Only a couple weeks in, the Republican presidential primaries have already given us all we've come to expect from the GOP: baseless attacks and conservative talking points. After the New Hampshire primary, the leading Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, called Obama's incumbency a "failed presidency" and claimed Obama is trying to "put free enterprise on trial."
Romney's plans, on the other hand, have two goals: to aid the extremely wealthy and weaken the lower and middle classes. He plans to repeal Obamacare, cut social programs and reduce the corporate tax rate to 25 percent.
The specifics of Romney's policies are similar to those of the other prominent Republican candidates. But avaricious, inequitable politics are not enough; Republican policies must also masquerade as fairer and more American.
Romney says he believes "in an America that's based upon opportunity and freedom." There's a small problem with that. Putting more power in corporate hands and cutting social programs - programs designed to give the slightest semblance of equity to working-class Americans in our grossly inequitable economic class system - does not strengthen opportunity and freedom.
Romney and other conservatives ignore a fundamental problem with unchecked capitalism: The wealthy accumulate inordinate amounts of wealth by capitalizing on the desperation of the working class. Our desperate working class, willing to work for the spare change of executives, can have no opportunity in America under the austere economic policies of the Republican candidates.
But wait, conservatives proclaim, "Anything else is redistribution! And socialism!" Indeed, just before the primaries, Romney went for the Republican-patented method of appealing to xenophobia. He claimed Obama "wants to make us a European-style welfare state."
It would be slightly less despicable if Romney's comparison was logical. It wasn't.
In a study of the United States and its European counterparts, the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project found that "there is a stronger link between parental education and children's economic, educational, and socio-emotional outcomes" in the United States than in any other country they investigated.
So where is the opportunity and freedom?
Apparently, they are in those "European-style welfare states." Pay attention, Romney and other conservatives. It seems Obama's plans are more in tune with your vision for America than your own plans.
In the natural manner of a politician in need, Romney - in a grossly misconstrued manner - appealed to our Founding Fathers for help, claiming that Obama's protection of working-class Americans will "kill ... the rights which have been in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution."
An America with a profoundly vast class divide - a divide that puts, according to a review at Harvard Business School, 50 percent of all wealth into the hands of 1 percent of Americans - is not what our Founding Fathers envisioned. It is not even conservative, but a grossly perverse state of society. Austere economic policies, including limiting spending and cutting social programs, are antithetical to opportunity and freedom. When an American is making pennies off her 40-hour work week, when she can't afford health care because of money-grubbing insurance companies and is struggling to pay basic bills, she no longer has the "certain, unalienable rights" that the Founding Fathers tried to protect.
Conservative politicians need to learn this: Opportunity is for more than just the wealthy. And until they stop working for the wealthy, their policies threaten to widen the class divide in America and replace our republic with a plutocracy. That is, if it hasn't been replaced already.
Abdul Zalikha is a biology and English junior at UF. His column regularly appears on Wednesdays.
