Turns out, Mitt Romney is a hypocrite regarding welfare!

After castigating many middle class and poor Americans (and Obama supporters by extension) with this statement ...

"There are 47 percent who are with him, 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."

"These are people who pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

IT TURNS OUT, MITT ROMNEY'S PARENTS COLLECTED WELFARE!

In recent weeks, a Mitt Romney campaign ad has flashed across television screens blasting President Obama on the issue of welfare. The ad claims Obama "gutted" the requirement in the 1996 welfare reform law that recipients look for work in exchange for government support. Media fact-checkers quickly debunked Romney's attack—PolitiFact rated it "Pants on Fire"—and Obama's campaign lashed back with a TV ad of its own. Yet Romney stuck with the welfare attack on the stump, and Romney aide Ashley O'Connor said the ad was the campaign's most potent of 2012.

Romneyland didn't whip up the bogus welfare attack on its own. It relied instead on the work of Robert Rector, a senior researcher at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, DC.

Few Americans outside the Beltway will recognize Rector's name. But it's worth knowing that, for a national campaign spot, Team Romney turned to a man who holds controversial, and in some cases inaccurate, views of poverty and economics. Rector has claimed that poverty doesn't impact children, that you're not really poor if you have air conditioning or a car, and that the very idea of welfare lifting Americans out of poverty is "idiotic."

Rector is the focus of a new opposition research document by the Bridge Project, a liberal nonprofit group digging into the personnel, policies, and funders in the conservative movement. The Bridge Project is affiliated with American Bridge 21st Century, a super-PAC that researches Republican candidates. (Unlike American Bridge, the Bridge Project does not disclose its donors.) The two groups are the brainchild of David Brock, the ex-conservative journalist who founded the watchdog group Media Matters for America. Bridge Project spokesman Chris Harris says it's "critically important" for Americans to know where political leaders get their information. "As this report shows, not only are conservatives' welfare attacks downright false, but they come from a man with a long history of minimizing the struggles of the poor and villainizing the very idea of government assistance for those who need it," Harris says.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/mitt-romney-welfare-obama-robert-rector