When Mitt Romney told CNN's Soledad O'Brien that he wasn't worried about the very poor because they were protected by the safety net, it wasn't the first time he'd played the class warfare card. This video is from September in Iowa.
Here's a partial transcript of what Mitt said:
MITT: My own view with regards to tax policy is that we ought to provide help to those who've been hurt most by the Obama economy. And that's the middle class. It's not those at the low end. It's certainly not those at the very high end. It's for the great middle class, the 80 or 90% of us in this country.
That's patently absurd. Mitt's worth more than $200,000,000. Saying that people worth $200,000,000 are middle class is silly. That'd be middle class amongst multi-millionaires but it isn't main street middle class.
Even pundits like Charles Krauthammer, who's been consistently in the tank for Mitt, objected to Mitt's CNN statements:
This is bad.
It’s not just that the day after a big win in Florida, he spent a whole day on a sound bite that can be taken out of context, and it has been and it will be.
And it’s not just that it strengthens the stereotype of Romney as the patrician who is only aware of the poor …as people who clean the streets and wash his car.
The real problem here is that it shows he doesn’t have a fluency with conservative ideas. Conservatives are not the ones who engage in the war of the classes or in a division of America into classes. Obama and the Democrats will win that kind of argument every day. The moral case for conservative economics is that our policy is going to help everybody, including the poor.
Two examples: school choice, which will help those trapped in the inner cities and tyranny of the teachers’ unions, [so they] will finally have an education, have the skills to get a job. And you lower the marginal rates of taxes so you encourage economic expansion and creation of jobs.
Mitt's never been in touch with main street middle class. Mitt's understanding of conservatism is limited at best. When Krauthammer said that Mitt "doesn't have a fluency with conservative ideas", what he's really saying is that Mitt isn't a conservative.
In fact, Mitt's a progressive that TEA Party conservatives are abandoning. Mitt's Alinskyite tactics have soured conservatives, too.
What America needs is someone who will fight for conservatism, for the 100% and for true prosperity. Mitt isn't a fighter. He's just mean-spirited and intellectually dishonest.
Comments