At least that’s how he’s spinning his landslide loss to President Obama in last week’s election. According to the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, Mitt Romney convened a conference call with donors on Wednesday and blamed his loss on a President who was “very generous” and promised to give away “big gifts” to women, minorities, and the poor. Those “gifts” Romney is referring to are things like contraceptive access for women, affordable student loans for young people, health care for poor people, and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who’ve been living in this country since they were children. Romney calls them gifts, while the rest of us call them basic essentials needed to make it in America.
Republican strategist Jude Wanniski was the first to label Democrats as Santa Claus back in the 1970’s for giving Americans things like Social Security and Medicare. Wanniski said Republicans had to play Santa Claus, too, by giving people tax cuts, which Republicans have stuck to ever since. Post-election, a lot of Conservative talking heads, from Rush Limbaugh to Bill O’Reilly to now Mitt Romney, have played the “gift card” against President Obama. But what they ignore is that for several generations now, we as Americans through our democracy, have voted in these policies. “We the people” have concluded that we should all be protected from old age, sickness, and unemployment - and have elected representatives to protect these programs.
Some of the millionaires and billionaires like Mitt Romney think that just because they don’t need any help, then no one in America needs help. If they want to whine about these programs now that they've lost the election, then I suggest they find a remote piece of land and begin constructing their Ayn Rand utopia far, far away from the rest of us in “we society” America.
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