You can't even buy it in a book store yet, but a series of excerpts from Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's new book: “The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty,” is already becoming a major issue.
Cuccinelli is the presumptive Republican nominee for Governor of Virginia.
The Washington Post released excerpts of the book under the headline "Cuccinelli echos Romney's 47 percent'.
For Democrats, the book outlines in Cuccinelli's own words, their principle attack against him. That he is a rigid conservative hellbent on fundamentally changing the way government operates. The Post outlines several excerpts which illustrate that point.
One of the more revealing pieces of text specifically mentions politically sacred programs.
“One of their favorite ways to increase their power is by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security, and outright welfare (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing, and the like). These programs make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can’t afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run, or costly to the rest of society.”
But while the book offers a new forum for Cuccinelli to express those views. They aren't necessarily surprising or something the Attorney General has been saying virtually his entire time in public life.
Take this speech Cuccinelli gave this past spring. He was a speaker at the Iowa GOP's Lincoln Dinner. Cuccinelli was promoting the Republican ticket and called the election one of the most important of the audience's life time. He said in order to win Republicans and Conservatives were going to have to work harder than their Democratic counterparts.
Here is the video from the Iowa's GOP's YouTube channel:
“The Conservative sales pitch is tougher than the Liberal sales pitch. The Liberal sales pitch is easy. Here is a check," said Cuccinelli to laughs. "Vote to keep us in power and the checks will keep coming. That is pretty easy."
Cuccinelli goes on to say Conservatives need to articulate how they plan to help the poor by giving them the chance to fight their way out of poverty.
"That is pretty easy," he said of the Liberal campaign pitch. "They do the feel good thing and so on so forth, for Conservatives it is more intellectual. It means setting up a system that when our children are our age that opportunity will still be available to them.”
In a press conference today, DPVA Chair Charniele Herring said Cuccinelli has a misguided view of the government's role and the people receiving assistance.
"Ken Cuccinelli's extremism has reached a new low with his suggestion that Americans who have paid into Medicare and Social Security are 'dependent on government', 'getting the goodies' and incapable of making decisions in their own their own best interests," She said.
Cuccinelli's campaign claims his opponents are taking short excerpts of a long book out of context.
"It's unfortunate that Democrats are cherry picking a select passage to attack Mr. Cuccinelli," said Jahan Wilcox, Cuccinelli's spokesman. "When the full book is available, voters will realize that Mr. Cuccinelli supports Medicare and Social Security and that this was a baseless attack."
The book was co-written by Cuccinelli's Director of Communications in the Attorney General's Office Brian Gottstein. It is set to be released on February 12th.
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