Are Republicans really 'enemies of the poor' in our society?

"There are 47 percent 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."

By now nearly everyone in America knows the preceding quote is part of the statement Mitt Romney thought he was making in private, the quote that might have cost him the 2012 election.

This isn't about Romney. What it is about is the attitude conservatives have toward those Americans who aren't making it.

Many of these people never had to struggle just to get onto the bottom rung of the success ladder, and some of those who did then wanted to prevent others from succeeding the same way. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas admitted he was a beneficiary of affirmative action, but said it should be eliminated because it left him wondering whether he had really succeeded on his own.

The debate over extending unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed has also shown what ought to be called a "sympathy gap." Despite the fact that there are far more unemployed men and women than there are job vacancies, conservatives are claiming that paying unemployment benefits makes it less likely that people will look for jobs.

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman is blunt about it when he says Republicans in 2014 are enemies of the poor with policies designed essentially to double down on supply side economics. Since they're not about to raise taxes on the wealthy, all their budget cuts come from programs that help the middle class and working class.

It really all comes down to one question. Are people who are rich and successful somehow better people -- or harder workers -- than people who are struggling to get by?

It's a real simple answer.

No.

Actually, it comes down to individuals. Some are better and some aren't, and just as there are rich people who succeeded strictly through luck and connections, there are poor people who are talented and hard working.

The one point at which the entire philosophy of forcing the poor to make it on their own falls apart is when you think about children.

It's one thing to be self-righteous and say that people who don't work shouldn't eat. It's another thing entirely to say that little children should be punished because they were unlucky in their choice of parents. The whole "makers and takers" thing fails to address people who have no way of making anything.

If there's one thing that is truly disgusting about the self-love these people seem to exude it's the other side of the coin. If you look at the Romney quote again, it comes down to someone who grew up fabulously wealthy saying that people who weren't as lucky see themselves as victims.

Sadly, some of them are victims -- victims of people like Romney and the others who get far more from the government than any of them do.