Go Ahead, Try To Prove Him Wrong
On a private phone call hacked by an informant to media outlets, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney told major donors that he lost the election due in large part to “gifts” President Obama gave to certain strategic demographics.
“The Obama campaign was following the old playbook of giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they could get to vote for them and be motivated to go out to the polls, specifically the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people. In each case they were very generous in what they gave to those groups.”
Romney gave examples like student loan forgiveness and health care insurance for young people ages 18-34 which Obama won with 63% of the vote. (Reuters)
While leftwing media and liberal Twitter trolls attempt to demonize Romney for his comments, few are trying to prove him wrong.
Other “gifts” from the government that likely helped the Obama win include free birth control for young women, which Obama won by a large margin. Using an executive order to grant amnesty to Hispanic and Latino children likely aided the president’s nearly 80% support among nonwhites (Reuters). And who could forget the million+ Obamaphone giveaways in OH?
There’s no doubt the race was close. Did government gifts sway the election in Obama’s favor? Romney may be on to something.
I want to quickly address two of your points that I think are inaccurate. The first is that Obama has promised free contraceptives to women. To the best of my knowledge, this is not the case. The argument stemmed from a law student at a Catholic University speaking out about the fact that the insurance policy she paid for as a student did not cover the cost of contraception. This is not the same thing as demanding free contraception, right? Wherever else we disagree, we can agree that saying that a service that she is paying for denying her a legitimate claim is not the same thing as demanding something be free. As a result a fat tacky drug addict called her a whore on the radio. Somehow in all of this right wing media decided that what Obama wanted to do was make sure all women can sleep around on the public’s dime.
The other thing is the Obama phones. Look, I know you love that video, and that it speaks to your worst fears about what an Obama administration looks like, but, well, unsurprisingly she has a few of the ins and outs of how the program works wrong. First, this is not an Obama program. According to Forbes magazine (not exactly a bastion of liberal ideas) this program is part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which in part provided for free telephone access to impoverished individuals. The reason cellular phones are being used is that in some cases cellular phone service is less expensive than landline service, especially if a building is not wired for landline phones (which is becoming more and more the case).
Anyhow, the election is over. I for one sort of miss being inundated with election-related literature.