2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forum"The Real Romney Captured On Tape Turns Out To Be A Sneering Plutocrat"
Jonathan Chait
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/real-romney-is-a-sneering-plutocrat.html
"Presidential campaigns wallow so tediously in pseudo-events and manufactured outrage that our senses can be numbed to the appearance of something genuinely momentous. Mitt Romneys secretly recorded comments at a fundraiser are such an event they reveal something vital about Romney, and they disqualify his claim to the presidency.
To think of Romneys leaked discourse as a gaffe grossly misdescribes its importance. Indeed the comments direct impact on the outcome of the election will probably be small. Romney repeated the wildly misleading but increasingly popular conservative talking point that 47% of Americans pay no income taxes. The federal income tax is, by design, one of the most progressive elements of the American tax system, but well over 80% of non-retired adults pay federal taxes. But most people hear income taxes and think taxes, which is why the trick of using one phrase to make audiences think of the other is a standard GOP trick when discussing taxes. For that very reason, it wont strike many voters as an insult: Most people who dont pay income taxes do pay other taxes, and fail to distinguish between them, and thus dont consider themselves among the 47% scorned by Romney.
Instead the video exposes an authentic Romney as a far more sinister character than I had imagined. Here is the sneering plutocrat, fully in thrall to a series of pernicious myths that are at the heart of the mania that has seized his party. He believes that market incomes in the United States are a perfect reflection of merit. Far from seeing his own privileged upbringing as the private-school educated son of an auto executive-turned-governor as an obvious refutation of that belief, Romney cites his own life, preposterously, as a confirmation of it. (I have inherited nothing. Everything I earned I earned the old fashioned way.)
It is possible to cling to some version of this dogma and still believe, or to convince yourself, that cutting taxes for the rich or reducing benefits for the poor will eventually help the latter, by teaching them personal responsibility or freeing up Job Creators to favor them with opportunity. Instead Romney regards them as something akin to a permanent enemy class Ill never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
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progressivebydesign
(19,458 posts)regnaD kciN
(26,044 posts)...is probably the most important:
Indeed the comments direct impact on the outcome of the election will probably be small.
This may fire avid progressives up, but I doubt many people will care one way or the other -- mainly because they already know that this is the way Republicans think, and it hasn't stopped them electing Reagan or one of the Bushes five times out of the last eight races.
TomCADem
(17,387 posts)...Which showed that President Obama wanted to help everyone, including folks who resented him.