
"The people who receive the disproportionate share of government
spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are
senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill
Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have
benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more
so than the dependent poor. Romney’s comments also reveal that he has
lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s
second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a
responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, according
to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.
"The
Republican Party, and apparently Mitt Romney, too, has shifted over
toward a much more hyperindividualistic and atomistic social view — from
the Reaganesque language of common citizenship to the libertarian
language of makers and takers. There’s no way the country will trust the
Republican Party to reform the welfare state if that party doesn’t have
a basic commitment to provide a safety net for those who suffer for no
fault of their own. The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney
knows nothing about ambition and motivation." -
David Brooks, in a
New York Times essay titled
Thurston Howell Romney.
Reposted from Joe
Comments