The Bigger Lie
The Bigger Lie
In excoriating Romneys campaign for its disgusting, mendacious ads and attack lines claiming Obama has re-created no-strings welfare, I probably havent been clear enough that this is part of a much bigger picture Team Mitt is trying to paint. WaPos Greg Sargent nails it here:
The original Romney theory of the race was similar to the one animating the AFP ad. We were told for months that Romney could win by making this race nothing more than a referendum on the economy and on Obamas stewardship of it, which was such a disaster that all Romney had to do was paint him in as a nice guy in over his head and hed win.
But the Romney campaign has veered sharply away from this approach. Todays ad is only the latest example of the new tack, which is all about stoking an old-school politics of resentment by painting Obama as someone who harbors disdain towards the hard work of ordinary Americans and redistributionist designs on their hard-won wealth. This has lately been everywhere: The didnt build that distortions; the ads featuring hard working Americans alongside claims Obama wants to send welfare checks to people who dont work; the enlisting of Newt Gingrich to amplify the welfare assault; and, now, the new ad suggesting Obama wants to raid old folks health insurance and channel it into a massive new government program thats not for you.
This last point is worth underlining. The sudden new attacks on bogus Medicare cuts (which in any event, were included in Paul Ryans budget as well) are generally being interpreted as aimed at blunting Democratic assaults on Ryans treatment of Medicare, and thats partly the case. But if it was just a matter of a counter-Mediscare, Team Romney wouldnt be putting so much emphasis of where that money went: to ObamaCare, which benefits those people. Building resentment towards a supposed broad-based redistribution of money from older and whiter people to younger and darker people is the common aim, and if it requires a lot of lying, who cares, right? Its Obamas secret Alinskyite plan, even if he isnt actually carrying it out.
But it gets even worse, as Jamelle Bouie notes today: even as its playing blatant racial politics, the Romney campaign has the gall to accuse its opponents of racial appeals in its aggrieved reaction to Joe Bidens chains reference (which was in fact a clumsy effort to invert Ryans talk about unshackling the economy).
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