The enemy of Mitt Romney is Mitt Romney himself

By Michael J.W. Stickings

To thine own self be true... and to other super-rich pricks in Boca Raton.

Jon Chait now admits that he was wrong in thinking, initially, that Romney wouldn't be severely hurt, if hurt at all, by his "47%" remarks.

It's okay, Jon, we forgive you. Your reasoning was sound, even if it was likely you were going to be proven wrong -- it was just so clear that the remarks would resonate, that the narrative of Romney as a privileged rich douchebag out to help his own socio-economic kind would be confirmed beyond any doubt, and that the Obama campaign would make good use of them in ad after ad.

But let's move on. In "The Poetic Justice of Romney's Self-Immolation" at Daily Intel, Chait explains just how the remarks are severely hurting Romney, "reinforc[ing] the worst stereotypes voters have of Romney" and "destroy[ing] Romney's fundamental credibility. Again, you could have seen this coming, but it's good to have it confirmed. "He was trailing narrowly, but in a polarized electorate with a tiny number of undecided voters. Not only has he turned some of those undecided voters against him, but he's blown up his bridge to reach them."

And this is where justice comes in. "Romney has spent the last five years refashioning himself in the image of his party, discarding his most decent elements along the way, only to be caught in the end speaking bluntly." More immediately, he has spent a good deal of the campaign lying about both his Republican primary opponents and President Obama, and being generally dishonest about who he is, what he stands for, and what he would do as president. And here he was being himself, being honest. Or so it would seem. Even if he was just pandering to the rich people in Boca the way he panders to every constituency he encounters, he was being himself by being shamelessly opportunistic, by being utterly without principle. But I think it's fair to say, from all that we've seen, that the real Romney is a largely unprincipled rich guy out for himself and his kind. Maybe there's more to him than what came across in Boca, but we have every reason to suspect not.

And, really, he deserves what he's getting:

And then, finally, there is a poetic justice in the substance of Romney's self-immolation. This is not a random gaffe, a joke gone bad, or even a terrible brain freeze. It is Romney exposed for espousing a worldview that is at the heart of his party's mania. The idea he summed up at that fund-raiser was a combination of right-wing fever dreams I've been analyzing since Obama took office — the Ayn Randism, the fact-free class warfare, the frantic rage at a changing America. The Republican Party is going down because its candidate was seen advocating exactly the beliefs that make the party so dangerous and repellant.

Justice indeed.

Now we just need to make sure he and his reprehensible views, along with his reprehensible party, go down big in November.