“Republicans are and should be the party of the 47 percent”

Ted Cruz is part-right, and part-wrong. First, where he’s right:

“To sum up what went wrong last election, I think it comes down to two words: 47 percent… What I mean by 47 percent is the narrative of the last election. The narrative of the last election was that 47 percent were dependent on government [and] we don’t have to worry about them. … It buys into the premise that the economic pie is fixed and that it never changes,” Cruz said.

Completely correct. That and saying that we don’t care about the very poor, or that we like being able to fire people was insane, and it didn’t help that we had a candidate whose background at Bain Capital reinforced that.

And now, where Cruz is wrong:

I think Mitt Romney is a good man. He worked very very hard. He’s a decent man of character. Anyone can have a slip of the tongue.

First, the 47 percent remark was not a slip of the tongue. The quote was:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what…who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims. …These are people who pay no income tax. …and so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives

That’s one hell of a “slip of the tongue.” Let’s be honest: it was not a mistake. It was not a slip of the tongue. It was a deliberately-made, insulting statement that disparaged the middle class, working class, elderly, and the poor.

Second, such arrogance displayed towards such a broad swath of Americans also shows that Romney is not a man of character. His record as Massachusetts governor and his willingness to say anything to anybody is further evidence of that. Romney was a hack and a charlatan, and a traitor-in-waiting to every conservative cause that he had fought against at the state level.

Stoic Patriot on January 27, 2013 at 9:40 AM