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Why Romney’s Redistribution Breitbarting of Obama is Destined to Fail
The Romney campaign has embraced an edited clip of Barack Obama from 1998 claiming to be in favor redistribution. Here’s why this counterattack is destined to spectacularly fail.
A desperate and drowning Mitt Romney campaign latched on to a YouTube video linked to by Drudge which claims to show that President Obama really is a socialist who favors redistribution.
Here is the video:
Ooooh, that seems scary doesn’t it? Take that, David Corn and Mother Jones. Boy, I guess they really showed the world that Obama has been a secret socialist forever.
Except that isn’t all of what Obama said. The full transcript of the then future president’s remarks reveals that the clip Romney has embraced left a few things out.
What Obama really said while talking about helping the working poor was,
I think what we’re going to have to do is resuscitate the notion that government can be effective at all. There has been a systematic—I don’t think it’s too strong to call it a propaganda campaign—against the possibility of government action and its efficacy. And I think some of it’s been deserved: Chicago housing authority has not been a model of good policy making and neither have been necessarily the Chicago public schools.
What this means, then, is that we try to resuscitate this notion that we’re all in this together, leave nobody behind, we do have to be innovative in thinking what are the delivery systems that are actually effective and meet people where they live? And my suggestion, I guess, would be that the trick—and this is one of the few areas I think that there are technical issues that need to be dealt with as opposed to just political issues—I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources, and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody has got a shot.
That whole government’s resources should be used efficiently to give everyone a fair shot is the part that they left out. One look at the support for Obama’s argument that the rich should pay their fair share in taxes makes it easy to see why that sentence was cut out. You see, Americans like fairness. As a country we like to believe in the Horatio Alger story that anyone really can work their way up from rags to riches in the United States.
The problem for Republicans is that their nominee and their policies are all about making sure that those working class men and boys Horatio Alger wrote about never advance and escape poverty. For Romney and the GOP what belongs to the wealthy is theirs, and what little you have belongs to the rich too.
This ideological bedrock of the Republican Party is why Romney’s attack on Obama for supporting redistribution is destined to fail. The majority of Americans do support redistribution. Even though workers pay into it, Social Security is a form of redistribution because the government does not limit benefits to only the people who have paid in, and they don’t limit retiree benefits to just what they paid into the system when they were working. Medicare is a form of redistribution. Workers pay into the Medicare/Medicaid system so that seniors, the poor, and the disabled can have healthcare. The social safety net is wildly popular. This misguided Breitbarting of Obama is not going to resonate outside of the anti-Medicare and Social Security conservative circles.
The truth is that the vast majority of Americans love their socialism.
Romney is trying to compare an edited clip of Obama saying something fourteen years ago that when taken in full most Americans would agree with, to a complete video of him at fundraiser a few months ago secretly telling millionaires that half the country are deadbeats with a victimization complex.
Most of the media headlines are approaching Romney’s attempted push back with a degree of skepticism. Redistribution is usually in quotes, and the media is reporting as part of the horse race.
The fact that Romney said it also damages the attack. Mitt Romney still is carrying a net negative approval rating. Voters don’t like or trust him, so when he comes to them with an attack on a president that the majority of voters do like that is based on an edited clip, it is a backfire waiting to happen.
The biggest reason why this attack is destined to fail is that Republicans have tried this before. Back in 2008, John McCain and Sarah Palin tried to sway voters by telling them that Obama was running to be the running to be redistributionist in chief. Sarah Palin took it a step beyond and called Obama a socialist.
The strategy crashed and burned.
Republicans are desperate. They are doing anything to change the subject. This includes resurrecting old failed attacks on President Obama. They want to talk about anything other that what Mitt Romney said in that video. Most telling is that Romney is losing so badly that he is now pulling pages out of McCain’s playbook of fail.
By failure, I don’t mean that the political chattering class won’t talk about Romney’s embracing of the clip. I mean that this attack isn’t going to change the subject for Republicans. It won’t move voters into the Romney column, and it won’t shift the growing anti-Romney inertia of the campaign.
The fact that Romney is looking to conservative media to rescue him demonstrates that he is a sinking candidate who has no clue how to right the ship on his own.
Mitt Romney just looks desperate, and desperation doesn’t win the White House in November.
Image: The Daily Refried
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14 Responses to Why Romney’s Redistribution Breitbarting of Obama is Destined to Fail
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Eric Jaffa
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 12:58 pm
I still don’t know what Obama was advocating.
