‘I’m not concerned with the very poor.’
Mitt Romney’s latest fit of cluelessness:
A few points.
First, what makes this sound so bad is not just the sentence I quote in the title of this post. It’s the combination of this sentence and the one before it. “By the way, I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned with the very poor.” The suggestion, surely unintended, is that the poor are not really Americans — or are, at any rate, less American. They are exotic creatures, for whom real Americans must make some minimal provision — hence the next sentences: “We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”
Second, Romney seems to think that the problem of unemployment and the problem of poverty are separate ones: “My campaign is focused on middle-income Americans. You can choose where to focus. You can focus on the rich — that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor — that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans: retirees living on social security, people who can’t find work, folks that have kids that are getting ready to go to college.” The suggestion, surely unintended, is that the very poor are not people who can’t find work, but are people who are unwilling or unfit to work. Romney is also implying that when middle-income Americans lose their jobs, they remain middle-income instead of becoming poor. Of course he knows this isn’t necessarily the way it works, but he can speak this way because he himself is not “middle-income”: he comes from a class in which people can lose their income and remain quite comfortable because of their wealth. Most middle-income people don’t have a lot of wealth; they run out of money not long after their paychecks stop arriving. And then they’re poor, even very poor. (Romney could have saved himself some trouble by using the word “middle-class” instead of “middle-income,” but conservatives aren’t supposed to believe in class.)
Third, the conservative response to Romney’s gaffe is telling. Rush Limbaugh doesn’t fault him for saying he’s not concerned with the very poor. (Who hasn’t lapsed into imprudent candor from time to time?) No, Limbaugh’s upset because Romney said he’d fix the safety net if it needed fixing, when he should have said he’d tear it up and get the government out of the way so the poor could find jobs. But Romney’s conservative critics shouldn’t worry too much. After all, Romney had nice things to say about Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which would shrink the safety net considerably. “If it needs repair, I’ll fix it” is a wonderful Romneyism. The unabridged version of this statement is: “If it needs repair — and I’m not saying it does — I’ll fix it.”
Finally and most obviously, very poor Americans don’t vote as much as middle-income Americans.
Maybe he took the same public speaking class as Cardinal George?
Here are the very poor sleeping w/o a tax dime from the Romney or anyone elses ‘safety net’.. wait…wait …. the executive. director is a West Point graduate,
http://thegubbioproject.org/video.html
There’s also the (intended) implication that “focus[ing] on the rich” is a diversion from addressing the problems afflicting the middle class, instead of a necessary condition of addressing the problems of the middle class.
Much of the news coverage is presenting Romney’s comment as a gaffe. I have to wonder about that. We may be seeing the opposite of a “Sister Souljah moment.” Candidate Bill Clinton assailed a remark by Sister Souljah to show how moderate and centrist he was. Candidate Mitt Romney expresses disregard for the poor to show that he is not moderate and centrist, his political need for the moment. Romney didn’t appear to be uncomfortable when he made the remark. And he had to know that Soledad O’Brien would come back to it.
Contempt for the poor is probably the most deeply abiding American prejudice. A person wondering about the dignity of the working poor should read “Nickeled and Dimed.” It changed my perspective and some of my habits.
I don’t understand his concern with the middle-income people: if their state in life changes, then they’ll fall off the end and join either the very rich or the very poor, and then, either way, they’ll be all set, as Romney explains. So what exactly is the problem?
Seems that Romney’s problem is that he said out loud what basically all politicians from either party are really thinking.
I suspect that Romney’s attitude towards the poor might be influenced by his Mormon religion. As I understand them, Mormons believe that if you work hard you will succeed financially, and we are obligated to work hard. It follows that Mormons do well. I suspect (but do not know) that Mitt then draws a conclusion: that the poor who stay poor are that way because they don’t hustle, and we owe them only a bare minimum of survival. They could be well off if they tried.
Many Christians believe this also, and the so-called “prosperity Gospel” being preached by some non-denominational preachers is reinforcing this idea among many people, including, I suspect, many Tea Partyers.
The only cure for such people is for them to get to know some hard-working, but uneducated and in some cases dumb poor people who simply can’t move up. (Remember half the people are below average intellectually, and some, through no fault of their own, are not at all smart. Yes, I could say “dumb” but even that word has some shade of moral disparagement. It might go back to the Puritans who also emphasized hustling to make a good living.)
Romney seems to be a generous man, gut he doesn’t seem to know many poor people.
