Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan made a statement on Fox News's On the Record Tuesday that is guaranteed to raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle.
Speaking with host Greta Van Susteren about how Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's remarks concerning the 47 percent of the nation that don't pay federal income taxes were spot on, Buchanan called Barack Obama a "Fabian Socialist" and "a drug dealer of welfare."
PAT BUCHANAN: Look at Europe. Look at France. Look at Spain. Look at Greece. Look at Italy. The public sectors have gotten so huge that these places are collapsing and people are leaving. That is what is happening to us. 37 percent of our entire GDP now is consumed by government. 24, 25 percent at the federal level, 12 percent at the state and municipal level. It's about 55 percent in France. This is the great cause of our time. Are we going down the road?
Barack Obama, in my judgment, is a Fabian Socialist. You saw the redistribution, and by that I mean he's not Bernie Sanders who is out in the open and honest about it, but he's a Fabian Socialist who wants to move through gradualism and reform step by step until a majority of Americans are dependent upon government. And when that happens, the party of government wins every election.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, HOST: You know, I'm sort of curious, we have only this snippet of it, and I always want the whole thing so that I’m satisfied I can put it in context. But what's interesting is that what he said was in part, and I realize it's only part, “I think what we’re going to have to do is somehow resuscitate the notion that government actually can be effective at all.” In the last past four years has he resuscitated the notion that the government actually can be effective?
BUCHANAN: No. Let's take one example. Food stamps. I grew up in D.C. 800,000 people here in D.C., born in the ’30s during the depression, grew up in the ’50s. Nobody in D.C. of those 800,000 was on food stamps. City’s now 600,000. One in every five people are on food stamps.
VAN SUSTEREN: What happened?
Now, I think you've got, Gov. Romney is the complete opposite. We believe in temporary help for anybody that's in trouble. You should have a floor of decency under any family. Unemployment should be temporary. Unemployment benefits should be. Food stamps should be temporary. What are we doing with 47 million people permanently have to be fed by the government?
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, it's much easier to move people off food stamps and move them off unemployment if the economy is revved up and going, so they had some place to go.
BUCHANAN: It is indeed, but look at what we did in the ’90s, the Republicans and Bill Clinton did. They said, okay, two years on welfare and then off. You got to get Workfair. You got to go get a job. I mean, you cannot, look, the society cannot carry forever a huge, vast, and growing class of folks who are permanently dependent upon the government of the United States and state and local government while you are shrinking the number of people that are contributing and paying the taxes. When the tax consumers outnumber the taxpayers, it is all over for the GOP, and it is all over, I think, for this republic.
VAN SUSTEREN: I suspect if President Obama were here he would say the reason that he talks about the redistribution is because he doesn't want the United States to become an essentially a gated community where you have the haves and the have-nots. It’s so extreme that even the haves have to live behind bars to be protected.
BUCHANAN: Ronald Reagan said something different. He said a floor of decency under every family but no roof over any man’s head. This idea, look, redistribution has got to be permanent because the most successful, hardest worker, most energetic, most ambitious, they’re going to rise up and make more and more and more. He’s going to come in and scoop it off for eternity to give to folks who aren't making that much? That is socialism. That's not the country we grew up in.
(HT The Right Scoop)
