Chris Ladd: Romney is Right About the Very Poor
By HHR | February 6th, 2012 | Category: Featured, Opinion/Reviews | 4 comments
By Chris Ladd
A political gift can come in an awkward package. The left’s efforts to frame Romney’s remarks this week about “the very poor” are likely to have an unintended consequence for Democrats. They are hardening the impression that the left is hopelessly disconnected from middle class concerns. Call it a gaffe, call it an error, but if the Democrats succeed in their misguided effort to define Romney by that statement, Obama is more likely to lose this election.
Here’s what Romney actually said:
“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”
Everything you need to know about the 2012 election is in that paragraph. Romney got it right.
The economic issue of our era is the damage done to middle and working class families by the financial disaster of the past decade. The housing crisis has destroyed the most potent method of capital accumulation available to ordinary people. The transition out of industrial era capitalism to a more dynamic information-based economy has stalled, leaving millions of workers in limbo. A culture of debt at all levels of our society is choking off opportunities for investment and fostering stagnation.
Meanwhile in the midst of the worst crisis since the Great Depression our safety net for the very poor is so strong that we have had to redefine hunger. We no longer count the number of people who starve to death, because that number is zero. We no longer count the number of people who suffer from malnutrition because that is so rare. The hunger statistic we follow now is called “food insecurity.”
As Romney correctly pointed out, the very poor have state and federal assistance available to help with housing and food. They can receive direct financial payments. They get healthcare provided by the government through Medicaid (more than 50m people in 2010). Democrats deserve credit for building this safety net and Romney in his statement makes clear his commitment to keep it working. The outcome of this election will not affect the support system for the poorest Americans.
What Romney has accomplished with this “gaffe” is to expose the blinding effects of left’s fascination with poverty. While Democrats kvetch over The Very Poor and far too many Republicans hyperventilate about abortion and gays, the rest of the world is building better schools, freer commerce, and new ways to compete. We need to shift our focus to stay ahead.
Romney gets that that a fresh program of government aid is not what struggling Americans are most concerned about. They want opportunities to earn their own way up the economic ladder through productive work.
The Democrats are welcome to make this election about the very poor if they want. There’s no greater program of aid they could offer to America’s needy Republicans.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chris Ladd is a Texan who is now living in the Chicago area. He has served for several years as a Republican Precinct Committeeman in DuPage County, IL, and was active in state and local Republican campaigns in Texas for many years.
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A number of leading conservatives blasted the comment, and Mitt himself backtracked saying he “misspoke” — but ok fine, you think the comment was on the mark. Here’s what you don’t get Chris. The people who are struggling in this country aren’t just the stereotypical poor as you likely imagine them — they are Iraq war veterans, they are people WITH jobs–minimum wage jobs–who are incapable of providing for a family on a minimum wage salary, they are people who’ve been laid off by companies shipping jobs overseas, they are college graduates who have become sick and are now saddled with through-the-roof medical bills. Here’s the thing Chris, you don’t get it. You’re out of touch. You’ve never been poor and I doubt you know too many people who are. How do I know this? Because if you did, you wouldn’t be writing the things you’ve written above. If you want to reply to this email, please start by telling me about yourself…what do your parents do for a living? What college(s) did you go to? What wars did you serve in? What minimum wage jobs have you worked at, and for how many years? How many kids are you supporting? What health problems have you had to overcome? I’m curious.
Chris,
With all do respect, you cannot be more wrong about this:
If you actually parse what he said and look at each point separately, you’ll see that it represents a callous and/or out of touch individual:
(1) He says he doesn’t care about the very poor. On the face of it, this seems cruel, but I’ll give him that, on its own, it sounds bad. But it deserves context. So, let’s look at the rest of his statement…
(2) He says if there are any holes in the social safety net, he’ll fix them. So, he says IF there are any holes in the social safety net. Implying there may or may not be. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what kind of holes are in the social safety net, yet he doesn’t care about the poor? Shouldn’t he find out what the problems are before he decides where he needs to direct an important resource like his attention? Most importantly, shouldn’t a man of Christian values want to help the least of us first?
(3) He says the social safety is adequate: The safety net is not adequate to the needs of the very poor. I live in the suburbs of a city that has REAL poverty. All the social safety net does is prevent people from dying of starvation and allows them to put substandard roofs over their head. Where is the path OUT of poverty? As a Republican you should be all over this statement because it’s exactly what you’ve been talking about for years. When I was a Republican I complained about it as well. I still do. The social safety net has been designed to alleviate some of the effects of poverty, not to eliminate poverty. Romney says what is there is good enough, flying in the face of years of Republican orthodoxy and reality.
(4) He says he’s not interested in helping the very rich either. Yet he advocates steeper tax cuts for people like him. Dennis, he supports the Paul Ryan budget which would gut the social safety net and help the rich through more tax cuts.
(5) He says he’s interested in helping the middle class because that’s who’s really hurting…fine. Thanks, Governor Romney. Things are not as good for the middle class than they used to be, I’ll admit that. Who wouldn’t?
But, does he really want to engage in…wait for it…class warfare by pitting the middle class against the poor and comparing the pain of the middle class to the pain of the poor? Really? I’m a member of the middle class. Sure things are tighter than I’d like them to be, but can I put food on the table, my family in a nice house and clothes on my kids’ backs? Absolutely. And I wouldn’t trade any of that to be a poor person in this country, social safety net or not?
And he says nothing of the people who used to be in the middle class, maybe even a year ago, but are now out of work because some company came in and broke up the business they worked for and sold it to a bunch of foreign investors? Or of the people who lost their jobs because it became more attractive to do business in China instead of the US while this country gave them tax credits to finance their move. Does he care about THOSE poor people? Which poor people doesn’t he care about ?
I don’t mean to turn this into a harangue, but this is an atrocious statement and a worse indictment of Romney than anything Newt has said about him. He does NOT understand what is going on on “the real streets of America.”
The first sentence “I don’t care about the very poor” is bad enough, but putting it into context makes it even worse. Mitt Romney is 100% wrong for America.
[...] So Very Wrong About the Poor I know this is a couple of weeks old, but after reading a post by Chris Ladd (a friend!) over at Hip Hop Republican, I feel it’s important to post this rebuttal I wrote to [...]
(Where is the path OUT of poverty?) Perhaps, the answer is “The Middle Class”, it is “this” class that is key to a healthy tax base, healthy economy. In every major world economy an indicator of upward economic mobility is a healthy “middle class”, this “class” in turn help the poor by providing jobs for them. When the rich guy hires a middle class guy, the middle class guy has money to spend, which is then used to, hire the pizza guy (poor “formerly jobless” pizza guy).
In other words: If the middle class is fucked, then so will the poor. Romney is 100%