CORRECTION: In another thread I said that he was born in Mexico and knew poor Mexicancs, etc. That was wrong. It was his father, George Romney, who was born poor in Mexico, but prospered in the Mormon way.
P. S. There is a story about the rich New York politician Theodore Roosevelt who apparently didn’t know any poor people. But a visit to the New York City garment district (with Samuel Gompers??) made him realize that his assumptions about poverty in the U. S. were wrong, and so he revised them drastically, speaking out against the corrupt business of his time. He was originally a Republican but later founded the short-ived “Progressive” Party.
The great unwashed class of American voters don’t parse political prose as closely as you do. They know what he’s saying, even if he doesn’t say it, literally. It’s a different register. You’re judging him as though he were speaking to a college class. He’s not.
Just what are you talking about, David?
I think part of what is going on is also the tendency of rich and poor Americans to identify themselves as middle class, the former out of guilt, the latter out of shame. When Romney refers to middle-income Americans, he also refers to this group as comprising 95% of Americans! But the official poverty rate is about 15%.
Also, your characterization of the conservative response is a bit unfair. You suggest that they all agree with Limbaugh that there is no problem with Romney not being concerned with the poor. The article from the Weekly Standard to which you link says: “But Romney’s remark isn’t merely tone-deaf, it’s also un-conservative. The standard conservative argument is that a conservative economic agenda will help everyone.” Most of the responses at National Review Online are similar, that Romney should make the case that conservative ideas are more beneficial to the poor. Take or leave the argument, but it is the argument they are making.
Ann, I’m just saying that most people understand perfectly well what Matthew at least pretends not to understand, because they and Matthew are not listening in the same way. Every language has several or many registers. If you’re listening in the wrong register, you may well misunderstand what you’re hearing.
Politicians know, probably far better than academics, how to talk to the people.
I think everybody is over-parsing that statement. We’ve heard for 50 years that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” I won’t say where that came from. Romney is merely saying he’s going to watch the middle class boats when the tide comes in because he can’t do much for the rich and the safety net is taking care of the poor.
If, he added, the safety net doesn’t take care of the poor, he’ll fix it. From where he stands, seeing what the safety net does would require sending Henry M. Stanley to find it. But he claims to be willing to send someone or listen if someone who knows about it comes to him. Actually, I’d say his “gaffe” is considerably more sophisticated than the rising tide guff.
David Smith,
As a man of the people and a spokesman for “the great unwashed class of American voters,” maybe you could offer a better interpretation of Mitt’s words. Please, unwash them for us.
It isn’t the literal meaning of his words that worries me as much as what he clearly wants those words to convey. After all, he explicitly said he would fix the safety net if it needed fixing. But he also implied — especially in the context of what he’s said before and the policies he supports — that the safety net does not need fixing and is, in any event, a matter of no great importance. Likewise, he explicitly said that he wasn’t focused on the rich, but his fiscal plan involves huge tax cuts for the rich, cuts that will either add to the nation’s debt or be paid for with a sharp reduction of spending on entitlements, including programs for the very poor.
And by the way, I am not an academic.
To Paul Moses’s question, I think the “gaffe” here is simply that he said the specific words “I’m not concerned with the very poor.” The message itself was no slip, as Jonathan Chait documented — he’s been repeating it over and over on the campaign trail. Still a major political error in my opinion, but not an unpremeditated one. Gail Collins is very good (and very funny) today on just how bizarre the broader context of Romney’s statement is, both in its suggestion that “We will hear from the Democrat Party [sic] (about) the plight of the poor” – will we really? – and in its evident anxiety that Romney might be perceived as overly concerned about those same poor.
Not a supporter of Mitt, but I think this quote is being taken out of context a bit. What I get him saying is he is not worried about the very poor because they already get help. He is not saying he has no concern for them as people or their plight, but that he believes (wrongly, but nonetheless what he believes) that they have the structure put in place already to make sure they are able to live their lives without grave concerns for their well being. He is wrong in believing that, and I think it would be proper to point this out, however, I also think it doesn’t help to misconstrue what he said and make it mean something different from what the context makes of it.
I don’t believe for a moment that Romney is not concerned with the very poor. It is not our calling as Christians to function as James Carvilles or Sean Hannitys or any other partisan spin master who is ready to pounce on each and every mistake made by a political opponent. You’re taking his words out of context. I admit that it was an incredibly stupid thing for him to say for the very fact that his critics are waiting to jump at any opportunity to attack. Let’s give him a chance to explain himself before we make a judgement. If he comes back and says “I meant what I said, I really don’t care about poor people and there problems”, then you can unleash your criticisms and I will join you.
