Romney: The ‘gifts’ excuse

last updated 8 January 2015

“Mitt still doesn’t get it,” said John Podhoretz in the New York Post. When tape surfaced late in the campaign of Mitt Romney dismissing 47 percent of Americans as government-dependent freeloaders, he apologized for his “inartfully stated” comment and insisted that what he had said was “completely wrong.” Last week, however, in a post-election conference call with his donors, Romney doubled down by blaming his defeat on the “extraordinary gifts” and “free stuff” President Obama had promised to blacks, Hispanics, women, and young people. Prominent Republicans Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio were swift to denounce Romney’s sore-loser excuse, said Jennifer Rubin in WashingtonPost.com, and they were “right to be mad.” The noxious idea that half the voters are greedy freeloaders “cannot be the message of the Republican Party.”

“Don’t be fooled” by the Republicans now distancing themselves from Romney, said Adam Serwer in MotherJones.com. They’re angry he made his “gifts” comments “because they’re politically harmful—not because they see them as incorrect.” With his singular talent for “ugly and unappealing language,” Romney was simply expressing what conservatives have been saying for years. That’s because it happens to be true, said Investor’s Business Daily in an editorial. In this election, “Obama bought young Americans’ votes by offering to forgive student loans, letting them stay on their parents’ health insurance until they’re 26, and giving free contraception under Obamacare to the hook-up generation.” He offered amnesty to Hispanics and universal health care to the poor. It was divisive and cynical, but “it worked.”

Of course it worked, said Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune. People voted for Obama because they thought his policies “would help them to improve their lives.” That’s how politicians win elections—as Romney’s own “gift-giving strategy” illustrated. To win votes, he promised a 20 percent income-tax cut for even the richest Americans and corporations, and a big boost in Medicare and Pentagon spending. He pandered to Wall Street by promising to roll back financial regulations. But to guys like Romney, those aren’t gifts, said Ezra Klein in WashingtonPost.com.In his “ugly vision” of America, a government policy is a “gift” only if it helps the poor and the middle class. If it’s a policy that puts more money in the pockets of the rich, it’s what Romney and his friends call a “good idea.”