Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:31 am
With Republicans in full panic mode, Rush Limbaugh tried to defend Mitt Romney today by claiming that Robin Hood was really a tea partier, and Romney Hood is a hero.
Here is the audio courtesy of Media Matters:
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Transcript via Rush Limbaugh,
LIMBAUGH: The latest big lie the from Obama’s Truth Team is Mitt Romney wants to raise taxes on Americans while Obama wants to cut taxes. That’s the latest big lie. And they’re basing this ludicrous claim on a study that was written by an Obama supporter who was a senior economist for public finance and tax policy for Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors. They’re trying to make this thing stick, folks, by calling Romney Romney Hood. They’ve got ads. They’ve got all their talk-meisters out spreading that word. Romney is Romney Hood. The only problem is everybody misunderstands the Robin Hood story.
I’ll bet you more than half the people of this country think that what Robin Hood did was steal from the rich and give it to Lady Marian so that she would put out. If you watched the TV show, that’s what you probably thought. When I was growing up, Robin Hood and his band of merry men, Lady Marian in there, and the sheriff of Nottingham Forest was an evil guy. But the sheriff of Nottingham Forest was trying to always capture Robin Hood. Everybody thinks that Robin Hood was out there stealing money from the rich and taking it back and giving it to the citizens of Sherwood Forest. Robin Hood was stealing from the government. Robin Hood was a Tea Party activist. Robin Hood was anti-taxes. And that’s another myth. So many people misunderstand what Robin Hood’s all about. And, of course, the Democrats don’t care about the truth. They care about the illusion that they can carry forward.
So Obama is now trying to call Romney Romney Hood. By the way, this is not new.
Rush Limbaugh is claiming that hundreds of years of storytelling are wrong. He has the real story of Robin Hood: Tea Party Republican, and he learned it from watching TV. Even if we accept Limbaugh’s fractured fairytale premise that Mitt Romney is a real Robin Hood, much like the Republican nominee’s tax cut plan, it still doesn’t add up.
Mitt Romney doesn’t want to take from the government and give back to the people. The Romney plan is to take from the people who have little, and give to those who have a lot. Romney isn’t a Robin Hood. He’s a robber.
There is no way to spin Romney Hood into a Robin Hood like hero for anybody, but the wealthy. The Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson’s of the world who feel like they have been, “taxed enough already.” In Limbaugh’s story, Robin Hood’s Merry Men would have actually been a front group funded by the aristocracy in order to disguise their agenda of upward wealth redistribution.
The Romney Hood line is another devastating shaping of Mitt Romney’s candidacy and character in the public eye. It plays into an already widely held opinion among voters that Romney doesn’t understand Americans who aren’t rich like him.
Republicans can’t make this go away. They can try to rewrite Robin Hood all they want, but voters viscerally understand the real story. They know enough about Romney to already understand that they don’t want to be victims of a reverse Robin Hood.
No amount of rewriting of Robin Hood can hide the truth about Mitt Romney.
Image: memegenerator.net
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
