Everyone knows that "European welfare state" is just codeword for "black people."
But in a way it kind of is.
You really don't see the connection between railing against "the nanny state" and coded swipes against minorities on the welfare system? The GOP can keep denying the strategy until their dying breath but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's won them many elections on the backs of scared racists.
Yes, I realize some people believe that the rhetoric of economic individualism is necessarily a veiled form of anti-minority resentment. But that has little to do with the idea that Romney is talking about how socialism is unAmerican in order to say that Obama is a black. People that care about Obama's race aren't in need of Mitt reminding them about this little detail.
