The supercut of “things Mitt Romney does that make him seem like an out-of-touch, cold-hearted Wall Street fat cat,” which Democrats are surely compiling, seems to be growing by leaps and bounds this week. This morning, just two days after saying he likes being able to fire people — it’s not so bad in context, but Mitt Romney doesn’t believe in context — Romney was asked by Matt Lauer whether questioning the practices of Wall Street and the “distribution of wealth and power” in America today is legitimate:
Here’s how Romney handled it:
To sum up, for the video impaired: Romney thinks gripes about income inequality reflect nothing but envy, and that such topics should only be discussed in “quiet rooms.” What Romney is saying is, maybe we can debate income inequality and the abuses of Wall Street, if you insist on it, but it’s nothing to get upset about.
This is not a gaffe, really, just a particularly stark reflection of Romney’s true beliefs as he’s repeatedly expressed them. Still, it’s a ballsy way to handle issues of income–power inequality, particularly when he’s already being portrayed as an unfeeling, opulently wealthy corporate monster by Democrats and Republicans alike. And Romney might soon find that the 77 percent of Americans (including 80 percent of independents) who believe there is “too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations” and the 61 percent (including 61 percent of independents) who say that “the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy” don’t find his ideology very relatable.
