Mitt Romney: Okay, businesses do need government, after all

By Greg Sargent


Great catch by Jed Lewison here. Look at what Mitt Romney said on the campaign trail today:

“There are a lot of people in government who help us and allow us to have an economy that works and allow entrepenuers and business leaders of various kinds to start businesses and create jobs. We all recognize that. That’s an important thing.”

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This is hard to distinguish from what Obama himself said in his “controversial” remarks: individual success doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it is also enabled by a smoothly functioning society that is kept running by government. What this confirms is that the radicalismdiscerned in Obama’s speech by Republicans is a pure invention. Remember, in attacking Obama’s remarks yesterday, Romney went so far as to say that Obama had insulted all Americans everwhere who have ever worked hard to better themselves in life. Romney cast Obama’s remarks as an attack on individual initiative itself. Yet today, Romney only underscored how non-controversial Obama’s remarks really were.

Sure, Romney kept his attack up on the “didn’t build that” comment. But as you can see, he needed to dishonestly cite the one Obama line out of context in order to do it. That's because this is the only way Romney can paint Obama’s point as controversial — or, indeed, as being significantly different from his own admission that businesses do rely to some degree on government.

more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/mitt-romney-okay-businesses-do-need-government-after-all/2012/07/18/gJQAezDHuW_blog.html