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Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams once offered this advice to rookies: “If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much.”
Mitt Romney would do well to take Ted’s tip to heart. The GOP presidential front-runner thought he could win the votes of Workaday Joes and Jolenes by touting his experience as a successful businessman. Indeed, Mitt was a sterling success at raking in a quarter-billion dollar fortune for himself as top dog at his Wall Street investment outfit, Bain Capital. But what he didn’t think about is that Joe and Jolene might not like the way he got so rich – you see, Romney got his by taking theirs. Through Bain, he took over corporations where thousands of Joes and Jolenes worked, sold off the best chunks of their companies to grab a quick personal profit, eliminated their jobs, and left their companies in bankruptcy.
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Romney didn’t think this would be exposed so early. But there it is, so he had to think of some way to stop the scathing criticism he’s now getting (even from Republicans) about the wealth inequality that rapacious financial hucksters like him have been creating. He thought and thought, and then it came to him: “It’s about envy.” I’ll just say that anyone who questions us one-percenters is just envious of our success.
So, this multimillionaire recently went on national television to wail that he’s a victim of “a very envy-oriented” politics of “class warfare.” He even went so far as to assert that such criticism of financial barons like him “is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.” But wait, asked the interviewer, isn’t it fair for America’s hard-hit people to demand a presidential policy debate about the obvious and ever-widening wealth gap dividing our country? To that, without thinking at all, Romney said: “I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms.”
Yes, yes, people, go to your rooms and be quiet. You’re disturbing Mitt’s train of thought.
“Mitt Romney Tells the 99% to Stop Being Jealous & Quiet Down,” www.thinkprogress.org, January 11, 2012.