Rush, "The Titular Head of the GOP," couldn't make it any clearer:
"But Obama is going to be campaigning exclusively to the people who are being pulled in the cart: The people that aren't paying income tax, the people that are on the federal dole. He has made the calculation that that's where he wins. It's clear to me that the Democrat Party has now made the determination that, of the people that vote in this country, a clear majority of them don't work. A clear majority of them don't want to work. A clear majority of them live and breathe on this class envy stuff, and are gonna vote for somebody who's gonna make sure their contraception pills keep coming; their welfare checks keep coming, their disability checks keep coming, their unemployment checks keep coming. Food stamps, you name it."That's his group. That's his constituency. Illegal immigrants or families of illegal immigrants. As many minority groups as he can create and convince they are victims of an oppressive America. And, in that calculation, he just casts aside white working-class families while setting up African Americans for Obama."
Yet today, 49 percent of Americans live in a household receiving some form of government assistance. Will that make Republicans' "welfare queen" arguments less effective this election?
Never mind that, even in these tough economic times, only about 1.9 million families receive "pure" welfare (cash assistance) in the form of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, down from 5 million in 1994 before President Clinton's welfare-to-work reforms. And never mind that, as far as welfare goes, Medicaid ($274 billion) and refundable tax credits ($102 billion) far outweigh food stamps ($71.8 billion) and cash assistance ($6.9 billion).
Is the mental image of the black "welfare queen" -- a made-up story by Ronald Reagan that changed with each re-telling -- so deeply embedded in Republicans' brains that no amount of information can erase it?
February 29, 2012 | The Rush Limbaugh Show
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