Rich Uncle Pennybags is his name. No, I don’t mean Mitt Romney. I’m talking about Mr. Monopoly, the mascot of the wheelers-and-dealers game, complete with spats, top hat and monocle. That’s the image that immediately came to mind watching Mitt Romney speak to prospective donors in the leaked video seen ’round the world.
His message: They own all the property on the board — and you don’t.
The class warfare charge is usually lobbed at Democrats by Republicans imagining socialist revolt. There’s no danger of that, though. As Warren Buffett once said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” However, not content to have affluence and comfort on their side, the crowd at the fundraiser, led by cheerleader Romney, must claim goodness, too. And, as opposed to his awkwardness in public, he seemed quite relaxed in the privacy of like minds. They are rich, not because of tax breaks or inheritance or luck, but because they are better people.
Romney, in his post-video press conference, said his remarks were about political reality. But behind closed doors, he didn’t stop at cold calculation — numerically dividing the electorate between Romney voters and Obama voters – he continued with cold contempt, demonizing those without the smarts to vote for him, the 47 percent of Americans, “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the 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.”
Putting aside the shocking belief that a poor child isn’t entitled to food someone hasn’t earned, much of what Romney said is, of course, fantasy. Reporters and fact-checkers have blown holes through his characterization of close to half of the nation as “freeloaders,” as he has said, wanting “free stuff.”
Most people pay all kinds of taxes – payroll, sales, Medicare, Social Security and more. A lot of those who don’t earn enough to pay income tax are plenty hard-working in the kinds of dirty jobs that a guy like Romney depends on but fails to notice — like the waiters in the video, filling water glasses while their “betters” complain.
You’d think Romney had not seen any of those TV reports about Americans working two and three jobs, standing on lines for hours when a position is advertised or sending out hundreds of resumes, not giving up. Romney has said, though, that he, the son of a business executive and former governor “inherited nothing,” not privilege or good fortune.
Despite the damning video, the country is so polarized that many of those in the 47 percent, Romney supporters included, won’t consider themselves one of the insulted because the frame fits a theme that hordes of undeserved want to prey on the virtuous. In the same way, Obama supporters who are top earners and pay a chunk in taxes could find more common cause with the poor because the alternative — a country divided into deserving have’s and lazy have-not’s – doesn’t resemble an America they know or desire. In the meantime, the candidate obsessed with taxes still refuses to release all but two years of his own returns.
Why does Romney want to be president of the United States when he so clearly disdains so many of the people who live here? That’s a question he has to answer.
But now that the video is in the open, we can expect to hear him rinse, repeat and signal to his base that we are definitely not all in this together.
One thing he won’t do is apologize. No matter how insulting the comment, he will never apologize. Romney said his “job is to not worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
If Romney had Mr. Monopoly’s thick white mustache, I can imagine him twirling it.
Mary C. Curtis, an award-winning Charlotte-based journalist, is a contributor to The Washington Post‘s “She the People” blog, The Root and theGrio. Her “Keeping It Positive” segment airs Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m. on Fox News Rising Charlotte, and she was national correspondent for Politics Daily. Follow her on Twitter
This article appears in Sep 19-25, 2012.
What is really odd is that most of the people cheering for the every man for himself mentality of the Republicans are the people most likely to be victimized by it.
The reason that your bank savings account pays less than 1% interest and a new fee is introduced every few months is the fact that the CEO and other top officers’ compensation is based on a constantly rising profit margins.
You struggle to fill the gas tank in your car because oil company executives are not satisfied that their profits are the highest of any US corporation in history.
Pure unregulated capitalism is greed based and kills the small businesses that the Republicans claim to be representing. Try to find a small neighborhood grocery store like used to exist everywhere. They are now part of huge corporations like 7/11 or Circle K and the people working there make minimum wage. Giant corporations either absorb or destroy smaller businesses. Try to go out and start a personally owned retail store within a 10 mile ring around a Wal-Mart. The people working at that Wal-Mart are the people that Mr. Romney was denigrating.
That system concentrates money at the top and you wind up with a few rich, many poor, and no middle class.
I suppose it would be inconvenient to point out that Mr. Monopoly is said to have been based on Paul Warburg, the primary proponent of the Federal Reserve System that was brought about by the Owen-Glass bill (Owen: DEMOCRAT, Glass: DEMOCRAT, Woodrow Wilson the president who signed the bill: DEMOCRAT).
The Federal Reserve System has engineered a 98% decline in the purchasing power of the Dollar, impoverishing most of America while transferring most of the country’s wealth to a small cadre of bankers.
Again: DEMOCRAT DEMOCRAT DEMOCRAT
^ Oh look, another guy that mistakenly thinks he has a point by acknowledging that a Democrat of the past behaved more like the Republicans of the present, and thinks everyone should find the label to be more important than the action.
rumbrave:
Financial executives convicted by Bush Justice Department: 1300
Financial executives charged by the Obama Justice Department: 0
Obama is Lloyd Blankfein’s houseboy.
Democrats like to warp fantasy into something that fits their distorted idea of reality. They can vote for Democrats all day long and indeed, elected enough to have a strangle hold on both houses of Congress and the White House AND on both the legislature here in NC for over 100 years. None of them are richer or better off for it. In fact, they saddled their children, grandchildren and probably great grandchildren with $16,000,000,000,000 (and growing by the minute) debt. Your ideas have failed. Obama has failed. Pelosi has failed. Perdue has failed and bailed. Nothing they have done has worked. Obama Care is going to stick it MILLIONS who it was supposed to help and it is going to cost even more than feared. Your foreign policies of appeasement and apology have failed. Your economic policies of tax and spend have failed. You may win some elections, but that will only give America 4 more years to see your failures dig us deeper into a hole that will in all likelihood cave in upon us.
Yes, that’s right, The Nasty Truth (9/25, 7:45 pm), the $16 trillion dollar national debt has NOTHING to do with the Republicans (2001-2009), their tax cuts on the rich, two wars not paid for, and Medicare Part D (the part that does not allow the government to negotiate prescription drug prices). And Romney, with his wonderful, respectful attitude toward 47% of the American people, not to mention FURTHER tax cuts on rich and increased military spending, is just the one to “dig” us out of this economy!
BallSuck,
Obama hasn’t ended the wars – more troops in Afghanistan today than on Jan 20, 2009, and now the NY Times reports that more troops are heading BACK to Iraq. Meanwhile, Obama’s military budgets are all larger than Dumbya’s biggest one was. President Peace Prize also has expanded drone attacks, assassinations of US citizens without trial or charges, commitment of military personnel and materiel without Congressional approval, etc.
Thinking liberals (Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, Jeremy Scahill, etc.) have not been afraid to call Obama’s foreign policy what it is: Bush On Steroids. If you want peace and a balanced budget, vote for Gary Johnson and down-ticket Libertarians as well.