Speaking to “a group of his wealthier Golden State backers at a San Francisco fund-raiser,” on a Sunday in April 2008, one presidential candidate slimes small-town America as bitterly clinging to their guns, bigotries and bibles. The media listens in, but decides to keep a lid on the rant, because, in the words of a reporter who like the rest was rooting for the candidate, she “didn’t want to bring down the campaign.”

Four years later, another presidential candidate states a few plain facts about an electorate of which “47 percent ‘will vote for [Obama] no matter what’; “who are with him,” no matter what, “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it”; who regard as an”entitlement” the fruits of another man’s labor, and think “government should give it to them,” and who “will vote for this president no matter what… people who pay no income tax.”

The same reporters who refused to pull back the curtain to reveal Obama’s contempt for small town Pennsylvania are hyperventilating over Mitt Romney’s unvarnished assessment of a large portion of the Democratic Party’s constituency.

One is, seemingly, forbidden to point out that while some people work for their living, others vote for their livelihood.

Thankfully, Romney is not groveling, this time, but simply affirming the figures and his,

concern about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work.