Meet Clifford Russell a Romney Campaign Worker in Bedford, Virginia.

I ask him to elaborate and he complies, vigorously.

“What’s killing us is all these entitlements, we’ve got to get rid of all of them. All this welfare, food stamps, Medicare, and then big government health care on top of it, it’s all just too much! When do we say enough is enough?’

What do you mean, exactly, I ask him. You say people are suffering under Obama, don’t they need some help?

‘No. No more help, enough is enough. People have to pick themselves up, take some responsibility. Why should we be paying for people’s mistakes and bad choices? All these illegitimate families just adding to the population, making all these bad decisions, then asking us to pay for it? It’s time to cut them off.”

I ask for some clarification: what do you mean, just starve them out? What if people can’t find work? Let them starve?

“Look, there’s always something you can do. You telling me people can’t make a choice for a better life? We have to help all of them? No. I’ll tell you what really need to do with these illegitimate families on welfare—give all the kids up for adoption and execute the parents.”

I stare at him and blink in a glaze of shock.

Just to be sure I heard him right, I ask him to repeat it, twice.

“Yes, I mean it. Get rid of all of them, give the kids up for adoption, execute the parents, and you get rid of the problem.’ (When I call him back to revisit the issue, he elaborates: ‘put the children up for adoption and execute the parents, and word would get out soon’ that poor people shouldn’t have kids.)

This is a local Romney headquarters in swing-state Virginia, not some far-right Tea Party fringe group (or maybe that’s what the GOP has become). This is, at least in growing part, today’s mainstream GOP.

Mr. Russell has several other opinions about government programs and policies to share with us in the article, most equally as bad. How is it that these types of beliefs have become acceptable enough within the GOP so as not to preclude him from fronting a Romney campaign office? This is really the kind of man the Romney campaign wants talking to prospective voters when they come thru the door?

The author of the article did miss one question that I definitely would have asked Mr. Russell…

“If the both the parents of any illegitimate child are put to death for their “crime” what do you suppose that would do to the abortion and murder rates?”

After all when a pregnancy becomes a matter of life or death you have to believe that 99.9% of people would make the choice to terminate it. Some women certainly would not want to tell their boyfriends that they were pregnant either, they might end up being murdered if they did.

Then again, perhaps Mr. Russell has thought about that side of things and simply sees his suggestion as a “legal” means of minority/underclass population control?