In a meeting Thursday with the
Detroit Free Press editorial board, Mitt Romney was
on the defensive about his ridiculous ideas on what should have been done with the American auto industry in 2009.
“That is so absurd,” to suggest that he would have stood by while the automakers were liquidated, Romney told the Free Press editorial board this morning. “I can’t even listen to that. Of course I wouldn’t have allowed them to be liquidated.”
Gosh, I
wonder how anyone got such an absurd idea.
Trying to prove that he's just an ordinary guy who can relate to the struggles of working people, he resuscitated a line he's tried out before:
On his empathy for the poor: "I lived in France in an apartment with no toilet. I don't remember whether it had a refrigerator."
It's well established, though, that he spent at least eight months of his time in France living in a
mansion, complete with servants, and his campaign trail descriptions of the
toilet situation make clear that it's not that there were absolutely no toilets, but that they were not what Americans were accustomed to. But here's the thing: Let's say that—as unlikely as it is reported to be—Romney
did spend all but eight months of his Mormon mission in France living without a toilet, refrigerator, or bath. Even if that were the case, it was still a brief interlude in a life of privilege, and one that had a defined end. Willard Mitt Romney was not worried that he would never again have a toilet in his life. He was not worried he would go
hungry.
Implying that you can empathize with poor people because part of your mission in France was (possibly, according to you) spent in less than ideal circumstances is like saying that because you had the flu once, you know what it is to be chronically ill. Or that because you've been on a diet, you know what it is to be hungry because you cannot afford food. Believing that because he, for a specific reason, chose to live for a while below his usual standard of living, he knows what it is to be chronically deprived, to be worried about whether you will be able to support yourself or your family, is in its way as good a piece of evidence of Romney's blindness to his own privilege as his $10,000 bet was.