"I am so hilarious when I pretend to work!" (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Mitt Romney really can't help himself, can he? Touring a fence-post manufacturer in Ohio, the
Washington Post's Phillip Rucker
reports, he "was invited to press the button that starts the machine that turns sheets of steel into U-shaped fence posts." His response?
“I gotta press the button,” Romney said jokingly. “That will be my heavy lift in terms of manufacturing.”
There are things you joke about because they're true. This is a thing Romney should
not joke about, precisely because it's true on both the personal and policy levels. Campaign photo ops are as close as Romney will get to the experience of being a manufacturing worker, and campaign photo ops are as much as he'd do to promote American manufacturing if elected president.
I don't know what I want to see more—video of Romney actually saying this, or video of his campaign aides' faces as they hear him yet again reinforce that he's incredibly wealthy and out of touch.