Romney and welfare: Who's waging class warfare now?
Our view: The candidate's racially charged rhetoric suggests he thinks he can't win on the economy alone
You know some things never change when the GOP presidential candidate starts criticizing his Democratic opponent for handing out checks to undeserving layabouts who are too lazy to work. Remember Ronald Reagan's "welfare queens" driving Cadillacs and eating sirloin steaks? Or Newt Gingrich's epithet for Barack Obama as the "food stamp president" during this year's GOP primaries?
Apparently there's no stereotype too base, no innuendo too thinly disguised that some aspirant to high office claiming to represent the party of Lincoln won't use it to stir up the politics of racial and class resentment.
Now Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has waded in with the latest incarnation of this hoary theme. This week his campaign started running an ad accusing President Obama of "gutting" the 1996 welfare reform act signed by former President Bill Clinton, which requires people receiving public assistance to work or train for a job in order to be eligible for benefits.
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That Mr. Romney is stooping to such tactics now suggests he is becoming desperate, and that his camp no longer believes he can win in November solely his claim to be a superior manager of the economy. If so, we can expect to see him rely even more heavily on such demagogy as the election approaches. Mr. Romney is showing he will do anything to win, no matter how dishonorable or dishonest it may seem in light of his own past positions, and unfortunately that appears to include playing the race card to the hilt.
more:http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-romney-welfare-20120812,0,2073139.story
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