Romney roasted over comments on poor
Ill-chosen remarks spark controversy
Poor Mitt Romney. OK, bad choice of words.
Not 24 hours after coasting to victory in Florida’s primary, the former Massachusetts governor went from being the suddenly sure-footed Republican front-runner to putting his foot in his mouth on the plight of America’s poorest citizens.
Romney’s campaign was on its heels much of Wednesday after the GOP candidate told a national television audience he was “not concerned” about Americans on the lowest rung of the nation’s social ladder.
“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it,” Romney told CNN on Wednesday.
It was the kind of tone-deaf comment that makes Republican campaign strategists wince and Democratic ad makers rejoice — reinforcing a long-running opposition narrative that Romney is out of touch with the economic challenges facing voters in 2012.
Romney, who is worth an estimated $250 million, immediately tried to offer a clarification after CNN host Soledad O’brien suggested the comment might sound “odd” to very poor Americans.
“We will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor. And there’s no question, it’s not good being poor, and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor,” he explained.
“But my campaign is focused on middle-income Americans. My campaign, you can choose where to focus. You can focus on the rich. That’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor. That’s not my focus.”
Newt Gingrich, who finished second to Romney in Florida, seized on the comment during a campaign event later Wednesday in Nevada.
“I am fed up with politicians in either party dividing Americans against each other,” Gingrich said.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported last September that 46.2 million Americans were living below the poverty line in 2010, the highest number in more than half a century of record keeping. The poverty rate, measured at 15.1 per cent, was the highest since 1993.
A family of four with an income lower than $22,314 is considered to be living in poverty in the U.S.
“We have a very ample safety net, and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it,” Romney said.
“But we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor. But the middle-income Americans, they’re the folks that are really struggling right now.”
The comments provided new fodder for Romney’s critics, not only President Barack Obama’s campaign team, but conservative Republicans who have blanched at a series of illconsidered remarks from the GOP candidate.
Erick Erickson, editor of the influential conservative website RedState.com, complained that Romney “played straight into the liberal caricature that Republicans don’t have hearts.” But Romney also risked alienating evangelical Republicans “who are very mindful of the rich man and Lazarus,” Erickson wrote on his blog.
Jim Messina, Obama’s re-election campaign manager, tweeted a brief response to Romney: “So much for ‘we’re all in this together.’ ”
Romney was concerned enough about the impact of his remarks that he spoke to reporters travelling with him aboard his campaign plane, explaining that his comment was in line with past statements about his intention to focus on helping the middle class. “If there are people who are falling through the cracks,” Romney said, he would seek solutions.
Romney won the Florida primary on Tuesday over Gingrich by a double-digit margin, seeming to rebound from his rivals’ criticisms of him as “corporate raider” who profited as a private equity executive when bankrupt companies laid off workers.
The gaffe about poor Americans was also a reminder about the perils of premature jubilation among Romney supporters, who have trumpeted the Florida outcome as evidence the former governor now has the Republican nomination all but sewn up.
The next test of Romney’s postFlorida strength comes with the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, followed by caucuses next week in Colorado, Maine and Minnesota.