Robot Compassion
by digby
There’s a lot of talk this morning about this Romney statement:
“I’m not concerned with the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”
He really has a tin ear. As Yglesias points out:
[H]e wants to cut the safety net, cut the health care part of the safety net, muck around with the federal workforce, and then cut the non-health care part of the safety net. To further clarify, he states that he “will immediately move to cut spending and cap it at 20 percent of GDP” while increasing defense spending. Which is to say he wants to cut social safety net spending. What’s more “as spending comes under control, he will pursue further cuts that would allow caps to be set even lower so as to guarantee future fiscal stability,” thus cutting social safety net spending even further.
There’s nothing remarkable about this, really, since I don’t think most Americans assume that cutting spending on poor people is what Republicans are all about. But it’s extremely strange for Romney to be running on agenda of sharp cuts to the social safety net while citing the safety net’s existence as a key reason to be indifferent to the plight of the poor. It’s quite true that we have a safety net for poor people right now, but we won’t have one for long if Romney’s budget ideas are implemented.
And whether he knows it or not, and clearly he doesn’t, the vast majority of the struggling middle class he purports to care so much about also depend on the government at some point in their lives and nearly all of them depend on it in retirement. Even middle class people who have a nest egg count on Social Security as a large part of their retirement and they all will use Medicare. And he wants to cut all that too!
So Mitt’s idea of compassionate conservatism is to cut everything in sight but make some nice noises about how much he cares. And he’s just not a good enough actor to pull off the “caring” part.
Update: I was just watching Mitt on TV and had a breakthrough.Why is it that people just don’t like him? It’s the obvious: he’s a rich, arrogant asshole. Americans don’t hate rich people in general, but nobody likes one who seems to be stifling laughter as he’s turning you down for mortgage.
Like this guy:
.