It never ceases to amaze me how liberals and "progressives" harp on a meme when they think it suits them politically, when in reality, the meme itself exposes the bankruptcy of their position.

Take the '47%' issue from the now infamous "secret" video tape of Mitt Romney. Governor Romney stated, among other things, that the 47% of Americans receiving government benefits wouldn't likely vote for someone who wants to change that (inherently unfair) system. He's probably right. The sad state of affairs is that we have created a culture of dependency and entitlement that is anathema to what this country is all about. When the top 50% of wage earners pay 97% of all income taxes something is desperately wrong. That is not "fairness." That is redistribution, pure and simple. And I'm tired of it.

Paul Kengor chimes in on another iteration of the '47' meme in The American Spectator. "'47' -- What's in a Number?"

The newest pro-Obama, media-generated scandal is this Middle-East diversion of a story about Mitt Romney stating that "47 percent of the people … will vote for the president no matter what." These are people who, said Romney, 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."

The Obama media think this new magic number will help Obama. They hope it diverts our attention from the disaster in the Middle East, where Obama faces a Carter-like catastrophe. They hope it shifts our focus from genuine shockers, like the fact that Obama has missed a literal majority of his daily intelligence briefings, including all of them in the week leading up to the anniversary of 9/11 and the Middle East eruption. Our nation's so-called "journalists" dig feverishly for something negative regarding their true enemy: Mitt Romney. They smell blood (or so they hope) in this "47 percent" thing. They sense a winning issue for the president who they strive not to cover with objective reporting but to shamelessly promote.

If I were they, however, I wouldn't be so confident. You want to talk about "47"? I'll give you a "47" that all of this comes back to: It's the 47 million Americans who are on food stamps. That's an astonishing number, truly unprecedented, and it strikes at the core of Mitt Romney's message, and, more so, at what works to Romney's advantage in this election -- and to Obama's disadvantage. [...]