Okay, so most of us have heard Romney’s comment about how he “not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. 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, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”
I want to focus on one problem with that statement. It doesn’t just make Romney look like an inept politician. It makes Romney look like an inept unprincipled politician. You can almost see the thought balloon over Romney’s head as he tries to manipulate his listeners. I think the Romney thought balloon would look a little something like this:
Well, the vast majority of Americans describe themselves as middle-class and those who describe themselves as “very poor” (I need to remember to work the “very” in there) probably have low voting rates. So I should position myself as the defender of the middle-class rather than the very poor. I should also throw in something about not representing the very rich.
There is just something so oily about how Romney goes about some of his panders. I think the single biggest part of his blunder isn’t that it creates a sense that he doesn’t “care” about the poor. I’m not sure a lot of persuadables are ready to believe that Romney wants the poor to suffer. This is a guy who tithes. The biggest part of the blunder is that he comes across like he is trying to hustle people who consider themselves middle-class. A more effective response by Romney would have been something like:
Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last three years are those unemployed or underemployed tonight and those so discouraged they’ve abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one’s been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country, the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did.
As Republicans, our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life’s ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.
That is from Mitch Daniels’ response to Obama’s State of the Union. Daniels and Romney are both smart guys, but Daniels has a big advantage when it comes to talking. Daniels really believes in a set of limited government, pro-effective government, pro-upward mobility, pro-growth policies, and Daniels is focused on explaining his beliefs to open-minded listeners. Romney is stuck pretending to believe whatever he imagines the average voter wants to hear.
Run Mitch Run
February 2nd, 2012 | 8:05 pm
I wish you were wrong.
Is there any real chance of a brokered convention?
February 2nd, 2012 | 8:31 pm
I can imagine such a thing. You can think of a sequence of events where nobody gets a majority of delegates (though public opinion usually consolidates around one candidate eventually – or at least since 1980.) I can’t bring myself to believe in it as a realistic possibility.
February 2nd, 2012 | 9:10 pm
Pete had my vote sewed up until I got to the end and found out Daniels, not he, said it.
There was a piece in the WSJ that said since Republicans are gonna lose, they should have Gingrich as the candidate to at least make it an entertaining contest.
February 2nd, 2012 | 10:52 pm
It is significant that Daniels uses the exact same word that has caused Romney trouble, “concern.” But for Daniels, those who might be considered poor are the “first” concern.
February 3rd, 2012 | 5:09 am
Romney “panders?” If this is so, why didn’t he try and more artfully disguise how he worded his “poor” statement? After all, panderers kin of defeat their purpose when they so transparently seem to be pandering. A better explanation is that romney just didn’t think carefully enogh how he worded what he was saying. But if he’s smart, and if he’s pandering, he would have been careful to word this differently.
Also, what on earth was so bad about what he said anyway? His views represent what most politicians think. They want a safety net for the very poor, for obvious moral reasons, but they don’t pay too much attention to them, since they don’t vote as much. The middle class does most of the voting, so they get more than alittle bit noticed.
If this is “pandering”, then all politicians are panderers.
February 3rd, 2012 | 7:57 am
Pete, right now I can’t vote for Mitt. You know why plus I really don’t think he has the backbone to confront the Gifted One. I think he’s gonna get all wobbly in the face of Barry’s semi-minority status!
Besides we may all be at the barricades with the Catholics fighting for liberty!
February 3rd, 2012 | 8:19 am
“Run Mich”?
Since you are in fantasyland (there is no mathematical possibility Daniels could garner enough delegates to win in the primaries, and if he was merely handed the nomination at the convention, he wold go down to crushing defeat in Nov.), why not go for broke, and ask Abraham Lincoln resurrected from the dead to run?
Face facts: Obama is getting a second term.
February 3rd, 2012 | 6:21 pm
Bret, I think some of your confusion might be resolved if one assumes that a) romney wants to pander but b) has a not-very-good sense of what people want to hear. If he had a Bill Clinton-type sense of what swing voters want to hear, he would be having less political trouble (though he would deserve the trouble.) He might actually be better off going with his real political beliefs (assuming he has some.)
Robert, I mostly trust Romney to do whatever Romney thinks is in Romney’s short to medium-term political interest.
Gene, well of course I’m in fantasyland. But it is merely very unliekly rathe than impossible. A split in some of the early March states and some late Daniels wins (if he got in – which we both know is somewhere between very unlikely and just not gonna happen) could leave no candidate with a first ballot majority. I don’t see why the selection of the GOP candidate on a later ballot would, in itself, be much of a disadvantage (this distinct from the fundraising and organizational problems of starting a “late” general election campaign in the late summer before the election.)
February 4th, 2012 | 5:17 am
Pete Spiliakos: hi, good to talk with you. I enjoy reading your posts. I think you make a good point. Certainly we can at least be gratful that he’s not a “Bill Clinton type” as you put it.
February 7th, 2012 | 9:02 am
I don’t care whether or not care’s about the poor. The question is whether he will be good for the poor and for everyone else. “The poor” is an abstract categorization; just using the word is a lack of “caring”; one can care about this poor person or that, but very few really care about “the poor”. And in a day when beneficence is as organized and bureaucratic as anything else, the majority of the money comes from people who don’t “care” but do have a definite, if unfeeling desire that the poor be better off. Likewise I would rather a politician possess competence and integrity then that he “care”. Even if he sincerely does care. A politician who feigns caring to gain votes is certainly one I do not want, other things being equal. It is likely to be the one we end up with given the naive sentimentality of some voters. But that doesn’t make it better.
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