Today, Krugman exceeds his usual high standards in his analysis of Romney's Boca Raton video. While this video will likely end up being the equivalent of Ford's comments about Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, the comments of a party nominee aren't necessarily the key point here. The key point, as Krugman notes, is his party's deep and profound disdain for working Americans.
The (literal) $ quote from Krugman is:
But here’s the question: Should we imagine that Mr. Romney and his party would think better of the 47 percent on learning that the great majority of them actually are or were hard workers, who very much have taken personal responsibility for their lives? And the answer is no.
For the fact is that the modern Republican Party just doesn’t have much respect for people who work for other people, no matter how faithfully and well they do their jobs. All the party’s affection is reserved for “job creators,” a k a employers and investors. Leading figures in the party find it hard even to pretend to have any regard for ordinary working families — who, it goes without saying, make up the vast majority of Americans.
Am I exaggerating? Consider the Twitter message sent out by Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, on Labor Day — a holiday that specifically celebrates America’s workers. Here’s what it said, in its entirety: “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” Yes, on a day set aside to honor workers, all Mr. Cantor could bring himself to do was praise their bosses.
It's not just Cantor who shares these views. Ryan does, too, as does just about anyone in this year's GOP presidential field. People took Cain's utterly absurd "9-9-9" plan
seriously. Compared to the rest of that field, Mitt looks pretty good--in the land of the blind, the man w/ a seeing eye dog is king (even if the dog is on the car's roof).
Rush, Sarah, Newt, Santorum--their views were expressed on the viral video. The likes of Linda McMahon and Scott Brown are distancing themselves from it, as they have no choice. I suspect, however, that McMahon largely shares those views, and Brown may, too.
Again, as per Krugman:
Needless to say, the G.O.P.’s disdain for workers goes deeper than rhetoric. It’s deeply embedded in the party’s policy priorities. Mr. Romney’s remarks spoke to a widespread belief on the right that taxes on working Americans are, if anything, too low. Indeed, The Wall Street Journal famously described low-income workers whose wages fall below the income-tax threshold as “lucky duckies.”
What really needs cutting, the right believes, are taxes on corporate profits, capital gains, dividends, and very high salaries — that is, taxes that fall on investors and executives, not ordinary workers. This despite the fact that people who derive their income from investments, not wages — people like, say, Willard Mitt Romney — already pay remarkably little in taxes.
Where does this disdain for workers come from? Some of it, obviously, reflects the influence of money in politics: big-money donors, like the ones Mr. Romney was speaking to when he went off on half the nation, don’t live paycheck to paycheck. But it also reflects the extent to which the G.O.P. has been taken over by an Ayn Rand-type vision of society, in which a handful of heroic businessmen are responsible for all economic good, while the rest of us are just along for the ride.
As far as the upper echelons of today's GOP feels, there is them, and there is the help, and the help is pretty damned ungrateful about what the echelons are bequeathing upon the help. While those views happen to coincide w/ those of the people who fund GOP campaigns, they're conisistent w/ those of the upper echelons. It's not an accident that, since 1988, the GOP has nominated the son of a senator, a governor, or a president 5 of 7 times, and they nominated an admiral's son (w/ an extremely wealthy wife), too. Dole was the only nominee in the past 28 years who didn't start life w/ a step up on others.
One party unabashedly exists to serve the 1%, if not the .05%. It is long past time that someone happened to catch their nominee on tape openly acknowledging that fact. W sort of did w/ his haves and the have mores line in 2000, but except for Michael Moore, no one ever picked up on that clip. It equally past time for the Dems to openly confront the GOP's obvious tilt and take a more aggressive approach against their foes once this election is over.
Finally, as someone who called Boca home from 1974-85 and whose parents still live there, I note that the 3d and final debate this year will be held in (drum roll) Boca Raton. Somehow I suspect that, in the buildup to that debate, there will be some mention of the fundraiser Romney held there 5 months earlier.