Mitt Romney is just really, really awful at being a politician. Every time he opens his mouth, that silver foot keeps getting inserted sideways. Greg Sargent tags this Romney comment from this morning:
“I’m not concerned with the very poor. We have a safety net there,” Romney told CNN. “If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”
“The challenge right now — we will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor,” Romney responded, after repeating that he would fix any holes in the safety net. “It’s not good being poor and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor . . . My focus is on middle income Americans…
In any political campaign, he said, “you can choose where to focus. You can focus on the rich — that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor — that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans.”
Pretty much everything I said yesterday about David Brooks being out of touch with Americans goes for Mitt Romney, and by a couple orders of magnitude to boot. Mitt Romney has the all the empathy of a hamster’s water bottle. The fundamental trick to being a politician is being a convincing liar at least a fraction of the time, and Romney has the distinct ability to speak about the 99% in terms of being unruly verge that needs to be trimmed. In other words, he lacks the skill to get large number of people to vote against their own-self interest because his programming keeps defaulting back to Thurston Howell III mode. Other Republicans have this ability, but the Marquis de Mittens just can’t bring himself to utter such banal chicanery (which his odd because everything else about his campaign is in fact banal chicanery, especially anything involving President Obama).
All this of course comes back to the issue that Mitt Romney’s about as approachable as a hedgehog with a migraine, and he can’t override his own instincts when it comes to dealing with “the people”. He’s never dealt with them outside of spreadsheets and statistics and it shows. It’s all numbers to the guy. And nobody, nobody believes him when he says he rich aren’t his focus.
That’s all he cares about. Everyone knows it. And yeah, we keep bringing up Mitt’s positronic brain and all, but that’s who he is, and that’s why he’s destined to lose.
[UPDATE] What Steve M. said.See? He keeps repeating it. It’s a rehearsed line. It’s a talking point he wants to take into the campaign. He wants to divide and conquer; he wants middle-class people who’ve had the rug pulled out from under them in this recession to feel that their interests are in opposition to the interests of “the very poor.” He wants them to think that President Obama is excessively concerned with “the very poor” at their expense.
Will this work? I don’t know. But it’s no slip-up. It’s no gaffe.
Every Republican has been pushing this point. The difference is Mitt is really, really bad at it.
Citizen Alan
Did he really say “Democrat Party”? Joseph Fucking Smith!
shortstop
Thing is, he’s been running for office for more than two decades. How long does it take the average politician to learn not to string certain words together? I’m really starting to wonder if he’s stone stupid as well as being all the other objectionable things we’ve fully discussed.
jibeaux
I’m not concerned with the very poor, just the 95% of Americans who are struggling.
Good lord.
Linnaeus
How many politicians really are concerned with the very poor?
Rafer Janders
Also, too, “Democrat Party”? Really?
He’s mainstreaming wingnut.
Stranger Reader
Beat me to it, Citizen Alan. I wonder if that’s supposed to burnish his tough guy credentials with the wingnuts. Seems to me that his consultants have clued him into the fact that he seems like a complete pussy who’s constitutionally incapable of putting that uppity incumbent in his place, and their antidote is taking Castro off the planet and Democrat Party. Pathetic.
Cat Lady
@Citizen Alan:
Seriously – is he going to keep that “Democrat Party” up all election season? I’m from Massachusetts and I didn’t think it was possible to have more disgust and contempt for him, but that quote right there makes it possible. What’s next – the Demonrat Party? He’s such a disgusting fraud.
inkadu
It’s blog posts like these that made me completely surprised when John Kerry lost. It’s a bit of a disservice to your readers to insist that Romney will lose. It might be nice to hear, but there’s not much to back it up.
You say that Romney distancing himself from the poor and the very wealthy to focus on the middle class makes him a “poor politician.” Nonsense. The truly poor aren’t likely to vote for him, and the ones that are don’t consider themselves the truly poor (maybe because they’re white). And the independents are probably convinced that Obama wants to take their money and give it to the poor. By saying he’s not too concerned about the poor, he’s signalling he’s not a spread-the-wealth-to-the-undeserving kind of politician. And nobody is siding with the rich this election cycle, but the rich know who their candidate is, so no loss there.
From my viewpoint, this is a good political move (if inartfully phrased at the beginning).
mike s
Romney – when you turn the cleverness and ruthlessness up to 11 the wisdom and humanity automatically default to 0.
Rafer Janders
@shortstop:
I know some people who know Romney. He’s a good businessman, but in a very narrow way. He’s not a smart or intelligent or perceptive or intellectually curious person outside of that.
Karen
Obama has already jumped on that comment. Good. But the media is already playing it down…guess it’s starting already…the coronation of Romney as President before the election even happens.
slag
“I’m not concerned with the very poor.” Romney then went on to say that he’d give a free ride to Canada to any poor person who wants one. There’s plenty of room on the roof of his SUV.
third of two
Perfect. I’ll be stealing this.
Satanicpanic
I got stuck watching CNN for two hours yesterday and had to listen to his awful rendition of “America the Beautiful” about a dozen times. Romney is tone deaf in more ways than one.
MariedeGournay
“Positronic brain?” Hah. Pre-emotion chip Data had more of a capacity for empathy.
Zandar
@inkadu:
And I disagree. Romney has to at least pretend to give a damn about the other 309,999,999 or so Americans. It’s not what he’s saying, it’s the awfully plastic, completely fake, transparently insincere way he says it.
It’s that “inartful” stuff that turns the people in the middle off.
shortstop
@Rafer Janders: Yes, I could see that. A true narrowness of vision that escapes notice until its holder finally starts getting scrutiny in wider arenas, such as the campaign for the presidency of the U.S.
