If you've been curious to hear how a newly reinvented Mitt Romney would bring his new anti-poverty, pro-middle class message to the Republican campaign trail, your wait is over. Meet the new Mitt Romney, and the new Mitt Romney has a lot of fresh new takes that
you just can't get from those other conservatives.
Mitt Romney praised marriage as an antidote to poverty, noted that he’s “not a big fan of Vladimir Putin’s” and acknowledged that “short term, our economy is looking up” during an appearance Wednesday evening.
Ending poverty by getting the poor people to hitch up? What a bold new concept in conservative anti-poverty thinking; surely, Mitt Romney is bringing the full breadth of his intellect to the battle. I cannot wait to hear the New Mitt Romney's revised economic strategies for helping America's shrinking middle class to stabilize their increasingly tenuous economic positions. Encouraging higher pay? Reinvigorating labor law to prevent abuses?
“How can Secretary Clinton provide opportunity for all if she doesn’t know where jobs come from in the first place?” Romney said. “And how does President Obama expect to make America the best place on earth for businesses, as he promised in his State of the Union address, if he persists in business taxation that is the highest in the developed world, regulations that favor the biggest banks and crush the small ones, a complex and burdensome health care plan, and a slanted playing field for unions and trial lawyers?”
Hmm. At first glance this seemed like the old Mitt Romney message of cutting corporate taxes, deregulating banks, dismantling Obamacare and blaming union labor and greedy lawyers for America's woes, but I see that he has replaced it with a new and much-refined Mitt Romney platform of cutting corporate taxes, deregulating banks, dismantling Obamacare and blaming union labor and greedy lawyers for America's woes. A clever rebranding, and no doubt one that will allow Mitt Romney to claim the mantle of Republican candidate most in touch with our harried middle class.
All that it needs now is a clever bumper sticker, something like Mitt Romney '16: Get married or piss off. It's a little rough, I know, but we'll get Frank Luntz to polish it up.
Fri Jan 30, 2015 at 6:59 AM PT (Laura Clawson): Romney is expected to make his final, official decision on whether to run for president public this morning, and most observers expect it to be yes, he's running.