Now look who’s beating him up

Even conservative commentators have now turned on Mitt Romney for his comments about the 47% who don’t owe income tax but still depend on government.

David Brooks in the New York Times points out that they include Iraq War veterans who use VA hospitals.

William Kristol points out that they include seniors who get social security and depend on Medicare.

In fact it turns out that of the 10 states with the highest percentage of filers who don’t owe any income tax, eight voted Republican in 2008.

And what’s interesting to me about all this is that Romney was simply repeating a core conservative value.

Government creates dependency. Government has created a welfare industry.

Look at the audience question that prompted his comment:

“How are you going to convince everybody you’ve got to take care of yourself?”

Strangely, there was one political pundit who seemed remarkably sympathetic to Romney:

“All of us make mistakes, all of us say the wrong thing once in awhile,” said President Obama in a recent interview, referring to his own comment about small town voters clinging to guns and religion. “What I said, I immediately said ‘I regret this’.”

But Romney regrets only the choice of words. David Brooks in his column says Romney got tripped up because he’s pretending to be a government-hater when in fact he is not.

But maybe he’s not pretending.

Maybe a Romney presidency would actually demonstrate what happens when you adopt the philosophy of conservative talk hosts, and apply it even to the loyal audiences who didn’t think it applied to them.

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