JPL
He is concerned about the poor. In fact he is so concerned he wants them to pay higher taxes.
shortstop
@slag: Bwa!
flukebucket
Right now renowned libertarian Neal Boortz is shouting out over the speakers in our warehouse how important it is to vote for the Republican candidate no matter who it is because the ONLY thing that matters is getting Barack Obama out of office.
Of course all of the callers here in Georgia want Newt but are assuring Neal that they will vote for the Republican no matter who it is.
That makes the libertarian very happy.
Benjamin Franklin
Hesitation, rather than moving with decisiveness, is the cause of many sports injuries. IOW, being protective of a weak limb, or digit while in play, actually exacerbates the potential for injury. Politics can be like that. Romney is so carefully parsed, that his decisions are flecked with poor judgement, and his words are hobbled by the FEAR he might say the wrong thing. Or, he may not know the right things to say. Just sayin’
kdaug
Watch how Obama pivots on this.
Bulworth
I’m not concerned with the very Mitt Romney…
schrodinger's cat
@MariedeGournay: Data was also more intelligent and more noble than the Mittbot.
Bulworth
@flukebucket: You have to listen to that where you work?
Mark S.
Mitt Romney believes that only the bottom 3% need the safety net. Everyone else is just struggling a little.
Zifnab
@inkadu:
But that’s the point. He’s talking like a machine programmed to spit out the right string of words that will capture the Presidency, without actually analyzing context and coherency. What does it mean that you want to help “95% of Americans, not including the rich or the poor who clearly are already set up fine.” Does anyone really believe 95% of Americans are middle class? Will the Republicans be ok with Romney endorsing the welfare state, even for those 4% of “poor” Americans? Will Democrats swallow the canard that Mitt isn’t concerned with the wealthiest of the wealthy when his platform entails tax cuts and de-regulation specifically aimed at that upper sliver?
“Middle class voters… I support… I support…” doesn’t really resonate even if it is a good political move from a deconstructed perspective. He lacks any sense of sincerity. Hell, he barely makes any sense.
JPL
@Bulworth: That was my thinking. There must me a study showing that productivity increases when listening to classical music rather than zealot talk show hosts.
rlrr
@schrodinger’s cat:
Data also served in the military, unlike Romney.
grandpa john
Mitt really is a robot, no actual living human person could be so totally lacking in self awareness.
JWL
Inkadu is correct. “Destined to lose”? Get real.
JPL
Romney on CBS news said several things including the fact that Newt was against Paul Ryan’s awesome plan to save medicare. That is what we should focus on.
barath
I think there’s a fair chance that he’s trying to play the Reagan southern strategy in his own clumsy way. The “very poor” are just the “young bucks” and the safety net he describes is the same one that they buy Cadillacs with in the GOP universe.
Satanicpanic
@inkadu: The problem is that he’s talking about his campaign– he’s basically announcing his strategy- I’m aiming for middle class voters– which is only going to appeal to those people who love being pandered to.
maya
Meanwhile, up north according to ABC….
Premature endorsalation.
Alex
I’m still amazed that no one has called him on the insanity of 95% of Americans are middle-class.
It’s been a part of his stump speech for months now.
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: Let us all cede the election to Mitt Romney and the Republicans and go hide under our beds instead.
Luthe
If Mittens is so convinced that only the bottom 4% of Americans are “very poor,” then why doesn’t he trying living off the salary of someone in the 95% percentile of income and see what he thinks then?
(Hint: 15% of Americans live in poverty)
ET
“Funny” from what I can tell the entire GOP domestic agenda – outside of gays and abortion – is getting rid of the safety net that Mitt mentions. How successful would he be trying to fix it when he party wants to get rid of it.
schrodinger's cat
@rlrr: Also he is not Lore either, because he doesn’t have the smarts.
amk
@inkadu: Do you have anything to back up the assumption that willard is not going to lose ? Despite all the money and the rabble rousing ads he dumped in FL, he couldn’t breach the 50% mark with his own party and the turnout was 300 K lower than that of 2008.
Agreed, the rethugs at the end of the day, might still vote for him with tied nose and all that. But that doesn’t get him the presidency since he is disgusting the deciding bloc, the indies, in great many ways.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Rafer Janders:
With those edits, we’ve just described The Worst. President. Ever.
Everybody on the right seems to still sell this “bidnessmen make the best president’s” crap and seem to forget the likes of Dubya and Hoover.
r€nato
“are there no workhouses? are there no prisons?” says Ebenezer Romney.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So 90% of the population is “middle class” in the Mitten eyes? That pretty much everyone from a fast food worker to upper management. Wow, is he really out of touch.
flukebucket
@Bulworth:
Man this is Georgia. I don’t think there is a television in any public place where I live that is not tuned to Fox and there is always a sign next to the TV saying DO NOT CHANGE THE STATION!
I walked out into the warehouse again just a couple of minutes ago and the guys on the show were chortling about how Obama actually thought there were 58 states not 57 because he said he had campaigned in 57 states with one to go. The implication being that Obama is just a dumb ni$$er that does not know how many states there are.
It is going to give me more pleasure than I can begin to describe when he mops the floor with nitwit Mitt.
bemused
Mitt thought the way to connect with the little people was to drone America to them, bless his hollow little heart.
Rafer Janders
@shortstop:
It’s PowerPoint thinking, essentially. A belief that life can be distilled to bullet points.
Rick Massimo
I thought we weren’t supposed to divide America like that. I thought we were all in this together. Go to fking China or North Korea if you want to talk like that, Mitt. America is right and you’re wrong. Mitt Romney told me so!
P.S.: I’ll give $5 to the first reporter who actually asks Romney how much money he thinks these 95 percent of Americans actually make.
rlrr
Everybody on the right seems to still sell this “bidnessmen make the best president’s” crap and seem to forget the likes of Dubya and Hoover.
