Retiring Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) sounded a dark note about the reelection of President Barack Obama Thursday, suggesting that he won a majority because many voters were "receiving a check."
"If you look at the numbers and if you look at the way pure democracy works, pure democracy is dangerous," the former GOP presidential candidate said Wednesday on Bloomberg TV. "The majority dictates against the minority. So, right now the majority are receiving a check...That is why people were sort of surprised with these conditions that this president can get reelected. That is a bad sign in that there are more on the receiving end. People do not want anything cut. They want all the bailouts to come. They want the Fed to keep printing money."
Paul admitted to The Huffington Post's Sam Stein that he takes Social Security. "[It's] just as I use the post office, I use government highways, I use the banks, I use the federal reserve system. But that doesn't mean that you can't work to remove this in the same way on Social Security," he said on MSNBC in June.
Paul's comments were similar to the infamous ones made by former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who said in leaked comments from a May fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans were "dependent on government" because they did not pay federal income taxes and felt they were "entitled to health care, to food, to housing." Romney later said after an outcry that the comments were "completely wrong."
He then turned to the so-called fiscal cliff. "They do not believe we have gone off the cliff or are close to going off the cliff," said on Bloomberg TV. "They think we can patch it over, that we can somehow come up with some magic solution. You cannot have a budgetary solution if you do not change what the role of government should be. As long as you think we have to police the world and run this welfare state, all we will argue about is who's going to get the loot."
Paul, who did not endorse Romney, praised him for his stance favoring a managed bankruptcy on the auto bailout as opposed to a bailout.
"Romney was hit because he was opposed on one issue he was correct on, he was opposed the bailouts, and the people in the Midwest voted against him," Paul said. "'Oh, we have to be taken care of.' So that vote was sort of like what we're laughing at in Greece. Those 80,000 people do not want anything cut, they won't compromise. It is the people that are that way. That is why our revolution is significant. We're trying to change people's minds. That is why changing the minds of young people is so important."
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