This video truly amazes me, but is doesn’t surprise me. If you have been following Romney’s campaigin, you will notice that he is always very cautious to not mention the poor. He loves to focus on the middle class, and I think he does so because a lot of people like to believe that they are middle clase (regardless of their actual income). Many very poor individuals in America probably believe they are in the middle class. Who wants to be really poor?
It is with this political calculus that Romney presses forward with the following quote.
On the surface this sounds like a political gaffe, but I think it truly exposes the way Romney, and in a larger sense, Republicans in general view the poor. They don’t feel as if they need to be politically accessible to the poor, and they don’t feel like it hurts them politically to ignore poor folk. I was floored when Romney deferred any political issues relevant to the poor to the purview of Democrats. Romney essentially said, “I don’t care about the poor, they are taken care of, and Democrats can deal with them.”
In a democracy a vote is a vote, regardless of the economic situation of the voter. And in these economically difficult times, middle class people who have been out of work for months may actually begin to believe they are really poor. Ask unemployed people if they believe in American social safety nets.
