What they don’t say, says it all
If you listen closely to Republicans, you can learn as much by what they don’t say, as what they do.
There have already been seven Republican presidential debates going back to May 5. I’ve taken a real close look at the transcripts of each. It is quite clear Republicans like to talk about “jobs.”
By my count, the presidential candidates used the word “job,” as in job creation — 208 times. Unfortunately, those people without jobs, the “unemployed,” have only been mentioned twice during all of those debates.
Social Security has become an especially popular debate subject.
Texas Governor Rick Perry’s controversial statements about Social Security being a “Ponzi scheme” have brought out the lover of Social Security in them all. The phrase “Social Security” has been used 65 times. But the people who benefit from it, the “elderly,” or “senior citizens,” have only been mentioned a combined total of 17 times.
It seems programs, not people, are the most important things on which to campaign. If you swear you’ll gut “Obamacare,” you’ll be assured a round of applause. I’ve counted 81 of those applause lines.
Yet, the people who are supposed to benefit from “Obamacare” because they’ll possibly get low cost “health insurance” might be a little dismayed to learn the phrase “health insurance” has only passed the lips of this crop of Republican candidates seven times. In case you’re counting, that’s an average of once a debate.
If you consider yourself part of the middle-class — beware. Out of the tens of thousands of words uttered during more than a dozen debates — the phrase “middle class” was used seven times by Mitt Romney, and once by Jon Huntsman. That’s all. “Middle-income” was used another seven times.
There have been a few exceptions. Republicans can, at times, show their concern for some people. Although, it’s not the kind of attention they’d like. Romney, Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Jon Hunstman, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Gary Johnson have contributed to making the phrase “illegal alien” (or illegal immigration) a debate staple. The candidates have used those phrases 42 times.
And the name Ronald Reagan seems to fly out of nowhere, regardless of the question. Reagan has been mentioned 42 times. Yet if Reagan was alive today, and on stage for one of these debates — there’s a chance he’d get booed. He’d probably even be called a “socialist” for mounting “class warfare.”
On Sept. 19, President Obama was accused of that after he announced, “Middle class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.” That’s nearly identical to Reagan’s June 6, 1985 speech, in which he asked a crowd, “Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver, or less?” It was a question that ignited a resounding “More!” from his Republican audience.
Today, Reagan would have had to answer to a man who now deifies him — Newt Gingrich. At the last debate, Gingrich seemed to have forgotten Reagan’s 1985 speech.
“It’s important to remember, this month, in the Reagan administration, September 1983, we created 1,100,000 new jobs. Obama’s socialist policies, class warfare, and bureaucratic socialism, we created zero in August,” Gingrich said.
But Obama, the so-called “socialist,” is no more a “socialist” than Reagan was in 1985, when he told that crowd, “We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share.”
The 1985 Reagan wouldn’t have been the only person who’d be at odds with his 2011, tax-cut happy, Republican brethren. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney of 2011 would boo the governor Mitt Romney’s 2003 state-of-the-state speech, when he said back then, “We’ll plug corporate loopholes, so companies will pay their fair share.”
Why, isn’t that what Obama had been saying on Sept. 22 in Ohio, when he told a crowd, “Let’s close those loopholes. Let’s eliminate those tax breaks, and let’s make sure everybody’s paying their fair share?”
Romney needs to hop on a time machine, then go back and find himself.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.