“structure government systems that pool resources, and hence facilitate some redistribution.”
What does that mean?
Jonathan Burton
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 3:47 pm
Arrgh! I not be know’in what the captain means either ye matey. ‘Cept fer the scurrvy dogs below deck need three squares, and deck to scrub before the mizzen!! Ye be learn’in ’bout the ways of the sea just as me!!!
Anon
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 5:41 pm
talking like a pirate day is tomorrow.
buckeyewill
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Hey, Romney is really for socialism.
For his kind, of course.
j
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 1:53 pm
Having read the whole of Mitt Romney’s speech (on Mother Jones) I do not understand why more3 people ar4e not as enraged as I am, he said they were hoping
for something like a hostage crisis like to the one
when Jimmy Carter was president, he was saying that if only he could get something like that to happen he would have it made.
Just think about it – he would like americans to be held by a foreign government just for his own ambition! This is shocking!
robyn ryan
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 1:58 pm
It’s how our government is supposed to work. We all need certain things to live well and be productive. If some of these things are too complex and interconnected, like roads and sewer systems, people pool their monies to build, then manage, maintain and improve those things.
Reagan and his ilk promoted the notion that ‘government should not compete with private industry.’ Under that rubric, all the facilities, services and corporate memory were sold off to the highest bidder.
Because these assets were now in the hands of for profit private industry, their operation was now focused on profit, not service to the old owners. Local jobs and government control were lost.
Post Katrina/Rita/Isaac, the for profit power company responded as expected – covering their shareholder’s losses first, then restoring power.
Trash collection contractors simply ignored their contracts. The City is suing, but the trash is still on the curb. If the trash was a City in-house function,politicians could be held responsible. You could even make them go out and collect the trash themselves.
Any time you sell something you still need, and rent it back you shoot yourself in the pocketbook.
Jindal is trying hard to make Louisianan the first corporate owned state. Which makes our citizens sharecroppers on land they used to own.
Bob
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
This is old news. Didn’t the Republicans drag this or something similar out in the 2008 election? Didn’t work then, won’t work now.
James Crayne
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 2:51 pm
He’s stating his perspective that for there to be “Equality of Opportunity”, there has to be some redistributive policies. Frankly, I agree with this view. The problem is many neoliberal capitalists and ayn rand types especially in the republican and even the libertarian parties don’t really want “equality of opportunity” as anything other than an ideological propaganda smoke screen to rationalize their positions and obfuscate the fact that they don’t really care about any sort of equality at all.
felicia jackson
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 2:58 pm
It is sad when Mitt Romney was something to happen to the American people for him to win a election are you kidding me he was tragedy to happen so he can look presidential he is a sick puppy.
Saje Williams
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 5:29 pm
We already practice income redistribution… by artificially keeping wages low while productivity and profits soar. The difference between this and any other form of redistribution is the money might actually be able to do some good for other people if we give some of it to the people on the bottom of the stack. The rich all get it in the end anyway.
Dave Thomas
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 6:20 pm
Thank goodness that tape of Barack Obama saying that ““the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution.”
So let’s just all quit work and sit back and wait on Barack and the other liberals to give away money as Ben prints it on the printing press. Good luck finding something to buy with it, because who will bust their hump to get ahead just to have some bureaucrat steal it from them.
Barack and all his supporters need to quit being hypocrites and just get guns and start robbing people because the is what they want to do, steal money from other people.
A lot of people in this country were never taught that jealousy, envy, and covetousness will destroy your soul.
Shiva (Moderator)
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 6:36 pm
Hilarious! Cops, the military, any government service is redistribution
But then again you enjoy 80% of the wealth at the top and 20% at the bottom. Isnt that a great recipe for success?
The biggest redistribution has been from the poor and middle class to the upper 1%. Get your self together. Perhaps someday you will wake up and see what is happening. And how Romney will redistribute even more of the 20% money to the top
Peter Kricker
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 6:50 pm
I think, Dave, that you are only reading the part of the quote that Romney wants you to read. Perhaps you should read the entire thing and try to understand what it is the President (albeit before he became President) was talking about.
Gary Vaughn
Sep. 19th, 2012 at 10:31 pm
He was talking about how Chicago was distributing tax monies to the wealthy and taking away from education. You people really need to go see the whole transcript before putting your misinformed right wing views on about something you know nothing about at all.