The left and most of the mainstream media think the release of Romney 47% video was a crushing blow to his campaign. But, many repubs agree with the thinking in the video and believe that the 47% (actually, 46% in 2011) of the populace not paying federal taxes really does vote exclusively for Obama, giving him an automatic 47% of the popular vote. Rush Limbaugh rants about this. Look what George Will said on the Laura Ingraham show last Friday
http://dailycaller.com/...
"We are reaching the tipping point where the majority of Americans are recipients of government programs," Will said. "Heavens, one-in-seven of Americans is on food stamps today. The gamble really a gamble, the tactic of the Democratic Party is to run up the dependency ratio in this country until you get 50-60 percent of Americans dependent on the government or at least one, or often in multiple ways, at which point they figure the party of government will always win."
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/...
First, let's dispel the myth. It's a real whopper of a lie.
Below, is the breakdown of the 2008 presidential election vote by income level.
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/...
INCOME % of electorate / Obama % / McCain %
<$15,000 6 / 73 / 25
$15 - 29,999 12 / 60 / 37
$30- 49,999 19 / 55 / 43
$50- 74,999 21 / 48 / 49
$75-99,999 15 / 51 / 48
>$100,000 26 / 49 / 49
- First, the so-called dependent voters were not 47% of those who voted. Even counting all of those earning less than $49,000, only gives 37% of the those who voted in 2008.
- Of voters earning less than $50,000, collectively, just over 38% voted for McCain.
- Those in the income groups $50,000 and above split their vote about 50-50 between McCain and Obama. Wha ... higher income earners voted for Obama 50-50? No way ... /snark
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Where to go from here ....
Even though much of right really believes Limbaugh, Will, etc Obama should be able to put together easy attack pointing out the fallacies.
In fact, David Brooks, yes David Brooks, puts together the basis for Dem ad on the Romney video in his NYTs article today.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.
Romney's comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan's second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can't help themselves. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.
The Republican Party, and apparently Mitt Romney, too, has shifted over toward a much more hyper-individualistic and atomistic social view from the Reaganesque language of common citizenship to the libertarian language of makers and takers. There is no way the country will trust the Republican Party to reform the welfare state if that party doesn't have a basic commitment to provide a safety net for those who suffer for no fault of their own.
The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency.