Painting Romney by the numbers

By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com

• Contribution to attend Mitt Romney’s secret Boca Raton fundraiser: $50,000
• Median annual household income, U.S., January 2011: $50,673
• Median household income, U.S., January 2012: $50,020
• Romney’s estimated annual income: More than $20 million
• Ratio of Romney’s income to national median income: 400 to 1
• Percent of Americans Romney says pay no taxes: 47 percent

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, then perhaps it would take an infinite number of words to portray the essence of the Republican Party and its presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, as richly and devastatingly as the video that surfaced last week of a May Romney fundraiser in Florida.

During the event, the GOP candidate, unguarded, unaware the discussion was being clandestinely videotaped, comfortable and candid in the company of his fellow 1 per centers, said what he really feels about half of the people of his country.

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.

“And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48 – he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years.

“And so my job is not to worry about those people – I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like.”

Since the video was posted on the Mother Jones magazine web site, the fact checkers and the pundits have had a field day exposing the astounding number of things that are false, misleading or just plain stupid in Romney’s peroration. There is no point in rehashing all that here or to try to poke new holes in a Swiss cheese. Suffice it to say that, as sociopolitical analysis, the whole thing is ridiculous, laughable.

Along these lines, one of the most amusing observations came from the executive editor of a publication in, of all places, Louisiana. He wrote that if, as he said in Boca, Romney thinks elections are decided on whether independent voters like someone, he did not help himself with his comments. Even before the Boca boomerang, Romney was rated by most voters as less likeable than President Obama. After Boca, his negatives are bound to rise.

What is not funny, and what I want to focus on here, is the moral aspect: the depth of Romney’s brazen contempt for the other, less fortunate, half (in fact, more like the other 99.99 percent), the condescending tone, the arrogance, the mean-spiritedness, and the sheer gall.

Let’s get specific. The phrase “those people” to describe the 47 percent Romney won’t bother worrying about is a dead giveaway. It’s a couple of words that have contempt written all over them, not to mention the coded racial disdain they typically convey. Who are “those people,” the takers? It’s not stated but the message is received and understood.

Those are the same people Romney condescends to when he says “I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” For a man who has led a charmed life as the son of a rich man, as a suit who made hundreds of millions destroying or degrading other people’s jobs, to speak down to millions who report every day to hard, boring, low-paying jobs, or who did until they got too injured, or too sick, or too old, takes an inordinate amount of arrogance, gall, and mean-spiritedness.

The Boca video shows that Mitt has all that in him and more. Here is a man who makes 1,000 times more than the average family, and pays a lower tax rate than most of them, waxing indignant that the poor, the elderly, and the disabled aren’t paying their fair share.
Boca shows the real Mitt, not warts and all as the saying goes, but the hideous self who hides behind the handsome façade.

The beauty of the Boca video is that it allows the American people the chance to see for themselves firsthand that the choice at the polls this November is not just about contrasting policies, it’s about two very different men. Let’s hope they are willing to look with a lucid and fair pair of eyes.