Last night Paul Ryan said:
Let me tell you about the Mitt Romney I know. This is a guy who I was talking to a family in Northborough, Massachusetts the other day, Sheryl and Mark Nixon. Their kids were hit in a car crash, four of them. Two of them, Rob and Reed, were paralyzed. The Romneys didn't know them. They went to the same church; they never met before ... Later on, he said, "I know you're struggling, Mark. Don't worry about their college. I'll pay for it."
This quotation is NOT about Ryan trying to rattle Biden by bringing up car crashes, although that surely occurred to the more Machiavellian among the debate preppers. It's much more important than that, and I haven't seen this in the media or on KOS.
This is the Republican healthcare and education plan - try and run into a compassionate millionaire or billionaire.
It explains so much, really. I believe, as a historian, that most people find ways to justify their actions and beliefs, however self-serving, as part of the greater good. Cut off foodstamps? It's about giving people self-esteem. Let all the foreclosures burn through America? It's about not creating a moral hazard or being unfair to the people who make their payments.
Democrats, liberals, progressives - sometimes to their detriment - respond to stories like Sheryl and Mark Nixon's - by trying to create programs so that ALL CHILDREN with disabilities can afford college, whatever their financial status. Romney pulls out the checkbook. It's a lordship model, in which the serfs may appeal to their masters for boons or gifts, but a systemic remedy would be unthinkable.
So I am sure that Romney did want to help these fellow, if not super-rich, Mormons. Great! What about the people who don't have a millionaire in their church?
I don't want my healthcare, my education, my housing, or my future to depend on either a government hand out or the unpredictable acts of millionaires. I want to see reliable, fair, universally accessible, programs to help people through the tough times and to give a little boost to those who need it on their way to stability, or even prosperity.
That's why I'm voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
As for empathetic Mitt? He can go spend his time doing charitable work to send disabled Mormons to college. I'm for it.