stricken wife.
Or, it's a hit job on multiple sclerosis survivor Ann Romney's therapeutic horse. Then, it's faux rage over Romney's firm statement condemning the feckless White House response to the murders of our U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans in Benghazi.
This week, it's a "secret Romney video" shot undercover at a closed-door dinner with Florida donors in May. Unemployed Democratic operative James Carter IV (grandson of former president and malaise engineer Jimmy Carter) brokered the film to progressive Mother Jones magazine.
Now, the same media lapdogs who had conniption fits when the late Andrew Breitbart and conservative investigative journalist James O'Keefe used undercover video are tripping over themselves to publish glowing profiles of Carter the Fourth and his impressive "furtive efforts" to secure the Romney tapes.
Carter the Fourth found the cameraman on Twitter, invoked his family name and convinced the mole to leak the tape to Mother Jones' David Corn. To quote Joe Biden with all due sarcasm: BFD.
But back to the bigger Big, Fluffy Distraction at hand: Let's reflect for a moment on the Beltway hoo-hah over one small snippet from Romney's nearly hour-long talk. Here's the quote that has liberal finger-waggers and Republican wet-finger-in-the-wind windbags in meltdown mode:
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," Romney explained to an audience member who asked how the candidate was going to change the "we'll take care of you" mentality of Obama voters. "All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, 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. ... And they will vote for this president no matter what."
Romney explained that this portion of voters was comprised of "people who pay no income tax. ... I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
He's talking, of course, about the Peggy the Moochers and Henrietta Hugheses of the world: savior-based Obama supporters for whom the cult of personality trumps all else. He's talking about the Sandra Flukes and Julias of the world: Nanny State grievance-mongers who have been spoon-fed identity politics and victim Olympics from preschool through grad school and beyond. And he's talking about the encrusted entitlement clientele who range from the Section 8 housing mob in Atlanta who caused a near-riot to the irresponsible, debt-ridden homeowners who mortgaged themselves into oblivion and want their bailout now, now, now.
Media wonks sliced and diced the words like hibachi chefs on bath salts. Beltway conservative scribes David Brooks and Bill Kristol denounced Romney as insensitive and out of touch. But Romney told hard political truths, which he's proclaimed openly on the campaign trail before. "If you're looking for free stuff you don't have to pay for, vote for the other guy," he told a heckler in March. "That's what he's all about, OK? That's not, that's not what I'm about."
Gasp! He said he's against freeloaders. Oh, the inhumanity.
In another section of the video that libs don't want to talk about, Romney received his biggest applause when he defended his success and mentioned what Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio's Cuban immigrant parents taught him. "When he grew up here poor, they looked at people who had a lot of wealth. His parents never once said, 'We need some of what they have. They should give us some.' Instead, they said, 'If we work hard and go to school, someday we might be able to have that.'"
Let the parsers and panicky pundits chase their tails and hurl their nuts. This election is about America's makers versus America's takers. Romney should never, ever apologize for making that clear.
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