Mitt Romney's new strategy to win over the Republican base:
Spew crazy like Glenn Beck (Orig. photo: Pool/Reuters)
As Jonathan Chait
says, this is "Glenn Beck-crazy":
Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.
In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing—the government.
The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards, but virtually everyone will be worse off.
Paul Krugman and Kevin Drum (and Steve Benen) add their voices to Chait's in debunking Mitt Romney's flagrant lie, but let's take a look at what President Obama actually said:
I’m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we’re greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. (Applause.) These aren’t Democratic values or Republican values. These aren’t 1 percent values or 99 percent values. They’re American values. And we have to reclaim them. (Applause.) [...]
[ Theodore Roosevelt ] believed then what we know is true today, that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history. It’s led to a prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world. But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can. (Applause.) He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. [...] “Our country,” he said, “…means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy…of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.”
Romney's claim is that President Obama was lying when he embraced Roosevelt's vision—that he actually harbors a secret desire to enforce equality of outcomes by government fiat. But Romney is unable to offer a single piece of evidence to support his claim—because there is no evidence. It's just not true. To claim otherwise isn't just Glenn Beck-crazy, it's birther-crazy, and he should be called out for it.
I don't know if Mitt Romney believes what he's saying. But I do know the only reason he's saying it is that he thinks he needs to say this kind of stuff to appeal to the Republican Party base. He's probably right, but if he does win the GOP nomination, he won't be the same "moderate" who launched his campaign last June.