Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Romney; "I'm not concerned about the very poor."

Instead of "I'm not concerned about the very poor" there are plenty of good, true and telling things that Romney could have said in a way that would play well with both the primary voters and in the general,

but what has been exposed here again is that Romney doesn't really understand the conservative position and all he is doing is trying to win a primary,

In the process of trying to win the primary he is making a cartoon of himself by saying things he doesn't understand because he doesn't believe it, but he thinks this is the sort of thing base wants to hear, because this is who he thinks the base is,

but the problem he is having is that the conservative cartoon will not win a general election and if we are smart it won't win a primary and partly for that reason and partly because he will be back to being a moderate with the baggage of having at one point been a cartoon.

There are a lot of intelligent things he could have said if he read the right articles and really understood conservatism, but instead he is projecting this insulting cartoon as a flop to the right.

1 He could have pointed out that the "poor" have more disposable income than the lower middle class

2 He could have pointed out what will happen to the poorest of the poor if the government goes under all the way, all the bennys are cut , and there are no jobs all at the same time

3 He could have talked about what is consistent with their dignity as humans which is that they should work for their bread doing useful work and that all our efforts should be to bring them to that point, not to just extend more bennys to keep them voting for the guy who is giving them out.

But he can't say that because he doesn't really have that in his heart, because he doesn't even know it, because he is not one of us, he despises us and he is probably so proud of his efforts to posture toward us while using ambiguous language that will allow him to slink back to the left as soon as this is sewn up.

That is what this sort of thing tells us, this is why they do it, and that is why we are always forced to defend this sort of clownish posturing that is jumped on by the likes of Rush as "Wow, Romney is really showing some conservatism and we have to defend him" when in reality he is just mocking us, and making us look bad in the process, and because we often fall for it he gets a 3-fer out of it.

If what Romney is is an accurate depiction of the conservatism of the political right then it is not consistent with Catholic teaching. Sure, one can make the tired old case of the GOP tends to have guys who tend to, and that it is the Democrats who are For abortion, For Same-sex unions, and trying to force us to pay for contraception, they are further from the concept of subsidiarity,

and that is all true, and so we have to vote against them, but Romney doesn't give us anything to be proud to vote for either. Newt may have articulated that "we want the poor to get a job, get a better job, and then eventually own that job" but one wonders what Federal or anti-subsidiarity program will be put into place to make that so. Newt is also recently was for Cap N Trade which would create a one-world regulation of carbon.

So I guess this leaves us with Santorum who has recently come to grips with the fact that the neo-con nation-building on sand theory of peace is flawed and may now be the best man in the race.I have to clarify this statement with the fact that the political reality in America right now is that we must either pick the Democrat or the Republican rather than a a candidate from some party that champions subsidiarity because that party doesn't exist

and that right now it is totally unacceptable to back a Democrat given the contraception mandates in Obamacare, the fact they are shutting down Catholic adoption services over same sex unions and so on. Also we must take as a given that the closest thing we have to a subsidiarity movement is "States rights" small government conservatism of which Santorum is right now our best bet.

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