“Well, you had to finish the sentence, Soledad. I said I’m not concerned about the very poor that have the safety net, but if it has holes in it, I will repair them. The challenge right now — we will hear from the Democrat Party the plight of the poor. And there’s no question, it’s not good being poor, and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor. But my campaign is focused on middle income Americans. My campaign — you can choose where to focus. You can focus on the rich, that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor. That’s not my focus. My focus is on middle income Americans, retirees living on Social Security, people who can’t find work, folks that have kids getting ready to go to college. These are the people who have been most badly hurt during the Obama years (transcript from here).The explanation is worse than the original remark! Since when is it the part of the Republican candidate to group people by class and have the government choose which class to favor? I thought we freedom-lovers hated that stuff and cared about making opportunity available for everyone? When is he going to talk about freedom for individuals and families, and not about him swooping in to help members of a particularly burdened class? And if that's his vision, exactly how is it different from Obama, except by degree? I become more convinced that Santorum is right, Romney can't make a sufficient distinction between himself and Obama. This is the same Progressive crud, just less bold.
Update: Maybe he really doesn't care about the poor. He wants the minimum wage to rise with inflation. Keep those poor minority kids out of work and on that nice safety net we have for them!
