But at least in the glory-days of welfare-bashing, the attacks had some grounding in reality—the system had grown rapidly was in need of some sort of reform. Now, at a time of drastically reduced welfare rolls, the attack is utterly unfounded. And Romney just keeps using it, at stop after stop, in ad after ad. How can this be possible? Well, maybe because very few of my colleagues in the press seem all that troubled by it. Unless I’ve missed it, none of the national papers or networks or Buzzfeeders have done a comprehensive report on Romney’s persistence in playing the welfare card. It’s as if it was enough to have the factcheckers offer their initial scolding, but after that, hey, anything goes. I saw no mention in dispatches from yesterday of Romney’s successful use of the welfare line in Beallsville—instead, the stories were dominated by Romney’s declaration of outrage, later in the day, over Obama’s campaign of “anger and hate.” This referred, apparently, to everything from the Obama SuperPAC’s boundary-pushing ad about the death of the wife of a steelworker laid off by Bain Capital (which has barely aired on TV) and Joe Biden’s use of the word “unchained” in talking about Wall Street reform in southern Virginia. A psychoanalyst might see in Romney’s outrage over campaign excess more than a little Freudian projection.
Alec MacGillis, at TNR.
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