“There’s an old saying about those who forget history. I don’t remember it, but it’s good.”
– Stephen Colbert
dmsilev
Hmmm.
So, who was this anonymous ‘very knowing American’? Was it Mitt? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
shortstop
@barath: I have no doubt he’s dog-whistling about the “undeserving” and “cosseted” black poor. However, I don’t think it will be very hard for Team Obama to turn this around and point out the ways that the safety net benefits the middle class as well as the very poor. And it’s easy to show that despite his talk, Romney has pursued policies that actively destroy the middle class.
bemused
@flukebucket:
There’s always a sign next to the tv saying not to change the station? Does that mean that people have tried often enough to warrant making all those signs?
Mark S.
@flukebucket:
Jesus, they’re still going on about the 57 state bullshit?
slag
@flukebucket:
Whenever I encounter that problem, I just reach down and unplug the teevee. But then, I’m one of those who believes that individuals have rights not enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
ksmiami
Mitt is a soulless corporate hack without any capability to show charm. He makes Newt Gingrich seem like a wayward, but humane person!
scav
And while they may be very dandy functional wings in theory, there’s still the general problem of grafting them onto the elephant with poor motor skills. (And that is not to say that blundering Franken-elephants in must don’t pose challenges.)
Tyro
He’s a good businessman, but in a very narrow way. He’s not a smart or intelligent or perceptive or intellectually curious person outside of that.
The phrase I used to describe him once was “pseudo-human money-making robot.” I am sure he is really, really good at analyzing spreadsheets. And that’s fine– there is no obligation to be a friendly team player. But one of the requirements for president is to be “someone who cares about people like me.” Romney fails that test in a big way.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: On CBS News Romney made at least three statements that were
falselies and left unchallenged by Charlie Rose. It’s going to be a long election season if that continues.Rick Massimo
@flukebucket: Like that’s gonna matter. They’ll just bray that “Romney wasn’t a REAL conservative and that Newt Gingrich would have mopped the floor with that uppity ni$$er oh did I say that out loud?”
All that matters is complaining. That’s all they do; it’s all they ever do; in the past three years I’ve realized it’s all they want to do. They loved America when they thought everyone was like them and now they hate it.
Linnaeus
You know, I wish that I could be as confident as you, Zandar, that this is a real gaffe by Romney and indicative of the problems Romney will have in the general election. But then I remember that this country elected the inartful George W. Bush at least once.
Don’t get me wrong. The president is a talented politician and has done his best as president (along with things I don’t agree with, but that’s politics). I feel better about his chances than I did several months ago. At the same time, I don’t have a whole lot of confidence that many of my fellow Americans won’t be hoodwinked by this plutocrat.
flukebucket
@bemused:
Well, I call them signs but I have only seen a couple that were really engravings that looked like they cost some money. Usually they are just pieces of paper with instructions written on them with a magic marker. And yes Neal Boortz is still going with the 57 state bullshit. He also said something like Obama needs to be sent back to live in an apartment with Bill Ayers. Boortz has said that he prefers Newt but that basically they all need to prepare to fall in line and vote for Mitt. Hannity will come on later today. We’ll see how he feels. I have a feeling I already know.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t know if he’s destined to lose, the last decade and a half haven’t done a lot to bolster my faith in the American electorate, but you pair this with “Let the foreclosure process run its course” and “corporations are people, my friend!” and maybe you chip away at the simple-minded “Well, he’s rich, he must understand the economy”
AA+ Bonds
Your FoxNews.com psychopaths-in-business update:
48-year-old Miami-polo-club founder adopts his 42-year-old girlfriend to shield his money from drunk driving wrongful death suit
Very much on topic; Romney may or may not be a psychopath himself, but as a Wall Streeter, his thinking and speech are designed to please psychopaths just like this one
SarahT
This guy is every PR person’s nightmare. And every sane person’s nightmare, too, come to think of it…
AA+ Bonds
@Rick Massimo:
That is, after all, what they said and still say about McCain.
The Moar You Know
@inkadu: The truly poor do not vote, period.
It would be quite a different country if they did.
scav
@JPL: That’s just New York Times Ombudsman Arthur S. Brisbane’s Nuanced Journalism (TM).
David Hunt
Zandar @top
I hope that you’re right about that “destined to lose” thing but I’ve been worried about this election since the 2010 elections. There are two powerful forces that could turn the majority of voters out to vote for anyone they identify as Not-Obama.
First, to quote the ’92 Clinton campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Starting in 2011, the Republicans have enough votes to stall/stop just about any measure that might improve the economy and they’ve shown that they’re perfectly willing to do that. They’re perfectly willing to hurt Americans figuring that they can lay the blame for that misery at the feet of the president. If the Economy gets bad enough, no one will care that it’s the Republican’s fault because the only place anyone will be saying that is places like this blog that is populated almost entirely by people that would already know whose fault it is.
Second, there’s a very large number of people (about 27% of them) that would vote for Vlad the Impaler if he ran on the Republican ticket. It’s a tribal/religious affiliation that transcends reason. Even if they know that Romney would be a horrible President, they will vote for him. The thought-process will go something like this. “Yes I know that the dystopian nightmare that Romney wants would mean that the first time I ever call in sick for work, I’ll be immediately rendered into Soylent Green, but at least I’ll know that I’m free. The Democrat [sic] Party would be infinitely worse! We’ll all be placed in re-education camps and after atheist services, I’ll be forced to have gay abortions and my manhood couldn’t take that.” What’s even scarier is that the people who think like this virtually always vote.
So I’m still worried about the election results in November.
barath
@shortstop:
Agreed.
It’s also easy to point out that for all Romney’s and the GOP’s talk about how stoking class warfare is bad and dividing people on class lines is bad, that’s exactly what he’s doing.
