The unvarnished Mitt Romney

By Mustang Bobby

The hits just keep on coming for Mitt Romney. No sooner had the dust settled from his coldly political take on the deaths of four Americans in Libya than up pops this video of him coldly calculating how he'll win in November by ignoring the majority of Americans that he apparently thinks are moochers and welfare queens. What’s next? A muttered "I can't believe I'm losing to this ni-CLANG!" caught on tape at the debate (shades of Jon Lovitz from SNL)?

The inevitable comparison of this unguarded moment will be to Barack Obama's caught-on-tape discussion about how people in Pennsylvania cling to their guns and religion. But the difference between then and now is two-fold. First, Mr. Obama was talking about how hard it was for him -- a Harvard-educated black man -- to reach the people he was talking about; the poor white folks who don't necessarily look upon outsiders with favor. Mr. Romney was dismissing not only the people who count on some form of government assistance -- and that's a great number of people if you count everyone from senior citizens on Medicare to veterans in the VA hospital or going to college on the GI bill or children in the schools of Miami-Dade County who qualify for free or reduced meals -- but anyone else who hasn't risen to his level. Mr. Obama, however awkwardly, was trying to reach out to them. Mr. Romney was dismissing them.

Second, what Mr. Romney said was not so surprising to anyone who has followed the Republicans and their philosophy for the last thirty years. Since the Reagan administration, and certainly since their inability to accept anyone but a Republican in office (which goes back generations), they have shown veiled contempt for anyone who does not fit within their idea of an American: white, straight, preferably evangelical Christian, with a decent income and no need to worry about asking for handouts -- at least overtly. Anyone else -- the poor, the other-colored, the recently arrived immigrant, the icky gay or lesbian, the non-Jesus shouter -- is steerage. The Republicans own the country; the rest of us just live here, and they equate anyone who relies on any form of government participation as lacking personal responsibility and see themselves as victims.

What this video reveals is the unvarnished Mitt Romney. Skits and snark have depicted him as the emotionless android, a real-live Lt. Cmdr. Data running for office, and a lot of people have said -- including his wife -- that if we could only know the real Mitt Romney, we'd all like him and vote for him. Well, this video does show us Mr. Romney in his element; he says this at a private fundraiser in the presence of very, very rich people who think like him and raise money for his election. And what it shows us is that he is a coldly calculating businessman who brings the same mentality it took to buy up companies, lay off a lot of people, sell off the assets, take a huge profit, and move on to being the President of the United States. This whole thing about having to actually go out and campaign for the job -- which to him must seem like begging -- is incredibly awkward for him, and it shows in his odd off-hand comments about tree height and our benevolent overlords, the Corporation People. 

Josh Barro at Bloomberg thinks this is the moment when Mitt Romney lost the election. I don't know if this is The Moment, but adding in everything else that has gone wrong for him over the last couple of months, it isn't going to help. Voters don't elect a candidate who views fully half of them with contempt.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)