The Right Likes Entitlements, Too

[Cross-posted at Purple Wisconsin]

Update: You can add the Romneys' 2010, $77,000 federal income deduction for show horse expenses to his list of entitlement perks, as reported by The New York Times.

Conservatives attack what they define as special interest arrangements, or entitlements created by government - - it can be Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, food stamps, affirmative action, gender and sexual orientation equity guarantees, public employee health and pension agreements, and the like.

Part of the argument is often, 'don't confer benefits, because it's then too hard to take them away,'

But look at hard Congressional Republicans and presidential candidate Mitt Romney are fighting to preserve Bush-era tax cuts for a relatively small number of upper-income earners.

Those tax cuts created an entitlement not even contemplated by Ronald Reagan - - a tax privilege that absolutely confers special benefits on politically-influential donors funded by cuts in programs for, or an increased tax burden on others with less power who do not receive the entitlement.

Conservatives say they oppose government-created social engineering and political correctness, and would have you believe those terms and strategies apply only to liberals and their constituencies.

But conservatives simply have their own set of government-sponsored, socially-engineered, politically-correct plans and goals, and tax breaks for the wealthy are at the top of list.

The right's embrace of social-engineering on the fiscal side was acknowledged by Newt Gingrich during the GOP primaries when discussing the Paul Ryan budget plan:

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," Gingrich said on "Meet the Press" in May. "I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."