What’s the saying about “they want to keep the poor poor so the middle class stays in line”?
opie jeanne
Mitt is harping on Obama having a billion dollars to spend on attack ads (I assume a combination of campaign money and PACs).
I have to ask, is that number realistic? I realize that he’s using that number as a scare tactic and his is not the first mention of the billion dollars Obama will have.
Culture of Truth
He’s not destined to lose, and the sentiment isn’t crazy — indeed most politicians blather on and on about the middle class, and probably mean it, but I’m surprised he’s not better at all this by now.
I mean he ran for the Senate, was elected Governor, he’s been a CEO, ran for President once before, and he’s clearly not stupid. He’s been doing all right in the debates…. and then goes out and sings ‘God Bless America’ to the Villages like a rookie town councilman with his head up his ass. His advisers must spend half their days smacking their foreheads, or calling tech support.
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: I don’t think that the election is going to be a cakewalk for Obama, it is going to take a lot of work and there will be some ugliness for sure but there is no reason to assume that Mitt can win easily. It hasn’t been that easy for him to win the support of his own party. The nomination is not yet a done deal.
AA+ Bonds
@Linnaeus:
The difference is that Bush’s fuckups just turned the Rove message into nonsense, and so the press took pity on him,
while Romney’s fuckups make Romney look like the exact sort of vulture capitalist who buys up newspapers and fires the reporters.
The particular way in which Romney keeps fucking up guarantees a personal vendetta against him by the press that already makes the whole Gore 2000 business look like a honeymoon
Now granted, this statement was designed to appeal to the fascists in America, the sort of people who wouldn’t mind razor-fenced work camps for anyone who loses their jobs, but as usual, Romney totally fucked up the delivery
My guess is that there was supposed to be a “for” rather than a “with” in that bolded statement, and Romney’s unable to realize the distinction, since there wouldn’t be one if he was impressing the newbies with cheap drinks ($30 or so) at Bar Five Seven
Benjamin Franklin
@opie jeanne:
Newt whined about Mitt having a 65 to 1 ratio of ads in Florida, so Mitt is just getting ahead of the curve with Obama
JGabriel
Shorter Romney: If you’re worried about the poor, vote Democratic. If you don’t give a fuck about anyone else, vote for ME!
.
bemused
@flukebucket:
I was just intrigued that they feel they have to make a point that no one should change stations and wonder if people change the station because they hate Fox or just to change to another wingnut station.
Kirk Spencer
The really interesting thing comes if you listen to the whole response instead of reading the selective quotations. If I trusted him to not change his mind this afternoon, or for that matter to be honest about what he’s saying right now, I’d be much happier about him.
To paraphrase what he said:
Seriously, listen to the whole thing.
I’m still voting for Obama come November, but I don’t like selective quoting.
AA+ Bonds
Romney knows how to sell himself to the upper crust, through phallic displays of gall and psychopathic disregard for life.
This goes over great on Wall Street,
It goes over great with the Stepford-style Massholes who liked Scott Brown’s big long truck,
But the press fucking hates it (see the Globe’s coverage of Romney during the 1994 Senate race) and most Americans hate it too,
because they’re not those people,
and thanks to TV and electronic media, they know exactly what those people are like and how they behave
eemom
Sorry, gloom-mongers, but I’m gonna keep on saying it — Obama’s going to win and it’s going to be a STOMP.
No one can possibly be more convinced than I am of the utter moronity of the American electorate. But how you can sit there and watch the republican fail parade fuck itself over eight ways to Sunday and continue to shake your heads and moan is beyond me.
(That doesn’t mean we should for one second be complacent, and not work to get every last vote.)
AA+ Bonds
@Kirk Spencer:
LOL, you’re so FILLED with CONCERN for POOR ROMNEY, it’s so INTERESTING that you rewrote his quote to say something totally different that sounds practically moral
Seriously, the man has utter contempt for the poor and middle class, he’s the enemy of the social compact that keeps America alive, and he reveals it every time he opens his goddamn mouth
If your follow up to a false complaint of “selective quotation” is to literally rewrite the quotation so it sounds better, you’ve already failed.
Paul in KY
@David Hunt: Your analysis disturbs me, but your ‘Piercian’ way with words gave me a laugh.
Culture of Truth
Actually John Kerry’s loss does not bode well for Mitt, in my opinion, since he share’s the former’s flaws without having his positive attributes.
Jay C
@inkadu:
However, a major problem with W. Mitt Romney’s campaign seems to be that the candidate seems fundamentally unable to avoid “inartful” phrasing: one can, of course, parse out the “deeper” meanings of Mitt’s comments; like:
“Corporations are people”
“I like being able to fire people”
“I’m not concerned about the very poor”
but, taken as sound bites (as they inevitably will be) they only serve to make Mitt sound even more disdainfully out-of-touch than he is…. and that’s not “a good political move” in any case.
rlrr
@opie jeanne:
Mitt is harping on Obama having a billion dollars to spend on attack ads (I assume a combination of campaign money and PACs).
So? Why does Mitt hate the free market?
Linnaeus
@AA+ Bonds:
Maybe so. The political landscape is different this time around than it was in 2000 or 2004. It’s just that I can envision Americans interpreting Romney’s remarks more charitably than we do here.
Linda Featheringill
:-)
But I haven’t read the books of de Mittens. Are they any good?
JPL
@Kirk Spencer: There is nothing selective about his support of the Ryan plan.
Mitt likes to mention that he should be considered a Mexican-American since his father was born in Mexico. Wouldn’t it be fair to ask why his grandfather moved to Mexico in the first place?
AA+ Bonds
Worrying about the poor is a public safety issue, which is one more reason why
electing Romney will kill Americans
wrb
It would be interesting if the effect of this comment could be isolated to see if it actually hurts or benefits him.
