MATT LAUER: When you said that we already have a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy, I'm curious about the word envy. Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?I'm nothing if not fair. It is certainly not Gov. Romney's fault if he was born with a platinum spoon in his mouth, and you know what? Mitt Romney gets a lot of flack for this kind of "empathy gap"--but he knows that losing jobs is a tragedy. Can he help it if he's the Sophocles of job loss? He likes firing people. How often do people get the opportunity to do something they like and make a butt-load of money at it?
ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it's about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99 percent versus one percent, and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent, you have opened up a wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.
LAUER: Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though?
ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It's a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.
Okay, maybe that wasn't all that convincing. Why don't I give the defense over to Mike Huckabee (who my internal polls via the services of Me, Myself and I Ltd are running at 2;1 over T-Paw for the running mate gig, now)? Gov. Huckabee?
Romney has come under a lot of fire for Bain Capital’s investments in some companies that were then scaled down with layoffs to become profitable. That’s been demonized thoroughly by the media as corporate raiding, But it’s surprising to see so many Republicans embrace that leftwing argument against capitalism. It’s terrible for the workers who lose their jobs, and nobody likes to see viable companies looted and destroyed. But if downsizing can turn around a failing company, then at least it prevents all the jobs from being lost, and it sets up a stronger company that can grow and start rehiring. The term for this among people who aren’t hostile to capitalism is “creative destruction.” Bad companies have to die to make way for stronger companies, in the same way that old trees fall over to make way for new trees. The other alternative, the Obama way, is to use vast amounts of taxpayer money to prop up companies that are failing in the marketplace. Sometimes, with a big enough cash transfusion, they survive, like GM. Other times, all the money in the world can’t stop them from going belly-up and losing all their jobs, like Solyndra. But at least when a company that’s bought out by investors goes bankrupt, the money that’s lost was voluntarily invested, not taken from taxpayers at gunpoint.
Well, I guess "bad companies" are like trees falling over....you know, if you don't think about what it's like to be a squirrel on that tree, or that some company trees sort of get violently chopped down in their prime because they are the ones with the useful wood you can sell off and....Gov Huckabee? (Aw shucks, I guess I lost him at "squirrel".)
What I'm trying to ask is, is it fair to criticize Romney just because the principal conceit of his platform is that he can create jobs when as a businessman, we can't ascertain that he ever created that many ("net-net"--which doesn't mean, I think, what Romney thinks it means) or because Massachussetts didn't really explode with job-creation when he was governor.? Or would that be small and envious? Criticize him if you must, but speak softly, love.
Oh, hell. I think it's mandatory that his claims are duly inspected and critiqued for their lack of accuracy. I don't hate him for being rich--and I don't envy him like that, personally. I think he's an asshole:
"Oh, you all are just jealous."
Weak sauce. In the real world, people need jobs to pay bills for food and shelter and so on--that's not envy, that is need. They've got definite feelings about people making short-term money by "creative destruction" of real people's livelihoods. They have reasons to ask, and if he doesn't like the questions, I guess he has reasons, too.
"Quiet rooms", my ass. All I envy is the mic MC Ro'Money has.
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