The Romney campaign is running more ads about welfare than just about any other issue

[Cali_Democrat]

Race and the 2012 election
Posted by Ezra Klein on August 27, 2012 at 10:00 am

Most of the issues dominating the 2012 election make sense. There’s the economy, of course. The budget deficit. Medicare. Obamacare.

But click through the “videos” section of Mitt Romney’s Web site and you’ll see something odd: His campaign is running more ads about welfare than just about any other issue. Of the 12 most recent ads posted, five are about welfare. That’s more than the number dedicated to health care (four) or introducing Paul Ryan (one) or the economy (one). Romney’s ad warns that, “under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and you wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you a check and welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare.”

The ad refers to an Obama administration proposal to give states more flexibility in the design of their welfare programs. The proposal says that the Department of Health and Human Services “will only consider approving waivers relating to the work participation requirements that make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals.” But Romney’s ad ignores all that. Politifact rated it “pants-on-fire.” The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler gave it four Pinocchios.

Beyond being flatly false, Romney’s ads are puzzlingly anachronistic. Welfare is a shrunken program. Where it helped 68 of every 100 families in poverty in 1996, it only helped 27 of every 100 families in poverty in 2010. Meanwhile, few think the problem in this country is that the poor don’t want to work. Rather, it’s that millions of Americans — the poor and undereducated most of all — can’t find work no matter how hard they try. It’s as if a political strategy from 1992 slipped through a wormhole and began playing out in 2012.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/27/race-and-the-2012-election/

So the 2012 election is now about welfare.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. It's not a dog whistle any more; it's a fucking siren.

[rocktivity]

2. Then maybe it's time for us to start running some

CORPORATE welfare ads...


rocktivity

[LongTomH]

3. They're trying to activate white, working-class, non-college educated males as GOP voters.

That's the only group left that's solidly in the Republican camp.

[spanone]

4. playing the race card

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. Race card? More like a race billboard.

Race skywriting. Race neon signs. Nothing subtle about any of this. They might as well put up billboards along every freeway that say something like:

UNEMPLOYED WHITE GUYS, DON'T VOTE FOR THAT MUSLIM SOCIALIST OBAMA BECAUSE HE'LL GIVE YOUR MONEY TO LAZY FAT N______ WELFARE QUEENS WHO BUY LIQUOR AND STEAK WITH FOOD STAMPS.

Because that's the message the GOP is really sending, isn't it?

[Cali_Democrat]

8. Yes indeed

[spanone]

9. it really shames this country and the civil rights we went to war over. went. to. war. over.

maybe these assholes want to fight the civil war again. i believe that the election of President Barack Obama has ripped the scab off the racists brains,

and romney has decided to pour salt in the wound.

i'm ashamed of them.

ashamed.

and frightened.

and pissed.

[Blue Owl]

5. So long as they conveniently leave out the facts about welfare

Like the fact that most welfare recipients are children, the elderly, or disabled.

All they have left is their racism and lies.

[regnaD kciN]

6. Welfare may be "anachronistic"...

...but, to a large bloc of voters, mention of the word still reflexively brings back a whole lot of images about how, supposedly, Those Lazy Blacks* Are Getting Supported By Big Government At The Expense Of Hard-Working Middle-Class White People Like You And Me. The fact that said government happens to be headed by someone (partially) of that race only adds a bit to the knee-jerkism that manages to sow class resentment of the poor for the benefit of the rich.

*(Obviously, not the word they mentally use.)