To introduce a Democratic National Committee charge that Republican candidate Mitt Romney is not from “real America,” an Iowa student levelled two disparate charges against Romney — that his tax plan would increase the deficit, and that his opposition to Obamacare is immoral — with a knock on the free market thrown in for good measure.
“Ultimately, it will be up to voters across the Hawkeye State and across America to decide what lies beneath the surface of Mitt Romney’s candidacy,” said Casey Petrashek, a senior at Iowa State University, during a press conference with the DNC vice chair. “For today’s young Americans, Mr. Romney would create a steeper path to the middle class and place the burden of paying for his tax cuts for the wealthy on the backs of my generation,” he added.
Petrashek criticized Romney’s proposed tax cuts because they would produce “deficits [and] debts that would lead to disastrous consequences for my generation.” But he forgot these deficits and “disastrous consequences” when protesting Romney’s proposal to repeal Obamacare. “Mitt Romney talks about moral responsibility,” Petrashek said, “but how moral is it to repeal health care for 2.5 million young Americans?”
With respect to Obamacare’s effect on the deficit, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said early this year that Obamacare would add $700 billion to the deficit, an argument bolstered by the failure of the CLASS Act, which Democrats had relied upon for a substantial portion of the supposed deficit reduction (or at least neutrality) that they said Obamacare would provide.
The college student, en route to praising President Obama for federal funding of college bills, also criticized Romney’s support for the free market. “When a student asked [Romney] about rising tuition costs, he said that the problem would work itself out in the free market system,” according to Petrashek. “Not only is that out of touch, it’s just plain wrong.”
Petrashek’s whole address boiled down to praising Obama for giving money and government services to young people, and criticizing Romney for threatening to take away those services and for suggesting that free markets, rather than government handouts, should drive college tuition.
Maybe Petrashek’s argument will resonate with other young Americans. Since May of 2010, after all, the percentage of 18-29 year olds who react positively to the word “socialism” has increased from 43 percent to 49 percent, according to PEW polling.
