i heard krauthammer last night saying that romney missed the boat because he didn't take the opportunity to say 'i want to expand the economy and create opportunity for the everyone, which obviously includes helping the poor get out of poverty' (paraphrasing here but that was the gist of it)
while i agree with his sentiment, what he failed to say, which romney correctly addressed, is that the poor have programs in place to support THEM, while the middle class is withering away....and i think that fact merits discussion and deserves to be pointed out
and more importantly we will ALWAYS have poor among us.....no program nor tax policy will create a society where we no longer have the poor (there were always be addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill, and those just incapable, either from lack of ability or laziness, of holding a decent job) so krauthammer can wax idealistic all he wants about what politicians SHOULD say, but the reality is, there is a certain amount of poverty that is embedded in the system and won't go away....romney addressed this when he said he wasn't 'worried' about the poor, they are being taken care of
reagan talked about expanding the prosperity of the country while maintaining the social 'safety net' and that is in essence what romney said (quite clumsily in the modern sound bite era)....we've reached the point where the 'safety net' has become a permanent abode for people who shouldn't be there because we keep expanding gov't spending on 'the poor'..... |
