Posted on 09/19/2012 7:08:32 AM PDT by teflon9
Mitt Romney echoed the sentiment in a video secretly recorded at a fundraiser ... in which he argued that the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes would vote for Obama “no matter what.”
As an explanation for electoral trends, though, this theory doesn’t hold up.
One major reason for the growth of the federal government in recent years has been that entitlement spending per beneficiary has increased, and so has the number of beneficiaries as people have retired. Yet senior citizens -- who benefit from federal programs, on average, far more than younger people -- have become more Republican over that same period. They actually voted for John McCain over Obama in 2008 by a slightly higher margin than they did for George W. Bush over Kerry in 2004.
In 2010, their Republican margin increased even more, to a whopping 21 points. Pollster Scott Rasmussen told me that ... Romney still leads among seniors by 19 points.
[T]he public at large isn’t as convinced as conservatives that he has been a dismal failure. Most people cut him some slack because of the economic crisis that began under a Republican president and kept unfolding as Obama took office ... Some people think the economy has done about as well as it could have under the circumstances.
Another reason Obama is doing well might have to do with the weakness of the Republican economic message. Republicans dwell on the heroic entrepreneur held back by taxes and regulation, which must be part of the story that a free-market party tells ... most people don’t see themselves in that storyline, any more than they see themselves as dependents of the federal government. They don’t see Americans as divided between makers and takers.
To the extent Republicans do, they’re handicapping themselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at memeorandum.com ...
Yet another liberal purposefully misses the point and wanders off into the nonsensical Land Of Spurious Warfare.
Romney needs to pivot on this and begin to include a statement regarding the unprecedented growth of the public sector under his administration. Include those gummint union employees in that 47%.
Dependent on the government...not just taxes.
examples for those left wing trolls on this site.
Why did you go to Vegas and did you think it was right after these attacks and the death of four Americans?
You called Bush unpatriotic for the debt and yet you have now said last night tat you do not know what the debt was under Bush and now have put us into 6 trillion more debt so does this make you unpatriotic?
I could go on and on but what's the point when the media has their messiah back and lies, covers for him.
Seniors benefit from SS because they were forced into it. All seniors I know are dead set against "O".I'm on medicare and would not have any objection to revamping it to be more efficient. If that meant me paying more of a deductible so be it but while we are at it how about the medicaid recipients who pay nothing?
Madison is very correct in the warning and that's where we are today. His conclusion was that the Senate would be the strength through this...the wise men...who would overrule ignorance and the political sheep....
THAT'S the 47% that Romney is talking about.
Social Security is a badly run annuity program. The issue of the makers and takers, taxpayers and welfare beneficiaries is distinct and different. The 47% number is a rhetorical flourish - and a short hand way of describing those who expect government, i.e., tax payers, to cover for those who could but don’t.
The current mind set is enormously corrosive. Those who retire but claim unemployment, those who claim disability but who are not, those who receive payment under the table, those who hide income to avoid taxes, those who double dip, those who hide assets to be eligible for medicaid and pass on the costs to the general tax payers are all destroying the trust we have that we will all play by the rules.
Seniors are being blamed? Maybe the requirement to be 65-years-old for Social Security and Medicare meant that those were made for retirees after they spent an entire lifetime paying INTO the system.
Once that money started being funneled to every waif who decided to squirt out a few children from deadbeat dads, the whole thing strts collapsing.
Of course the lefty journalist turn it around and make it about seniors “taking money away” from those “poor victims”, who haven’t contributed one red cent.
It’s obvious that if the left had their way, once we no longer work and pay taxes, we’d all be given an all-expense paid trip to the nearest gas chambers.
They “work the system” to steal money legislated for seniors, and then accuse the seniors of causing the problem.
This is retarded. Romneys remarks are aimed at the welfare state not people who worked for 50 years forced to contribute to social security and the upkeep of malingerers the entire time.
The issues are, and have always been, Takers vs Producers, the State vs the Individual, Constitutional Republic vs Rule of Men.
ALL those who get their income from tax dollars are Takers.
Producers don’t live off others.
So . . . ALL government employees at every level are Takers, with the exception of uniformed military. ALL those who get a check provided through TAX DOLLARS and the largesse of the state are Takers, this includes Social Security and all other forms of transfer (i.e. WELFARE) payments. Those who bend the tax code rules to their benefit are not Takers, it is THEIR money to begin with!
A Producer’s livelihood does not depend on taking money from fellow citizens through the force of law. Producers willingly provide goods and services to their fellow citizens through private voluntary exchange.
All you Takers, go ahead and flame away . . .
It’s not a liberal, it’s just Ramesh being contrarian. Ho hum. He may not always be right, but it is probably good for conservatives to have a few devil’s advocates on occasion.
And you are...? And I should defer to your brand of "logic" why?
Oh, and nice generalization there. Maybe you should consider finding a narrower brush with which to paint, huh?
This being written prior to the 17th Amendment. Today, Senators are Anything But "the wise men".
No, they’re right.
While we’re at it, get rid of social security and medicare, too.
People should plan ahead for their retirement, and if they don’t? Tough. Let ‘em eat cat food while staying at the Y.
So what if they paid into it. So have I and younger people than me, and thanks to these old leeches we’ll never get a third of it back. If we lose, so should they.
Frankly I’m tired of paying for retirees to drive off to Florida in their Cadillacs to their winter homes in the effing Villages.
Medicare and SS need to go.
You should have planned ahead.
I don’t watch television, but my wife does, and when I got up this morning, I walked by and “Good Morning America” was on the tube.
They had Jimmy Carter’s grandson, who was somehow involved in “exposing” the material, and the amount of air time they gave him was extensive and fawning from looking at the body language and facial expressions. Then they had Michael Isikoff on, followed by Nancy Pelosi. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but it was apparently non-confrontational and they looked quite smug and comfortable.
Looked like they were coming out with all weapons.
Obama’s “edge” is an illusion created by the Obamamedia and skewed polling samples. Even then is is fading quickly. Romney isn’t saying the 47 percent are welfare recipients. He said they don’t pay income tax, and that is correct, except the number of people who pay no income tax is higher than 47 percent. Besides, assuming Romney did mean to say that everyone who is dependent upon the federal government tends to support Democrats, is it any different than what Democrats claim?
It is the Democrats who divide people by class, race, sex, sexual preference and dependency on government. It is the bread and butter of their neosovietism. Yet when Romney brings up the division leftist politics and policies have created, there are conservative pundits who crumple up from anxiety. The left has created a class war, and they have defined the two sides of it, not Romney.
The Democrats define themselves by bashing prosperity and demanding more from the prosperous. They look at government as the purveyor of all things good to those who aren’t ranked among the prosperous, the great redistributing equalizer. It takes two sides to play that game.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.