Election 2012

Mitt Romney Continues to Play the Southern Strategy

Here's Romney today talking about the race-baiting welfare reform thing. Not only is the topic itself torn directly from Lee Atwater's Playbook, but this remark absolutely confirms it.

"There's no question in my mind that the president's action was calculated to... shore up his base," Romney said, according to an extended quote that USA Today provided to The Huffington Post. "Weakening the work requirement in welfare is an enormous mistake."

It's a lie. It's been debunked by everyone from FactCheck.org to Bloomberg to The Washington Post, and yet he keeps repeating it. Why? Because the white conservative Republican base thinks that black Obama supporters are milking the system and collecting free money -- free money that the white conservatives diligently pay into the system while the black liberals don't pay any taxes. This is precisely the ridiculous, racist idea Romney is referencing by continuing to repeat this lie.