This isn’t likely to hurt Mitt much, really.
I mean, I’d love to be wrong, and see him lose 90-10 instead of 60-40 like he probably will, but come on.
This is what Republicans basically think.
Everybody but them is getting away with something.
Everybody but them is getting some kind of special government help to succeed.
Everybody but them has unearned happiness, undeserved prosperity, and suspect advantages.
They don’t see themselves when Mitt talks about people who don’t pay income taxes, even if they don’t pay income taxes because they’re old, or have kids, or don’t make enough money. They don’t see themselves as beneficiaries of government help, even if they are.
These are the 27 percenters and probably another 10 percent for good measure. Government is something other people benefit from. Black people, mostly, and lazy people, and immigrants. Not them.
They’ve been told this for years and years and years, basically without having to ever once confront an opinion to the contrary, and it’s so ingrained in them you can hold up their tax returns and show them on the goddamn forms what government benefits they received and they’ll still spout this at you:
Because THAT’S NOT THEM.
And they are voting for Mitt Romney the way they voted for John McCain and George W. Bush and Saint Ronnie Reagan and every other Republican critter who ever ran for office on making you feel like you were at least better than somebody. They are voting out of a staggering, bullying desperation to keep kicking the weaker kid, even if the weaker kid is their reflection in a mirror.
They don’t see themselves as part of a system. They see themselves as the victims of it. That Mitt secretly holds them in contempt doesn’t matter. They don’t know who they are, so they assume he’s kicking somebody else.
A.
Exactly. I’m watching this thing blow up, and yeah, I’d love to think this would be like the moment where the mask falls off and everybody in the world sees Mitt Romney for the arrogant, privileged, heartless prick he is, and the sheer, staggering contempt he holds damn near everybody in, but the people who are going to vote for him anyway DON’T THINK HE’S TALKING ABOUT THEM. Even when he is. They are never, ever going to get it. I grew up surrounded by those people. I know those people. I even love some of those people, even as they drive me insane, and they just don’t get it. They aren’t going to give a shit about this. The people who DO give a shit, already knew what a dick the guy is.
It is going to be more than that 47% of Americans who vote against you, Mr. Romney.
We don’t want to see you anywhere NEAR the White House.
You are not only cynical and vacant, you are frightening.
One of the biggest “why are they getting it all and I get nothing” in the area has done damage (him and his tenants) to my yard on multiple times and when shown any damage flies into a fit of laundry lists that are all strawmen arguments. One of my favorites he has used a couple of times was that his tenants damage **HIS** property too (so he’s getting rent and it is cost of business to him. Why should I pay for him to have a business?) Interestingly, the Missouri Court records are online and I saw where there was a court judgement against him. This is from memory but it was something like $ 14k in damages and $ 120k in puntitive damages (I wonder if he tried to argue against the judge with specious arguments. Certainly seems a high ratio of puntitive to actual).
On the other side I have a neighbor that loves listening to talk radio and challenging me with the “facts” He had a suit against him where the plaintiff successfully sued for money owed but not paid (basically unpaid rent as the business started having problems).
Being a small, rural, town which fits the state’s conservative leaning. Not surprisingly, small downtown businesses are having trouble surviving – especially in light of business going to WalMart. Town has ordinance and fines for not shovelling snow from the sidewalk. In the last few years, a couple of cases of people injured as they slid on the ice on the sidwalks. Result is the city now is responsible for shoveling the downtown sidewalks. But for any person or business outside the downtown area, they are still responsible for clearing snow from their walks.
I don’t know about the local Walmart for a fact, but it isn’t unusual for Walmart to demand various forms of tax relief or other payments to be within an area.
While I can see arguments in favor of supporting local businesses, its amazing how the local businesses demand that the local people support them (often while giving poor service). And what a shame that the govt is supporting the poor while doing nothing for these businesses /snark. And lets not even try to discuss that govt payments for Social Security and Disability are sources of money which DO suppport the businesses indirectly as the recipients shop for groceries, etc.
The essential, boiled-down insight contained in this post could replace two rows of Poli Sci and Psych texts on my bookshelf.
Mr. Romney finally speaks from the heart.
He will dismiss 47% of Americans as beneath his consideration. He will be the President of the 53% (or whatever percentage of the population votes for him.)
This was no gaffe.
A gaffe is when one misspeaks.
This was not a mistake.
Mr. Romney was telling it as he believed.
For the first time, we hear a man speaking confidently, eloquently, because he is saying what he believes.
Who knew. We had thought he was just a candidate uncomfortable with oratory. No, he was a man who was hiding what he really believed and unable to do it artfully.
Yes, Mr. Romney has finally told the truth.
And that is the problem.
Goodbye, Mr. Romney.
Go away.
Go to your multiple homes, or to Switzerland or to the Caymans or wherever else you can be with your millions (or is it billions?)
Go away and don’t come back.
Please.
Also, the media is helpfully pointing out that “Obama did it too!” (even though no, he really didn’t) Meh.
Ditto to D Garr. This latest taped gaffe is terribly damaging.
That THAT’S NOT THEM thing constantly reminds me of this scene from Angels in America. Around 4:23.
at least it is making he rite wing meedia more nervous. SAVOR!!!
Maybe the perfect antidote for this “everyone else gets government help and we get nothing” routine is David Cay Johnston. He’s now written three books and hundreds of articles on the ways in which the wealthy, corporate and individual, have used government to game the system in their favor.
If the networks wanted real “balance,” they’d have him on 24/7 explaining the ways in which carried interest and debt financing work to the advantage of the rich and no one else, for example. Or Matt Taibbi (who only seems to get on Eliot Spitzer’s show, Democracy Now! and RT with any regularity).
There are people out there who have an in-depth understanding of the degree to which this complaint of the rich is an outright lie, but the public doesn’t get to hear them.
Honore de Balzac said that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. In the U.S., at least since the time that Mark Hanna was passing out thousand-dollar bills on the floor of the Senate, that crime has been making corruption legal.
And the public has little understanding of how that is done.
Montag, I’m reminded of a paragraph from the video version of Freakonomics. Admittedly, this is a distant memory so I may be slightly off the details of the quote. Admittedly, even if I am dead accurate to Freakonomics there are issues with the methodology they used (after all it was meant more to entertain and open a few doors of thought rather than provide the end-all info on the issues).
In it, te gist of one of their statements is that for a democracy or open marketplace to work, the people have to believe that the system is open to all and not predjudiced towards manipulation by any particular group.
Of course, who can determine politics more, me, contributions (bribes?) from one of the larger banks, or contributions by the bank to SuperPacs. (Not trying to single out any particular bank. Pick your favoite bank making unlimited contributions to the elections either directly or by SuperPacs. Thanks SCOTUS for Citizens United decision).
Likewise for the market. Scammers have a great power to temporarily alter the market by schemes such as pump-n-dump. The major powerhouses can alter data by innocently releasing news or even the timing of those releases. Can I believe that the market works for me the same way it works for a firm with a seat on the exchange?
Oh, and in the upcoming election, where opportunities to provide a fair election with auditable results, Can I believe that my vote truly counts equally versus the political machine finding ways to rig the results?
Even the Tea Baggers woke up to the fact that the Repub process was run by what they called the GOP-elite.
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