Always Kick a Man when He's Up--Tomasky on Romney

Michael Tomasky blasts Mitt Romney's idea that this election will be about entitlements vs. opportunity. Romney has already embraced the dismantling of Medicare and the Paul Ryan budget. And in his blast at President Obama's Kansas speech, he accused the President of not just wanting equality but also equal results. Of course, Romney can't quite explain President Obama's education program of "A Race to the Top". Michael Tomasky in today's Daily Beast says the Mitt new opportunity shtick is just a familiar trick from the GOP's well-thumbed playbook and it won't work this year.

Romney is trying to meld the more traditional wealthy Republicanism with Tea Party resentment. Romney plays on the Tea Party using all the dog-whistles the Republican Right have always used against the poor and minorities. He uses the term "government dependency" as his accusation against President Obama and claims the election will be between someone who wants government to look after every aspect of your life and the candidate who insists on your freedom to pursue wealth and liberate yourself from any obligation to those below you.

But Tomasky argues that there exists mountains of evidence that most Americans really don't think the way Republicans want them to. Romney is assuming like most Republicans that he talks for the "real Americans", while Democrats are in some way fake Americans. But the General Social Survey since 1972 still show by margins of two to one voters consistently saying that too little is spent on the poor, on education, health care and on drug treatments and it goes on and on.

Then spending on the middle class enjoys far greater support than even social programs for those poorer. While the Republicans rant now about Social Security, Medicare and the national debt, Middle America, as we have seen throughout this blog, simply do not agree with them. And it is by a really wide margin. As we saw in Obama's job bill, Americans with large majorities back each of his ideas, which went down in flames because of the obstructionism of the GOP Senate and House.

Romney, like the other Republican candidates, really believes the GOP primary voter represents the Middle Class and not the extremely right-wing fringe that has become the party's base. Romney is retro and he believes that majorities of Americans believe the Democrats are stealing money from them like in the 1980s. Despite Romney insisting that Obama is " stealing the soul of America", majorities actually like the President personally and most are actually pulling for the man.

Tomasky is on to something. If the American people weren't rooting for the President, his approval ratings would be in the dumpster but they aren't. He is at a five month high for Gallup and teetering near 50% in two other polls.

If you are as wealthy as Romney, your personal frame is going to be distorted. What the GOP considered welfare in the past has now graduated to essential programs for the middle-class such as Social Security and Medicare. Romney wouldn't know this because he is so far away from the reality of everyday Americans. The so-called Opportunity Society sounds great except if people start realizing that it is President Obama who is committed to opportunity and is the living incarnation of it, not a wealthy rich kid.

Somehow I think someone who won't release his tax returns will probably fail to persuade average Americans that Medicare needs to be changed into a voucher system. It's also going to be tough making the case against health insurance reform when you created it.

The dynamics of this year has changed from the intense reaction of 2010, when the extreme Republicans rebelled against the Obama presidency. Instead we have a political debate now shaped by the terms raised by the Occupy movement and a feeling that the financial system as managed by the Mitt Romneys of the world let the country down.