He’s donned his colors. He has his eyes on the top spot and is making his move, but right now Mitt Romney is standing strong as the protector of the great lie, “Corporations are people my friend.”
The tone deaf bodyguard of all things financially elite has been littering the landscape with this kind of absurdity for months. He drops diamonds at the feet of his opponents so let’s start scooping, make a little fine jewelry perhaps.
First the centerpiece in this tiara, “Corporations are people my friend.” Romney shared this gem at an event sponsored by the Des Moines Register during his successful run in the Iowa Caucus. His follow up and explanation suggested either a blunt condescension regarding the intellect of his listeners or a painful lack of mental faculty on his own part, “Everything corporations earn goes to people. Where do you think it goes?” A heckler responded immediately, “It goes in their pockets!”. The GOP front runner then leaned in, a clear gleam in his eye, “Whose pockets? They’re human beings my friend.” Even the most deductively challenged observer can sidestep the grade school logic that because corporations are operated by people (large groups of people in fact) that the entities themselves are somehow individual sentient beings. Romney’s implication as documented on the video is clearly that the trickle up nature of the corporate cash stream away from labor and towards executive compensation is somehow acceptable because the recipients are people. Who exactly, Oh sergeant at Arms do you think you’re talking to?
On to the smaller stones. We’ll wrap them around the above centerpiece. During ABC’s entry into the marathon of Republican Presidential debates (back when consummate mouth breather and Brokeback Mountain fashion devotee Rick Perry was still considered a threat) Romney challenged the Texan to a $10,000 bet regarding the veracity Perry’s claim that Romney had supported health care mandates in his book. I’ll keep this brief and salute the Sergeant’s audacity in attempting to wager $10,000 on national television while running to be the chief representative of a country where that princely sum represents 20% of the median household income for the year.
A nice highlight from a few months earlier occurred when the former Massachusetts Governor told a group of unemployed voters in Florida, “I’m also unemployed… but I have my eye on a certain job.” Cue the uncomfortable courtesy laughter. The reported net worth of this well coifed portrait of empathy is 202 million dollars. Ouch.
For the final setting in our stunning little bobble let’s go with this up and coming son of Oligarchy’s precious, “I like being able to fire people.” This one works because no amount of back-pedalling or contextual adjustment will spare Mitt the resentment such a blindly insensitive and media clumsy dollop of verbal drool is going to engender. The man has made it clear to a nation populated by a public reeling under a crippled economy and living in fear of further deprivation and desperation that he is clearly not their guy.
We ride.
