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Hamlette

(15,388 posts)
Tue Sep 18, 2012, 06:59 PM Sep 2012

David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan on the 47%

this might have already been done today. I've been busy at work but took a few minutes off to catch up. Brooks column today is outstanding. (I got tricked into reading it, I never do, but saw a quote.)

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey.

It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/opinion/brooks-thurston-howell-romney.html?_r=4&smid=tw-share

And Sullivan:


He did not say: "I'll never convince them they should vote for me." He accused 47 percent of Americans of choosing not to "take personal responsibility and care for their lives." He's describing half the country as parasites, bleeding the productive half dry. Half the country. He includes me, an Obama supporter, who pays three times the tax on my income that Romney does, who immigrated at 21, whose parents never went to college, and whose blog now employs six other people.

You know what, Mitt? Fuck you.


http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/diss.html

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