My Wednesday column digs deeper into Romney's twisted "47 percent" video and how it sounds as if the Republicans are suddenly becoming feverishly pro-tax.
Throughout the last 24 hours, Republicans and Romney surrogates have been scrambling to twist their walnut brains around their candidate's remarkably wrong/misleading/stupid hidden video remarks. Some of them have desperately pointed at the president's 2008 hidden video footage as a pathetic excuse for their own candidate's ineptitude. Others, like Rush Limbaugh, have defined the video as a "golden opportunity" for Romney to define real conservative values. Paul Ryan awkwardly referred to Romney's performance on the video as "inarticulate." Odd, since I understood every word he said, and much of it was in complete sentences using actual English vocabulary and, though ridiculous and disturbing, the sentences were coherent.
Chris Christie and even Romney himself used the cliche "skin in the game" to reiterate what was said on the tape. The Republicans believe the fallacious "47 percent" who don't pay income taxes should be forced to pay up -- to have some "skin" in the process of governing the country. When they do, they'll feel better about themselves because they'll be contributing to the greater good.
Interesting. Maybe I'm missing something in the new Romney message, but this sounds a lot like a case for tax hikes, the elimination of deductions and an overall "redistributionist" approach to government. Romney and his supporters sound like they want everyone in the 47 percent to pay up, and by "pay up" they're talking about taxes. Continue reading here.