"He not only stepped in it because it sounds stupid, he stepped in it because it IS stupid!" ~ Mark Levin
All day, everyone's made a stink about Romney's wording used in an interview this morning with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien:
Now before joining Miss Soledad in getting our proverbial panties in a bunch over Romney saying, "I’m not concerned about the very poor," I would caution everyone not to isolate pieces of Romney's comments (like he's practiced against his competitors in the race), but keep them in their full context. And as Levin points out, you'll recognize just how this rhetoric in total is consistent with Romney's mindset when it comes to governance of the individual. Yes, this is much more than a gaffe...
"So in a very bizarre way, Mitt Romney is a class warfare warrior. He has dipped into the class warfare pool. Now Obama, of course, claims to represent the middle class and attacks the rich. What Romney's trying to do is get in front of that parade and say, "Wait a minute, I care about the middle class too. The poor have all these government programs. The rich are rich. I'm for the middle class." You understand, ladies and gentlemen, this is not how conservatives argue. You understand...that this is not what we Americans believe."
"Excuse me, mastermind. Your focus should be on...helping to unleash the private sector by doing what a president should do, slashing regulations, slashing taxes, and getting government out of the daily lives of most of us. ... "The rich are fine; the poor are fine, they have all these programs. My focus is on the middle class." No, your focus should be on the Constitution. It should be on the private sector; it should be on capitalism; it should be on private property rights. That should be your focus. And while you're at it, you should pick up the Constitution and see exactly what your powers are as president, no more, no less. He's breaking us down into categories too! ... Wait a minute, that's not how we Americans are supposed to think! We didn't think that way 100 and 150 years ago. How are we going to break out of this, ladies and gentlemen, this utopian tyranny, this big centralized government, this overwhelming behemoth, and start to turn things around, if people talk like this? Worse yet, if people think like this?"
Refer back to the first quote of this post ("He not only stepped in it...") to complete Levin's analysis.
ADDENDUM: Erick Erickson of RedState also discussed how National Review's candidate won't stop digging!