Does anyone who might actually vote for Willard want a president who cares about the very poor?
Are are they reassured by the indication that the president won’t be spending much of “their” money on the poor, and appreciate the clarity?
Edit: I see Linneaus had a similar thought. I haven’t read all the comments yet.
4tehlulz
Mitt Romney is objectively pro-welfare.
gVOR08
Wish I shared your optimism, Zandar. People will eat up this ‘us against the takers’ BS. Several hundred million dollars in Rove’s Super PAC can overcome a pretty large absence of charsima.
Rove was once so naive he though he could get a permanent Republican majority with Medicare Part D and something like the Dream Act. Then John Roberts figured out they could just buy it.
JPL
Forget about the poor comment. Mitt’s tax policies hurt the very ones he wants to help.
GregB
It’s OK. Mark Halperin says that Mitt doesn’t mean what he’s saying.
Did I mention that Halperin is a flaming turd yet today?
The Moar You Know
This is not a negative to 90% of the voting populace out there. It would be well to keep that in mind.
Rommie
Bah, he’s way worse that Thurston Howell the III. Mr. and Lovey Howell had to mingle with the 99ers on a common tour boat – Mitt would have run over the Minnow in his yacht leaving Honolulu harbor.
some other guy
Heh. One of the news headlines when I logged into my Yahoo! mail account this morning: “Romney ‘not concerned about the very poor'”
I’m not surprised he’s a perennial loser when it comes to elections– he’s an awful politician!
If he’s the most “electable” the Republicans have to offer then I’m increasingly confident that Obama has very little to worry about this election year.
AA+ Bonds
@Linnaeus:
I don’t think the political landscape has changed much at all. I think you’re right that the fascists in America make up a large chunk of the population, just as they did in 2000.
Poverty exacerbates those sentiments among those who hold them – they grow desperate and even angrier.
What has changed is the business climate for the press: reporters all have their own Romneys in their lives. They have to write stories about businessmen who are buying newspapers, TV stations, etc. and then firing reporters. Firing them, and their friends.
Reporters are fickle, and the national-level press nowadays is immensely self-absorbed (just as in 2000, only now they all fear for their jobs). They will act out their daddy issues on Romney, especially because it’s still hip and young-looking to like Obama.
And the fascists in America can be divided into two groups:
1) staunch Republicans who will either vote for Romney or not vote at all (the job of the left is to make them not vote)
and
2) idiot fence-sitting independents, who will only endorse social Darwinism if the TV tells them it’s okay to do so (and here the left’s job will be helped by the press)
cat
@Rafer Janders:
In other words he’s the kinda of businessman a shark would be if a shark could be a businessman.
Culture of Truth
I agree it’s this quote is not necessarily a negative to many voters. However, I still believe that Americans, on a gut, lizard-brain level, do not want their President to act like a total asshole.
elmo
@eemom:
You want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing? Go outside, turn around three times, and spit.
wrb
@Satanicpanic:
You mean voters?
flukebucket
@bemused:
Not many people that I know around here would even want to change the station. It is just their way of saying that while you are here you will listen to Fox and if you don’t like that you can go somewhere else. Nevermind that anywhere else you go is going to have Fox news on the TV. Unless you go to Applebee’s. At least they are all tuned to ESPN :-)
Clem
What kills me about his statement isn’t the gaffe of saying he doesn’t care about the very poor, it’s his wild underestimate of how many there are. 46 million Americans are under the federal poverty line – and that’s a lot more than 5%.
chopper
@jibeaux:
yeah, somebody failed math.
scav
@flukebucket: Freedom’s just another word for nothing else to watch.
cat
@grandpa john:
There are tons of humans lacking Romney’s self awareness, you can goto your local prison and find lots of them that were born into the lower class.
JCT
@GregB:
Epic FAIL. Even that moron Halperin is at a loss.
Just wait until the electorate (such that it is) gets to focus ONLY on Romney without the rest of the clown chorus acting as distractions. He does not wear well. At all. There is a reason why his handlers kept him from going on Sunday shows and giving interviews for so long, When he opens his mouth, stupidities fall out. He has an utter tin ear.
AA+ Bonds
@Rafer Janders:
He’s just like most of the people I’ve met from Wall Street.
You don’t get there with brains, you get there with the right last name, good looks, or some psychopath taking a shine to you like a favorite dog in his kennel.
Sometimes you get there by blowing that psychopath by his pool while his wife is getting drunk at the country club. Who knows which side of that Romney might have been on? (Probably the blowee, because of his last name.)
Generally, people working in consulting or day trading are more likely to have been QBs on their school football teams than to have anything on their previous resumes involving analysis. A few rare examples actually started a business once (with other people’s money and which immediately failed.)
pete
@JPL: Take it away Clarence: You always hurt the one you love.
dogwood
Romney apologists like to take these statements in isolation and argue that they really won’t hurt the candidate with swing voters. However, these types of statements have a cumulative effect on voter perception and feed perfectly into the narrative that Romney’s opposition is trying to create. Romney can’t seem to create much positive buzz as a person or a candidate. He can’t create a positive youtube moment where he is charming or funny or spontaneous. Eventually it becomes death by a thousand cuts.
Frankensteinbeck
@Rick Massimo:
Wow. You hit that nail on the head. Anecdotes about attempts to talk to Teabaggers come back to that over and over. They don’t care about facts and have no policy positions. They’re just angry.
@Kirk Spencer:
A first reading has him saying he doesn’t like the poor. A second reading has him saying that he’ll fix the safety net. A third reading has him expressing that he doesn’t have a clue about who the poor are or how the safety net works, and is mouthing empty words based on an assumption that the poorer you are, the better off you are.
