Conservatism as a Second Language

This morning Mitt Romney said the following during a CNN interview that today earned him a lot of liberal and--although for different reasons--even conservative ire:

Romney says, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair , I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich.... I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling."

[Soledad] O'Brien asked him to clarify his remarks saying, "There are lots of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say, 'That sounds odd.'"

Romney continues, "We will hear from the Democrat party, the plight of the poor.... You can focus on the very poor, that's not my focus.... The middle income Americans, they're the folks that are really struggling right now and they need someone that can help get this economy going for them."

Now, I understand that the line about not caring about the very poor will be taken completely out of context by liberals and used against him.  Obama and his allies will try to use that line as an example of Romney's out-of-touch-one-percent-loving-self.  Read in context, Romney sees that the very poor already have safety nets, which make them less of the focus of his economic policy.  The line was obviously a mistake and now his supporters have to take time to defend Romney and make the case why the poor shouldn't be thrown to the wolves (never a good defense to be making in the first place).  

This I guess is as true as far as it goes.

But the main problem is that Romney has accepted liberal premises for his argument.  Here is John McCormack on this larger problem: 

But Romney's remark isn't merely tone-deaf, it's also un-conservative. The standard conservative argument is that a conservative economic agenda will help everyone. For the poor, that means getting as many as possible back on their feet and working rather than languishing as wards of the welfare state. 

And then of course there are the poor who will rely on the safety net even in good times. Romney isn't sure if the safety net is in need of repair, but for the poor, Medicaid is a dysfunctional system because of federal regulation. So Republicans are united behind the proposal to block-grant the program back to the states--not just to save money but to help the poor. School choice is another conservative program designed to help poor children flourish. 

Medicare and Social Security--programs Romney promised to protect the other night--are the two huge safety net programs, and they are being threatened by runaway spending. To be anti-debt is to be anti-poverty. As Congressman Paul Ryan says, when a debt crisis hits the elderly and the poor are hit the first and the worst.

Had Mitt Romney picked up his conservatism sooner, perhaps he would know these arguments by heart.

Conservatives cannot make arguments that focus on class because ultimately, those kinds of arguments are basically meaningless (especially in America).  Conservatives seeking to conserve the principles of the Declaration of Independence--principles that cut across wealth, religion, and race--should be talking about policies that help all Americans instead of pitting one group of Americans against another.