Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 05:48 pm
Buried in the full transcript Mother Jones put out of the unedited secret Romney tape was a telling moment wherein Mitt Romney gloated over Hilary Rosen “attacking” his wife Ann Romney.
Transcript from Mother Jones:
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Audience member: I was just gonna say, I think a media strategy would be sending Ann on the road. Because she, I think, is your best friend, your best advocate. She connects so well. People talk so much about this connect—and somebody said over there, people think he’s a rich, rich guy. Most of us know that you know that’s—
Romney: You know that I’m as poor as a church mouse. [Audience laughter]
Audience member: We know that you value [unintelligible] and hard work. And Ann really connects with people, and she can tell a story about the hard work and she can tell about the person who [unintelligible] and go on Good Morning America and go on The View and hold her own against these people. And really get you the women connecting to you more. Seeing her and think she’s a great—
Romney: I think you’re right. Absolutely right. We use Ann sparingly right now, so that people don’t tired of her, or start attacking.Audience member: Who gets tired of Ann?
Romney: [Audience laughs.] I’ll tell ya—. But you will see more of her in the September, October timeframe. And you know we had, what’s her name, Hilary Rosen, who, you know, attacked her, and that made Ann much more visible to the American people, which I think is very helpful. It gave her a platform she wouldn’t have had otherwise. And I agree with you. I think she will be extraordinarily helpful.
This moment showed Mitt Romney to be a novice player who sees all events through the calculating political eye of someone who doesn’t know very much. He’s gloating over the alleged attack in a way that proves he doesn’t really care about the real issues it raised. Romney’s gloating also reveals a man who cares more about his campaign than his wife. If anyone attacked his wife, it’s Mitt Romney, who sees her as a pawn to his attainment of power.
As for the alleged Hillary Rosen attack, Ms. Rosen said that Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life,” a comment that actually echoed Ann Romney’s own words when she told the Boston Globe that she was glad she didn’t have to work. But that didn’t stop the Romneys from jumping on the poutrage express in order to play the victim, even though the policies Mitt Romney champions victimize women.
Ann Romney had a valid point, even if she herself used to refer to being a stay at home mom as not working; our society does undervalue the work of stay at home parents of both genders. And Rosen had a valid point in that Ann Romney has not shown that she has a grasp of the issues facing most women.
Rosen apologized later, but her point was that Mitt Romney said he was taking input from Ann regarding the economic issues women face, and yet Ann Romney has been fortunate enough to never have faced the economic issues that most American women face. Mrs. Romney was born to a wealthy family and married the son of a wealthy man whose stock options were a cushion for the couple.
It’s clear from his smug delight in using Ms. Rosen’s comments to perpetuate the idea of his wife as a victim that Romney didn’t even pause to think about the real issues of women’s health, equal pay, or religious freedom. Romney was only interested in the political points he could score, not in the actual issues. This is a superficial man who just doesn’t care about anything other than his own ambition.
The joy he took in Ann being attacked was reminiscent of the smirk he couldn’t keep off of his face during his ill-advised Libya presser.
Romney wants to kick the can down the field in the Middle East and raise taxes on the middle class and remove the social safety net for the working poor. That’s what he stands for and he’s not interested in hearing from or about the people, let alone serving them.
Romney is also heard joking that he’s as “poor as a church mouse,” which might be cute to an audience eating a $50,000 plate dinner, but rings particularly cruel in light of his disdain for the 47% who he views with contempt because they feel entitled to food.
Mitt Romney built that: Mitt Romney is unveiling the elite class in a very unflattering manner. He is going to end up costing the Republican Party so much more than just one election.
Mitt Romney shows that the 1% are so far out of touch with reality that the idea of them running for city council is frankly disturbing. While the rest of America has suffered the results of their folly, they doubled down on champagne, entitlement and contempt.
Furthermore, they reveal themselves in the tape to be Fox News watching simpletons, and so we can only conclude that they got where they are due to their lack of conscience, rather than their intelligence. Perhaps there was a lot of hard work that went into the death of their collective souls, but frankly, their constant need of ego appeasement and sense of entitlement to being worshiped inaccurately as “job creators” has become trite and boring. They are becoming starkly farcical caricatures of themselves and we need to grab the reins of power away from them before they cause even more damage to our great society.
In not knowing what they don’t know, they’ve shown us why they need to go, and why the concept of the free market that they love will be the first to starve these beasts if only we can untangle the 1% from the government subsidies they feel entitled to.
Thank you, Mr. Romney, for throwing back the curtain on the 1%. It turns out that they are no better than your average American, only they take more welfare from the government and feel more entitled to it. These are not serious people, and they have no business near the red button let alone near policy-making. Mitt Romney sees even his own wife as nothing but a tool. It doesn’t get much lower than that.
I didn’t think it was possible that I could feel sorry for Ann Romney, but today I do.
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