Most people stop on the first reading. Those who get to the second, usually get to the third. Add Romney’s not-quite-human delivery, and this is a really bad speech.
wrb
@Bulworth:
In an awful lot of blue collar workplaces Fox and/or Rush and friends are the soundtrack all day and all week and have been for years. Seems to be the case at many construction sites.
chopper
i love it when followers of jesus say shit like this. it’s fucking awesome.
AA+ Bonds
@dogwood:
And at this rate, Romney is a cutter, and he’s doing it in front of a 24/7 webcam broadcast on every network and cable news station
Benjamin Franklin
@eemom:
From your keyboard to god’s monitor
Zach
This is idiotic, but I’m a lot more concerned about what Mitt said last night: “President Obama’s view of a free economy is to send your money to his friends.” That’s not out of context; you can check the tape.
Here’s the prepared text: “President Obama’s view of capitalism is to send your money to his friends’ companies.”
Is there any charitable way to read his remarks, particularly with respect to the changes he made? The prepared text is coded racism; he could say, “I’m talking about Solyndra!” The speech as delivered has no similar defense… if Obama were accused of funneling money to friends, perhaps, but he isn’t.
pete
@dogwood: Exactly. To know him is to dislike him. His relentless attack ads convinced a significant number of the Republicans that they dislike Newt even more, but Mitt’s unfavorables have been climbing. It’ll be a race, the media will see to that, and Obama will need to work (and, cough, inspire others to work) but reelection is absolutely winnable, and you can’t ask much more than that at this time.
AA+ Bonds
@Frankensteinbeck:
That’s the important part.
Romney keeps fucking up when delivering his lines. He doesn’t know how to speak anything but Wall Street language, “fuck them anyway”, “I’m great”, “go for the throat”, stuff like that – and this really worked with yuppies in Mass.
But now the nat’l press is there, hating him every second, waiting around to pull those lines out and show everyone how Romney thinks.
The “entire speech” means absolutely nothing, nada, zilch, zero.
Romney’s campaign knows that. Rove knows that. The entire ur-strategy in contemporary American politics is built around one-note sound bites, over and over and over.
Bush could pull this off even when he did not know how to pronounce the words he was told to say. Bush is a recovering alcoholic, which made him humble. He knew he was fucking stupid.
Romney thinks he knows what he’s talking about when he actually has no depth of knowledge about anything – the delusion of all Wall Streeters – so he fails Rove over and over.
wrb
Hey, he was being nice. He didn’t say outright that it is unlikely that Obama has any friends who work, or who are pale.
The magnanimity is downright presidential.
bemused
@flukebucket:
Yeah, I guess it was silly to think there was any other reason.
@scav:
That’s a good one.
I saw video footage of Newt greeting a whopping 200 people at a hangar in SC (Ed Schultz show) and couldn’t help thinking that the diehard Newtie fans there looked like very dim bulbs. Not nice to say just from physical appearance but they really did not look they had much going on upstairs. Then to see one poor guy eagerly shaking Jackie Kennedy wannabe Calista’s hand, I just thought he has no idea that he is just a meaningless nothing to her or Newt.
The Moar You Know
@AA+ Bonds: Good friend of mine WAS a reporter for the local paper here in San Diego. Yeah, it was a right-wing rag, and yeah, it sucked, but they’d occasionally commit some really good acts of journalism in spite of themselves.
Local billionaire Catholic jackass got tired of the protesters being DFHs outside his precious hotel (he dumped some insane amount of money into Prop 8) and boycotters, so he sold his hotel, and then bought the paper. Oh yeah, and he shitcanned every single reporter. Including some Pulitzer winners.
Now it is for all intents and purposes the “Doug Manchester Apologetics” and every single story is about one of his projects, or how great development is in general.
Satanicpanic
@wrb: Sure, but not so obviously.
The Fat Kate Middleton
Late to the party, but …
As a former owner and breeder of hedgehogs, I approve this message.
elmo
@The Moar You Know:
Holy crap, are you talking about the Union-Trib?
Hungry Joe
Elections generally aren’t a done deal this early. A lot of times we can see a blowout coming … in retrospect (Clinton ’96, Reagan ’84 and ’80). It all seems so obvious when it’s over, but we really don’t have a very clear view from where we sit right now. So it’s foolish — and dangerous — to chortle, kvell, and generally revel in the pasting Obama’s going to give Mitt. (See ya, Newt.) See chickens, counting.
(Flashback fact: “Democrat” as an adjective entered the wingnut lexicon via Bob Dole, who in the 1976 VP debate referred to WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam as “Democrat wars.”)
RalfW
Loving the visuals on this:
Ah, yes, golf carts & horse feed, the essentials for the Vulture Capitalist strata.
Well, I suppose item three might be something the poor can relate to: sacks of salt.
AA+ Bonds
@The Moar You Know:
A Catholic capitalist . . . short of “Jewish Nazi”, there probably isn’t a more ridiculous thing to be in the Western world, and yet there are tons of the former all over this weird-ass country
flukebucket
@wrb:
I started work here in 1994. Back then it was Chuck Harder that was piped in. Anybody remember him? Limbaugh, Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and of course a favorite in Georgia the peerless Martha Zoller. Hell I have heard them all.
AA+ Bonds
@bemused:
Typical fascist slime pool. As the middle class shakes out, there will be more and more of them. And Gingrich rallies are a good place at this moment to see them settling at the lowest elevation.
In interwar Germany, they were the people most terrified of becoming proletarian: failed craftsmen, wannabe artists, pissy racist college instructors, etc.
Generally, in today’s America, they masquerade as “small business owners”, and average three or four “businesses” a year.
