Tag Archives: Republicans

Final Thoughts on What Romney Said

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There’s been a lot of commentary on Romney’s 47% remarks. What I haven’t seen anyone pointing out is how plain dumb his remarks were.

He said that the people who are totally committed to voting for Obama are the same people who don’t pay Federal income tax. 

He knows, of course, that there are plenty of people with well-paying  jobs who would never consider voting for him. Many of these people live in states like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Illinois. These states are home to lots of “liberal elitists” who the Republicans like to complain about. So his claim makes no sense, even from a right-wing perspective.

He also said that the people in this supposed group don’t take responsibility for their own lives. There are some such people, of course, but they are clearly a much smaller group than committed Obama voters and the people who don’t owe Federal income tax.

How could an apparently intelligent person like Romney say something so stupid? My guess is that he was simply engaging in some right-wing stream of consciousness while pandering to his wealthy contributors. If they took a moment to think about it, everyone in the room would understand that, literally speaking, his statements were false. But it would be great fun to hear him insult liberal Democrats, low-income people and welfare cheats by lumping them all together. His absurd remarks reveal as much about his audience as they do about him.

Yet More Background on What Romney Said

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From an article by Ramesh Ponnaru in the National Review Online:

“The Tax Foundation has calculated the percentage of filers in each state who pay income tax. The ten states with the highest number of non-payers are a strongly Republican bunch: Eight of them went for John McCain in 2008, and nine of them have Republican governors.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/283265/freeloader-myth-ramesh-ponnuru

Obviously, some people are very confused. And some people are making stuff up. The red states below had the highest percentages of people filing Federal income tax returns but not paying any income tax. The blue states had the lowest percentages. 

nonpayers.banner.taxfound

The Background to What Romney Said

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Ezra Klein of the Washington Post responds to Romney’s remarks:

“83 percent of those not paying federal income taxes are either working and paying payroll taxes or they’re elderly and Romney is promising to protect their benefits. The remainder, by and large, aren’t paying federal income or payroll taxes because they’re unemployed.”

And why don’t many working people end up owing Federal income tax?

“Part of the reason so many Americans don’t pay federal income taxes is that Republicans have passed a series of very large tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. That’s why, when you look at graphs of the percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, you see huge jumps after Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform and George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So whenever you hear that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, remember: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush helped build that.”

Klein points out that some of the tax cuts for lower income people were adopted to make tax cuts for higher income people more politically acceptable. Now, however, the Republicans are arguing that people who don’t owe federal income tax are parasites who don’t deserve government benefits:

“Republicans have become outraged over the predictable effect of tax cuts they passed and are using that outrage as the justification for an agenda that further cuts taxes on the rich and pays for it by cutting social services for the non-rich.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/romneys-theory-of-the-taker-class-and-why-it-matters/

Politics and the Prince of Peace

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According to a Gallup poll from last year, 62% of very religious white Americans are Republicans, while 27% are Democrats. In Gallup’s words: “A white American’s degree of religiousness … is a strong predictor of that person’s political orientation”.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/150443/Religious-Whites-Identify-GOP.aspx

Yet it isn’t obvious why this is the case. It certainly isn’t obvious that Jesus’s teachings are more consistent with right-wing politics than left-wing politics (and certainly not by a margin of more than 2 to 1).

No doubt there are many reasons why this state of affairs has come to pass here in America. While doing some casual reading on the internet, however, I came upon an article called “Would Jesus Vote Republican?” on a site called RaptureReady.com. Perhaps this article isn’t representative, but the author strongly recommends voting for Republicans, even though they are the lesser of two evils:

“The Republican Party brings to the legislative table in America a much safer, more sound course of governing, in our view. The GOP, for the most part, opposes abortion, legitimizing homosexuality as equal to heterosexual relationships, and huge programs that create and perpetuate destructive, mammoth social programs…. That party is, by and large, in favor of a strong national defense, national sovereignty, and keeping God’s name at the heart of our national character”.

http://www.raptureready.com/republican.html

One thing we might all agree on concerning the paragraph above: it doesn’t have a lot to do with Jesus.

Polling Is Fun

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Public Policy Polling, apparently a reputable organization, claims to have asked likely Ohio voters the following question:

“Who do you think deserves more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?”

Among Democrats, 86% said Obama, 1% said Romney and 13% weren’t sure.

Among Republicans, 38% said Obama, 15% said Romney and 47% weren’t sure.

There are lots of ways to interpret these answers, none of them good.

On second thought, there is at least one positive interpretation: it was a silly question and some people, including many Republicans, have a sense of humor.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_OH_9912.pdf