Mitt Romney insults every single unemployed person in America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Campaigning in Florida yesterday, supposed Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney had this to say about himself:

I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed.

He meant it as a joke and the people at the table with him, all unemployed, also laughed.

Oh... so... hilarious.

Is this really his shtick, and is he really trying to break the ice on umemployment by telling this stupidly unfunny joke?

Is it his multi-millionaire way of connecting with the suffering, struggling American people? He made his money mostly by destroying jobs. He has no idea what it means to be unemployed, to suffer through genuinely hard times, to struggle to pay the bills and put food on the table. And yet he makes a joke like this as a way to seem like he's actually in touch?

I'm sorry, but evidently he's an asshole.

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I would also note, following Jon Chait, that Romney is hardly as moderate/sensible/reasonable as he is being made out to be.

Responding to Romney's claim that Obama is some sort of un-American Europhile, Chait calls him "an ignorant demagogue," very much in line with other Republicans "exploiting cheap sentiment and playing upon fears of Obama as foreign, un-American, and working to undermine free enterprise," all of which, of course, it utterly baseless. Chait sums Romney up nicely:

I agree that somewhere, in his heart of hearts, Romney is an intelligent technocrat who's better than his campaign. But the plain fact is that the Mitt Romney who's running for president is sane and rational only by the standards of his crazed opposition -- which is to say, he isn't one.

Don't let him fool you. And don't let the media play along with his fooling.