AA+ Bonds
@elmo:
Hahahaha his website/Google results insist that he is “PAPA DOUG”
Nonstop animation of stock photos and text explaining that he is generally Jesus Christ in all things and all ways, “Committed to blah blah blah”, “Verbs the noun, adverbly”
Catholic fascist meets psychopathic vulture – some things never change
Third button from the bottom, of course:
ROMNEY FOR PRESIDENT
The Moar You Know
@elmo: Sadly, yes.
shortstop
@AA+ Bonds:
Well, no. The humility comes with working the program, not with simply refraining from drinking. Bush was and is a dry drunk who doesn’t do introspection or self-accountability.
Hungry Joe
@The Moar You Know:
Well, I used to be a Union-Tribune reporter, too. (I left before Manchester stormed the gates.) Manchester did NOT fire every reporter, by a long shot: Most of the bloodletting was done by the equity company that bought the paper for a song from David Copley, who, panicked by the falling price of real estate and the rising price of yacht fuel, bailed. There are still some good reporters there, but just about everybody who made a decent wage (generated by the Newspaper Guild, but the union was busted a decade ago) has been replaced by (mostly) well-meaning but inexperienced reporters making around $35K.
Linnaeus
@AA+ Bonds:
Trust me, I hope you’re right on this. There’s still a lot of time for Romney to pile up too many errors for people to overlook.
And perhaps “political context” would have been a better term than “political landscape”. We’re still dealing with the economic implosion that we didn’t have in 2000 and 2004, and that might put politicians like Romney in a different light.
AA+ Bonds
@shortstop:
I think Bush considers himself to be a dumbass and acted accordingly.
Although I think you may be right about quitting drinking having little to do with it, now that I reflect on Rove’s timeline with Bush vs. Bush’s claimed dates for when he quit
Maybe it’s just that his dad told him he was a dumbass every day of his young life
RalfW
Romney just told Minnesota’s WCCO that “Sometimes I misspeak” about this morning’s not concerned about the very poor comment.
Ah, yes, the age old definition of a gaffe: mistakenly speaking the plain truth to an open mic.
AA+ Bonds
@RalfW:
Well he just fucking failed again by admitting it
Where is Rove, the Poconos? This is playing out like Romney’s 1994 Senate campaign all over again. “WHOOPS I ACTUALLY MEANT THE OTHER THING, YOU GUYS”
Read that leaked McCain 2008 oppo research file on Romney if you haven’t, it’s a trip
dogwood
@shortstop:
Bush and Romney simply are not comparable as candidates or as people. Partisans tend to see their political antagonists as all the same. But a wide swathe of voters don’t view things that way. Most people who predict election results base their conclusions on specific data like unemployment numbers, economic growth, right track/wrong track numbers etc. These are pretty good predictors. But, candidates and campaigns do matter. George W was a far better candidate than Mitt Romney will ever hope to be and that does make a difference on the margins where many states will be won or lost.
AA+ Bonds
@dogwood:
It’s true: Romney has been a pain in the ass to reprogram every time it’s been done, and his firmware may have finally aged out
AA+ Bonds
I do want to reiterate that the general will be like anything else: all about money
And Romney can’t really raise enough money to compete with Obama – because Obama’s campaign infrastructure includes the executive branch of the United States government
This is one reason why presidents usually get two terms nowadays
Lawnguylander
Yes, Bush was a way better candidate than Romney so anyone making predictions about 2012 and referencing 2000 and 2004 might want to consider that and the fact that he’ll be running against Obama and not a stiff like Gore or Kerry.
Mnemosyne
@dogwood:
I still maintain that George W Bush was good at one thing in his life, and one thing only — running for president. He knew how to run, who to talk to, which nasty rumors to start about his opponents. We liberals looked at him like he was an idiot, but he knew how to get Republicans and right-leaning independents on his side. IMO, Rove is way overrated — a whole lot of the “Rove genius” was actually Bush.
Romney does not have those skills.
4tehlulz
@Lawnguylander: Romney essentially is a right-wing Gore, without the intelligence.
AA+ Bonds
You can see in here the Rove strategy that Romney’s campaign is trying to get him to articulate, and has been for some time.
Romney looks like he doesn’t care about the poor.
So Romney repeats over and over that the hole-filled, threadbare “safety net” in America is just fine by him (and needs no repairs).
“I focus” = “you should focus”, i.e., think about how you’re about to become rich, America, and start acting like fucking greedy pigs like you already are rich and will benefit from that behavior, and vote for me, Mitt Romney
It’s the standard me-first appeal, but tailored to TRY to address Romney’s soaring negatives.
But because he doesn’t know how to talk to the middle class, he fucked it up so badly that he reinforced his negatives instead.
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
Rove had the brains, and Bush had the way, the Tao, the zen
Digging in garbage cans does not lead to the Presidency, but the chair behind it.
Assaulting your rich dad leads to the Presidency, once you get a garbage-digger in that chair.
(and I am being literal about Rove putting his actual hands into actual garbage cans and sifting through them; this happened)
barry
@David Hunt: “Second, there’s a very large number of people (about 27% of them) that would vote for Vlad the Impaler if he ran on the Republican ticket.”
Try 47%, as in 2008.
shortstop
@dogwood:
I didn’t actually suggest that they were, nor did I touch on absolutely anything else your comment contains. The full extent of my comment was correcting the misapprehension that any awareness Bush may have had about his own failings was a result of, rather than coincidental to, his having quit drinking without simultaneously addressing the behavioral and emotional aspects of addiction.
Rafer Janders
@AA+ Bonds:
Bush could pull this off even when he did not know how to pronounce the words he was told to say. Bush is a recovering alcoholic, which made him humble. He knew he was fucking stupid.
That’s the difference between Romney and Bush: Bush knew he was stupid and that others were smarter than he was, and he hated them for it. This gave him a kind of low animal cunning; he knew he couldn’t out-talk or out-think others so he had to work at a gut, lizard brain level.
