Mitt Romney is the new favorite villain for his remarks about 47 percent of people not paying taxes, and who won’t vote for him because, as he explains on the video, the low-tax message will mean nothing to them.
It’s been analyzed and replayed over and over omitting, significantly, the prompt question from an audience member that evoked the response, which was how to get people who have been taken care of for three years to buy into the message of taking care of yourself. (Refer to the Mother Jones video).
So, why did the middle class forgive the President’s remarks about the middle class doing fine? Even the most determined Democrats can see that in the context of that quote, in a speech pushing for more civil service jobs that the President was saying what he believed, and has shown, that the government class is the middle class to his mind.
Yet, the Republicans did not discuss context, as the Democrats did, and rally around their candidate, as Democrats did. Instead, the fundraiser became a “secret” meeting showing contempt for many Americans, showing the “true” Mitt Romney, and Republicans themselves criticized their candidate and their party.
The reason many independents and other middle class voters were open to Republican persuasion is the experience of living under the President’s commitment to trickle up economics, ignoring the middle as he raids their pockets to equalize the difference between being poor and middle class. In other words, bad policy, not a bad person.
In fact, statistics support this decimation of the middle class with summertime statistics showing a reduction in every middle class standard from median income, to percentage of households earning middle class incomes (look for August 2012 statistics, condition of the middle class) while there has also been a slight reduction in those households that consider themselves low-income and a perpetuation of the rich class.
The President extended tax cuts to the wealthy. The President ignored the enormous unemployment rate of young Americans by flooding the market with his amnesty for younger illegal workers. The President touts the success of having more young people with health insurance without explaining that it’s because he saddled their parents with the cost. And most significantly for Republicans, the President promises to stay the course, to use more time to do more, and that for any thinking middle class American is frightening.
So what went wrong with the Republicans?
First of all, unlike the President who largely ignored his base, rightfully assuming that they’d vote for him no matter what, the Republicans keep catering to their base, leaving them only their base as supporters.
After the President did not appear at the NAACP Convention in July, the fallout was nil, almost 100 percent of African Americans will vote for the President according to polls. After doing nothing for young people in this country EXCEPT flooding the market with newly pronounced formerly illegal now legal competition from illegal residents, most young voters will remain Democratic voters.
Romney instead has alienated his pool of possible Republican voters by playing to the extreme, right-wingers who NEVER would have voted for President Obama anyway, and in the process has delivered a confused and irrational message that worries some independents who were very ready to shift their vote from the President.
Second, the President does not set himself up in opposition to any group in American society, even when he’s given, and intends to further give them the shaft. Instead, when the President engages in activities and policies that give the middle class the shaft, such as extending tax benefits for the wealthy, such as his executive order that will make employment even scarcer for legitimate American citizens, such as healthcare changes that promise to further increase premiums and reduce options for middle class insureds, he uses language about group sacrifice and patience. The President’s hostility is confined to Republican obstructionists, rather than any specific segment of our society, even when he’s royally done them wrong.
Republicans will not disguise their contempt of various groups of Americans. The poor, the gay, women who are pro-choice, all have been alienated by the Republicans. Instead of speaking about policy and good or bad, the Republicans personalized it into people who are good or bad.
Third, in general the President has not come across as an extremist in terms of his approach. While the direction this President might want to take is extremely left, in actuality his policies have not been so. The Republicans have reinforced the impression that the President is reasonable through their own inability to effectively deal with the Democrats, leaving the impression that but for the Republicans more would have been accomplished.
Fourth, the President effectively presents his policies as “done”, which of course, for anyone who examines his proposals, significantly those under the Affordable Health Act knows not to be the case. The Republicans chose the lazy route of declaring that they’d undo laws, undo departments, undo taxes rather than providing meaningful critique and counter-proposals about what could be done or is likely to be accomplished within our government’s framework.
Sweeping, out-of-this-world hyperbole in commentary about how in the new Republican world there will be no abortion, no taxes and no food stamps is not only ridiculous but has irreparably damaged the notion that the Republicans offer a smart and reasonable leadership possibility for all citizens of this country.
By making it personal, Republicans missed their best bets. It’s a wonder a Republican poll wasn’t taken as to why Americans like the Affordable Care Act? President Obama knows, and he’s recited its two popular provisions (though neither has become effective, nor is discussed in terms of what it will mean for costs to middle class Americans), because it removes lifetime limits and prevents denying health insurance for pre-existing conditions.
The devil’s in the details, and most people have neither paid attention to, nor know that we have yet to experience those details. Republicans instead throw around numbers to counteract the projected numbers thrown out by the President, essentially allowing the President to frame the conversation.
Republicans have confined consideration of the Act to lawful or unlawful allowing the assumption that currently prevails among many Americans, that almost every aspect of the Act is here to stay now that the Supreme Court upheld the lawfulness of the majority of the Act.
As if that was not enough, Republicans argued that they’d repeal the Act, which is not going to happen unless the Republicans get both houses of Congress, and can persuade such repeal, assuming that a return to the days prior to the Affordable Care Act is the answer.
There is and will be a lot wrong with an Obama administration, especially when it comes to decimating the middle class. But the Republicans were not entitled to this election merely because our economy is in a ditch, and they’ve proven themselves ill equipped to offer an alternative to the course we’re taking.
