And today, Mitt just keeps getting worse. After he (rather bizarrely) requested that his full presentation at the now infamous Boca Raton (Florida) fundraiser be posted, Mother Jones' David Corn happily obliged.
And when looking at the full context... Well, Mitt just gets worse. And Ezra Klein explains why.
The big surprise at this point in the election is not that Mitt Romney is turning out to be such a bad candidate. His weaknesses were always well known, and even now, they’re likely overstated. He’s proven an able campaigner, an extraordinary fundraiser, and more than capable of uniting his party. But if he is, in some ways, a better candidate than many expected, he’s also proving to be a much more conservative candidate than anyone expected.
What Romney actually believes is an unusually tricky question fraught with metaphysical and epistemological uncertainty. But in terms of the recent comments and decisions that have gotten him in trouble, some of them are campaign missteps, but most of them are an unexpectedly doctrinaire application of the conservative worldview — the sort of stuff that gets a standing ovation at CPAC, but that gets Republicans into trouble among more general audiences. [...]
Perhaps Romney’s biggest and most ongoing problem is his tax plan, which seems to require either a tax hike on the middle class or a huge increase in the deficit, and has gotten him fairly accused of cutting taxes on the rich. It’s often forgotten, but this is actually Romney’s second tax plan. His initial tax proposal — which you can still see in his jobs plan – was simply to extend the Bush tax cuts and give Americans making less than $250,000 a cut on their capital gains rate. That would’ve been a much easier proposal to defend in the general election. [...]
Similarly, Romney chose [Paul] Ryan to be his vice president, yoking himself to Ryan’s budget and to the House GOP. In one day, Romney took the basic strategy of the campaign, which was to make this election a referendum on Obama’s leadership, and made it a choice election, with Romney standing side-by-side with the architect of the chief governing document of contemporary conservatism.
As we've discussed before, Paul Ryan's budget is nothing less than a full assault on America's middle class and the working poor aspiring to become middle class. And not only has Mitt Romney fully embraced Paul Ryan's "vision" of a middle class busting budget, but he also wants to undo decades worth of BIPARTISAN economic policy meant to boost the ranks of the middle class. And in pursuing this false dichotomy of "the makers versus the takers", he's actually attacking upwards of 60% (!!!) of Americans along with these bipartisan decades old policies meant to build and sustain America's middle class.
This is the real poison of what Mitt Romney said at that Boca Raton fundraiser. Mitt Romney revealed that he's more than willing to undo the foundation of America's middle class just so he and his fellow 1% plutocrats can pay even less in taxes. Heh, I guess Harry Reid has been right all along.
And this is why the teabaggers are reverting to screaming about what President Obama supposedly did or did not do in Las Vegas last week. Despite all their howls suggesting otherwise, perhaps even they are starting to realize this is a losing issue for Mitt Romney. Perhaps they are finally realizing that Mitt Romney is losing this election. One just can't attack 60% of Americans and expect no blowback.
Already, Romney has been looking at some daunting numbers.
Fueled by increased optimism about the economy and nation’s direction, President Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney by 5 points among likely voters and now sees his job-approval rating reaching the 50 percent threshold for the first time since March, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
The survey – which was conducted after the two party conventions and the political firestorm over last week’s U.S. embassy attacks, but before Romney’s controversial comments about the 47 percent of the country “who are dependent on government” – shows the percentages believing that the country is headed in the right direction and thinking that the economy will improve at their highest levels since 2009. [..]
Among a wider sample of registered voters, the president’s lead is 6 points, 50 percent to 44 percent – up from Obama’s 4-point edge last month, 48 percent to 44 percent.
“It’s clear to me that Barack Obama has moved a … step ahead,” says Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster BillMcInturff.
So he couldn't afford any more "embarrassing moments". Too bad for the Romney campaign that their candidate just delivered the epitome of "embarrassing moments".
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