Here's a good example of just how ridiculous Mitt Romney's new welfare attack ad is: the main third party validation for its claims is an editorial by
The Richmond Times-Dispatch, but the paper's news page now says those claims
have been debunked:
Mitt Romney’s campaign is up with a new ad in Virginia and other swing states using a Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial in support of its continued attack on President Barack Obama’s welfare policies.
The 30-second ad doubles down on the Romney campaign’s claim that Obama ended welfare’s work requirement “gutting welfare reform,” a charge that has been debunked by multiple independent fact-checkers.
Romney claims that the Obama administration has rescinded the work requirement for welfare recipients, but what
really happened is that the administration said it would support conditional waivers to work requirements for states interesting in launching pilot projects designed to increase the number of welfare recipients moving to work. No such waivers have been granted, but they would only be granted as part as a strategy of strengthening welfare-to-work, not gutting it.
Romney himself in 2005 endorsed even broader waiver authority for states. Moreover, Massachusetts had a waiver to work requirement rules for the first three years of Romney's term. That waiver wasn't about weakening welfare reform: it was about strengthening it. So not only is Romney lying about the Obama administration's policy, he knows it—because he has supported the policy in the past.
If Mitt Romney were actually interested in talking about welfare policy, he'd take a stand against things like subsidies for big oil and gas companies and tax preferences for guys like him. But what Romney is really interested in doing is calling President Obama a welfare king, and the reason for that is pretty obvious.