{"id":6298,"date":"2012-02-01T20:57:01","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T01:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=6298"},"modified":"2012-02-01T20:57:01","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T01:57:01","slug":"on-mitt-romneys-inhumanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=6298","title":{"rendered":"On Mitt Romney&#8217;s Inhumanity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After winning the Florida Primary, Mitt Romney wanted America to know &mdash; <a href=\"http:\/\/cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com\/2012\/02\/01\/mitt-romney-middle-income-americans-are-focus-not-very-poor\/\">he&#8217;s &#8220;not concerned about the very poor<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Erick Erickson, the CNN pundit and proprietor of Red State <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redstate.com\/erick\/2012\/02\/01\/mitt-romney-plays-to-the-liberal-caricature\/\">wrote that Romney&#8217;s line<\/a> &#8220;played straight into the liberal caricature that Republicans don\u0092t have hearts.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not how it is, though.  It&#8217;s not that Republicans, especially the free market\/libertarian-fueled Republicanism that&#8217;s taken root in the last twenty or thirty years, lacks heart.  It&#8217;s that Republicanism lacks <i>humanity<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>The reason Romney says he&#8217;s &#8220;not concerned&#8221; about the poor?  They &#8220;have a safety net there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s a problem with that, one that <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/daily\/intel\/2012\/02\/why-romney-is-not-concerned-about-the-poor.html\">Jonathan Chait<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/blogs\/moneybox\/2012\/02\/01\/mitt_romney_praises_safety_net_he_wants_to_shred.html\">Matt Yglesias<\/a> both point out &mdash; Romney&#8217;s budget plan would <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbpp.org\/cms\/?fa=view&#038;id=3658\">shred the very social safety net that Romney says supports the poor<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Romney&#8217;s cuts to Medicare &#8220;would threaten beneficiaries&#8217; access to care.&#8221;  His Social Security cuts would &#8220;leave poor elderly and disabled people far below the poverty line.&#8221;  Romney &#8220;would throw 10 million low-income people off the benefit rolls&#8221; for the Food Stamp program.  Romney &#8220;would leave 34 million people uninsured who would have gained coverage under health reform.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m reminded of something Gandhi said: &#8220;A nation&#8217;s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.&#8221;  Romney would have this nation turn its back on the weak.<\/p>\n<p>No, it&#8217;s not heart that today&#8217;s Republican party lacks.  It&#8217;s basic <i>humanity<\/i> they lack.  They may look like humans, but like a Nexus-6 Android, they&#8217;re not authentic human beings. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After winning the Florida Primary, Mitt Romney wanted America to know &mdash; he&#8217;s &#8220;not concerned about the very poor.&#8221; Erick Erickson, the CNN pundit and proprietor of Red State wrote that Romney&#8217;s line &#8220;played straight into the liberal caricature that Republicans don\u0092t have hearts.&#8221; That&#8217;s not how it is, though. It&#8217;s not that Republicans, especially<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=6298\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On Mitt Romney&#8217;s Inhumanity&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[137,120,138],"class_list":["post-6298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-mitt-romney","tag-republican-party","tag-social-darwinism","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}