By the way
Mitt Romney keeps showing that he just doesn't understand what it is like to live with limited resources. One hates to use terms like "spoiled rich kid" but he just so much fits the definition. People like him really don't know what it is like to have to do without something simply because your family doesn't have the resources to get it. It can be very disappointing, but it also teaches you what is truly necessary and how to live with disappointment.
Someone like Romney doesn't know what it is like to do without something, and therefore, his ability to connect with the average person is pretty much non-existant. How can he be president of people that he has no clue of how they live and what they think?
He has really given himself away lately in some of his public statements. The first one that really got my attention is his use of the phrase "bitter politics of envy" to describe Obama's call for higher taxes on the wealthiest citizens.
Envy? What does Romney mean by that? Is he saying that anyone who questions the income distribution in this country is guilty of being driven by jealousy? Even if the richest of the people have acquired their wealth by questionable means? It's just a way oversimplification of the issue that attempts to put the superrich like him in a faultless position and to shove all the blame on any questions about the income distribution on the moral flaw of the questioner. It's a terrible cynical and heartless position to take.
And then, yesterday, Romney was shown on a number of TV clips addressing his concern for the poor in one of his speeches. He put it this way - "by the way, I'm concerned about the poor."
By the way? The online "Free Dictionary" defines "by the way" as "in addition but of less importance." http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/by+the+way And to me, that is how I took it. When you say "by the way" you are adding something peripheral to the main point of what you were saying. And that's how it came off when Romney's soundbite was shown.
I just don't see how a rich guy with 6 mansions is going to be able to connect with enough regular people to get elected to be president. Romney needs to watch the Bill Moyers special that was shown this morning on KET instead of "To the Contrary" and "Inside Washington." The special was a documentary about some research that a couple economists had done on the income distribution proportions in the US and how it came to be that way.
These researchers presented raw and brutal information about how, in the last several decades, the middle class has stayed even or regressed economically while the very richest got exponentially richer. The cause of this, the researchers stated, was directly attributable to congress, which methodically undid laws to stop such meltdowns passed after the depression and various other financial meltdowns. Of course, the undoing of such laws is the direct result of lobbying efforts by Wall Street and the financial industry - greased by many campaign contributions.
Yet, in spite of all of this, which is actually pretty self-evident for anyone who thinks and reads, Romney says the problem is that poor people are jealous of the rich. That's so wrong. It's so wrong, that it gives insight into Romney's thinking, and that kind of thinking is just not going to end up being president in my opinion.