Mitt Speaks. Oh, No!
By GAIL COLLINS
NYT
On the morning after the Florida primary, Mitt Romney bounded out of bed, inhaled the sweet air of victory, donned his new cloak of invulnerability ...
... and went on CNN to announce that he doesn’t care about poor people.
“I’m not concerned about the very poor,” he told a slightly stunned-looking Soledad O’Brien.
Whenever the topic turns to wealth, or the lack thereof, some inner demon seems to make Romney say something that sounds ridiculous, offensive or ridiculously offensive.
If this had been post-South Carolina, we might have assumed that he was making a play for the segment of his party that believes the greatest threat to the American way of life is greedy paupers. But the nomination was in the bag! Mitt was just being Mitt and trying to present himself as the candidate of the middle class, which he defined as “the 90-95 percent of Americans who, right now, are struggling.” Subtract the 1 percent at the top and Romney appeared to be saying that he was absolutely not going to direct his campaign at the bottom 4 percent of the American public. That certainly makes sense politically, since you are talking — according to my very rough calculations — mostly about folks who are living in households with incomes under $5,000. Not a group with terrific turnout.
(More here.)
NYT
On the morning after the Florida primary, Mitt Romney bounded out of bed, inhaled the sweet air of victory, donned his new cloak of invulnerability ...
... and went on CNN to announce that he doesn’t care about poor people.
“I’m not concerned about the very poor,” he told a slightly stunned-looking Soledad O’Brien.
Whenever the topic turns to wealth, or the lack thereof, some inner demon seems to make Romney say something that sounds ridiculous, offensive or ridiculously offensive.
If this had been post-South Carolina, we might have assumed that he was making a play for the segment of his party that believes the greatest threat to the American way of life is greedy paupers. But the nomination was in the bag! Mitt was just being Mitt and trying to present himself as the candidate of the middle class, which he defined as “the 90-95 percent of Americans who, right now, are struggling.” Subtract the 1 percent at the top and Romney appeared to be saying that he was absolutely not going to direct his campaign at the bottom 4 percent of the American public. That certainly makes sense politically, since you are talking — according to my very rough calculations — mostly about folks who are living in households with incomes under $5,000. Not a group with terrific turnout.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
What a bone-head comment from a member of the party that ended slavery and attempted to reform welfare. There can and should be a legitimate discussion around the issue of poverty such as, why after some $16 trillion spent on means-tested welfare do we have more illegitimacy?
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