Did Romney Swiftboat Himself?

Governor Romney is being blasted in the media for the leaked video of him describing a demographic that he’s choosing not to campaign for. Whether you feel that this is right or wrong, we should acknowledge the reality that yes, a significant percentage of the electorate is in President Obama’s corner no matter what. If Obama were videotaped eating live kittens at the annual Vegans For Obama dinner, he would still be keeping most of those voters. Same thing with Romney. Portions of the electorate are locked and that’s what the video is showing Romney talking about.

It’s still a huge screwup on his part.

This exposes a huge fallacy underlying a republican domestic policy: trying to sell the message that there is a dichotomy between tax payers (a.k.a. “job creators” although I won’t get into that false dichotomy right now) and low-wage, Democratic entitled freeloaders out to getcha.

Jay Bookman sums up the statistics in his piece today.

What I believe is the Republicans main problem is that the party really believes this line.

Jenn and I sit firmly in the top 5% of income by household in the US. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way because of the amount going out to pay for student loans, but it’s true nevertheless. We pay just shy of double the annual tax rate of Gov. Romney (depending on which of his effective tax years we look at). We should be the republican demographic, given the espoused ideals of the party. Yet we are not. Almost across the board, the republicans do not represent us in any meaningful way. I’ll set aside all of the social issues that we disagree with the GOP on because that’s almost a given, but even economically (where Jenn and I differ most) the party of Lincoln just seems to be whistling a tune that is old, tired, and demonstrably ineffective based on the results of the Bush tax policies. Calling people who just want to be able to see a doctor “victims” demonstrates what we already knew: privileged people can’t relate.

The primary goal of this election season seems to be win at any cost.

I find that depressing.