Campaign 2012: The Report Card

…And yet, unfortunately, Romney’s worldview can’t just be dismissed out of hand. Too many Americans agree with it. Their dismay has been flagrant since the Ohio results came in. Assorted patriots in states that get more revenue from the federal government than they kick in—I’m talking about you, Alabama and Mississippi—are circulating petitions to secede. Business owners are threatening to raise prices, like the fool in Florida who runs more than 30 Denny’s saying he’ll slap a 5% Obamacare tax on his menus, even though he has no idea how much universal health care will cost him and even though the statewide health insurance exchanges might actually lower the premiums that most small businesses will pay if the exchanges unleash the power of (regulated) market competition.

There are sore losers in every election. But the quality of the carping is different this time. The sense that a “traditional” America is being supplanted by something foreign—an amalgam of Greece and Kenya, perhaps—seems to have only intensified since the election. The fantasy that the Obama coalition supports “socialism” was raised, mournfully, by William Bennett, who cited a 2011 Pew poll. The poll exists. Blacks, young people and liberals all copped to more positive feelings about “socialism” than “capitalism.” But I wonder, What do these people think socialism is?

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