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In the run-up to the 2012 Republican convention, Mitt Romney’s campaign reportedly poured half of its advertising dollars into a factually false ad that claimed that Obama had eliminated the “welfare-to-work” requirement and that welfare recipients were given money for doing nothing. Under Obama’s welfare plan, “you wouldn’t have to work and [you] wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send your welfare check,” the ad claimed. “That’s false,” wrote Jonathan Alter at Bloomberg, “but it successfully conjures unemployed people sitting on the couch mooching off the middle class.” The Romney campaign’s understanding of the “language of dependency, entitlement and lack of responsibility” prompted the welfare ads, with their “relatively crude racial demagoguery,” notes Haney López. |