Romney thinks he’s smart and others are dumber than he is, and he feels condescension towards them for it. The trouble is, others aren’t as dumb as he thinks they are — in fact, many are far, far smarter than Romney — and so he’s unprepared when they don’t fall for his bullshit.
shortstop
@Rafer Janders:
Uh huh. And again I must point out that he’s been at this campaigning thing for eons. What does his inability or refusal to learn anything — anything at all — from his previous failures say about his intelligence? His self-awareness? His social skills? His emotional health?
Barack Obama once made the mistake of slightly patronizing Bobby Rush’s constituents. You better believe he never committed that error again.
Rafer Janders
@shortstop:
Romney isn’t subtle, or nuanced. He wins (when he doesn’t fail miserably, that is) by brute force, outwork and outspend the other guy. But he doesn’t– and can’t — out-think.
Kirk Spencer
@AA+ Bonds: @Frankensteinbeck:
May I suggest you actually listen to the video instead of read what’s written?
Note, per what I wrote, that I don’t trust Romney to stick with what he’s saying. I’m must noting that the quotes are selected in such fashion as to, oh, I know, CNN “rewrote his quote to say something totally different”.
Calouste
Of course, if there were an actual safety net, people wouldn’t be very poor. They would be poor, but not very poor. That’s exactly what a social safety net is suppossed to do, preventing people from having to sleep on the streets, and it exactly what the social safety net in the US doesn’t.
dogwood
@shortstop:
Sorry. Reading your exchange with AA+ made me think of the differences between W and Romney. I should have scrolled down and posted instead of hitting the reply button,
David Hunt
@barry:
That’s a powerfully depressing number, but I take solace in the fact that it’s not quite that bad. First, I’m going to go the assumption that the 47% number is actually the correct percentage that voted for McCain and not a variation on 27% for humor. It can’t be far off if it is.
Second, I’ll point out that the 47% percent you are quoting is the percentage that VOTED for McCain. I mentioned that a large portion of the Republican variants of a Yellow Dog Democrat tend to have a higher turn-out percentage on election day. That’s an argument by technicality and doesn’t make the situation look better, but I still assert that not all of those people would have voted for a Republican no matter what the ticket was. I’m sure that there are a significant portion of people that arrived at the conclusion that John McCain was a better choice for their vote through rational means. They thought that having him in the Whitehouse was better for the country or better for them specifically because of their perception of the policy positions of the candidates and they might have changed their vote depending on changes in those positions (real or imagined). Also, loads of people make decisions based on their assessment of the “character” of the candidates. This is often just a lens to refract party affiliation through, but not always. John McCain got way more mileage out of his military service and POW status than anyone of this blog would say he deserved, but former military service is often a plus with the public. On the other side, the smears against Obama were well aimed at making him look like an alien other. I’m sure that racism moved some votes to the “R” column. It’s possible that a Democrat with the Good ‘ole Boy charm of a Bill Clinton might have managed to get more of that 47% on his side.
TL;DR version: not all of the people who vote Republican are dead-enders in the 27%. There are still people in that group who can be reached. And we’ve got to be on the lookout for them so that we can move them to vote for Obama, or at least NOT vote for
Thurston Howell IIIRomney.sherparick
@Frankensteinbeck: Bullshitting. Now we know the secret of his success at Bain Capital. He is an A#1 Bullshit Artist.
fasteddie9318
Steve M. is right that it’s not a gaffe, but wrong that it’s somehow new or unique to Romney. The only difference between “I don’t worry about the poor because we have a safety net for them” and “young bucks buying t-bone steaks with food stamps” is that the latter is more cleverly framed.
AxelFoley
@inkadu:
Everyone else already called you out, but may I add, STFU with your bullshit.
gnomedad
At least he didn’t refer to them as “lucky duckies”.
NobodySpecial
@eemom: Bingo. The question is not if Obama wins, but if he does it solid like 2008 or crushing like Reagan in ’84. That and how many other Democrats he drags in on his coattails.
starscream
47% of this country voted for a ticket with Sarah Palin on it. Anything can happen.
Chris
@AA+ Bonds:
As many people have pointed out, Romney’s problem is that he’s a Wall Street guy who thinks he can apply Wall Street skills to politics. Being a politician, even a Republican politician, requires very different skills and a different public persona, than being a Wall Streeter. And Romney simply hasn’t been able to upgrade.
Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, Edward Harriman, and all the other robber barons didn’t play politics or run governments – they had people who did that for them. Mittens should learn from there fine example, for his own sake.
A Conservative Teacher
Nice job of twisting his words out of context. He said that the poor have a decent safety net and have a range of programs already in place to help them (which he would like to fine-tune through better management and operations). And he said the very rich are doing fine too- mainly through connections in government, crony capitalism, abusing government contracts, manipulating laws and policies and rules to succeed, and the like. The real problem, according to Romney, is the vast middle class in America that is struggling- and that’s a valid point.
I’m surprised that this blog supports the 1% so strongly. I would think that you’d support the middle class and fight against the bailouts and the dependency programs that are creating a society of have’s and have-not’s.
Once I wrote on this subject too- check it out at:
http://aconservativeteacher.blogspot.com/2012/01/obama-and-democrats-turning-us-into.html
LanceThruster
Mitt’s like Hymie the Robot of “Get Smart” fame without the likability.
Positronic brain – BWAA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!
LanceThruster
@A Conservative Teacher:
Horse-hockey! Rethuglicons are the party of plutocracy and kleptocracy.
If you’re truly a teacher, you should at least know it’s the “Democratic” party, and that the phrase “the democrat party” is used to be openly rude (used on your site).
You’ve clearly drank the Kool-Aid. Romney is living proof that LDS have as little ethics as anyone.
evinfuilt
@jibeaux:
The he thinks the very poor is as small a number as the very rich is most telling to me. Ignore the extremely high Poverty Rates.