Correction – “… their problems…”
Should Romney launch another, better “War on Poverty,” LBJ style? Yes, that’s it! He should promise to destroy not only poverty but poor families to boot. But wait, that’s already been done.
All campaigns have a preferential option for the middle class. That’s where the votes are. Get the poor and working poor and the rest to vote, and you would see Romney (and Obama) singing a different tune.
As for campaign donations, the poor will never have influence.
I expected more than just partisan jabs from Commonweal readers. Romneys exceedingly generous charitable giving shows he knows how to make sacrifices for the poor. Like Obama he was merely trying to emphasize the pressing need to ensure that the increasingly stressed middle class gets the most attention.
I think this is more than “partisan jabs.” Romney has been getting it from all sides, and the middle.
Joe Klein has some good thoughts, I thought:
swampland.time.com/2012/02/02/romneys-poor-mouthing/
Last weekend James Q. Wilson, a social scientist universally admired by conservatives (and by many others as well), recommended a promising anti-poverty policy.
“One new strategy for helping the poor improve their condition is known as the ‘social impact bond,’ which is being tested in Britain and has been endorsed by the Obama administration…It may not be easy for the social impact bond model to work consistently, but it offers one big benefit: Instead of carping about who is rich, we would be trying to help people who are poor.”
The program is described in a Center for American Progress report to which the article links. This may be one of those rare once-in-a-lifetime events when a conservative and a CAP expert come to agreement on a significant issue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/angry-about-inequality-dont-blame-the-rich/2012/01/03/gIQA9S2fTQ_story_2.html
I think Claire makes an excellent point. If the very poor are all set, then middle-income Americans have no reason to be anxious. The one other point I wish I had made has been made here by Matthew Shadle. By identifying 90 to 95 percent of Americans as “middle-income,” Romney makes it clear just how much emphasis he’s putting on “very” in the phrase “very poor.” Republicans are always moaning about class warfare; this looks to me like statistical warfare. If you set the scope of “middle-income” broadly enough, almost no one counts as rich or poor, which is just how the GOP likes it.
I take Jack Foley’s point about Romney’s personal generosity, which should be noted and commended. But Romney is not running for the office of philanthropist-in-chief; he is running for president. And poverty isn’t just an occasion for charity (though it is that too); it is also a political problem, because it is a matter of justice (cf. St. John Chrysostom, Aquinas, et al.)
Romney’s exceedingly generous charitable giving shows he knows how to make sacrifices for the poor.
Add his charitable giving to his taxes and you still get a lesser amount than what regular upper middle “income” people pay in taxes, don’t you?
I, too, could be exceedingly charitable if my taxes could be arranged so that I pay less than half of what the people around me are paying.
Or in other words: takes my taxes and consider that the part of them that goes to medicare, medicaid, social security, and social programs, is charity. Then I am very charitable.
I hope that everyone has read Frank Rich’s article in the New York Magazine, “Who in God’s Name is Mitt Romney?”
It goes a long way, I think, to understanding why Romney is repeatedly demonstrating that he, to quote former Texas governor Ann Richards of fond memory, “was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/mitt-romney-2012-2/
Maybe we should thank God that frank Rich “moved on” to where he can roll out more than his NYT oped area allowed.
I though tStu”s and David’s post were grossoversimplifications, bu tI will say
there”s lots of code words used that can be chosen for deniability in context.
Will all those who have previously declared that they could not vote for Obama becasue of the HHS issue at least consider this statement before pullling a Republican lever? Or is there a choice for a polssible Ron Paul canadacy or not voting? We still have nine months to decide…
Mark Steyn is not very progressive but is critical of Romney’s remarks.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/289859/re-what-wrong-guy-mark-steyn
He’s not concerned about the very poor, in part, because he thinks they don’t vote. I can’t believe that the bishops, those supposed protectors of the preferential option for the poor, are supporting this guy (not to mention the Vatican, through its ambassadors).
As this post at The New Yorker points out, Romnay seems to believe that the middle class is 95% of Americans, with the poor and the rich being just 5$. but in actuality … According to the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, children “are 24 percent of the total population, but 36 percent of the poor population …… Twenty-two per cent of the children in the United States live below the poverty level, which is defined as $22,314 for a family of four. The numbers break down to two-fifths of black children, a third of Hispanic children, and one in every eight white children …
Yes, Jim, Mark Steyn is not very progressive (a word I dislike); and, like the conservatives I referred to before, he’s critical of Romney for all the wrong reasons. In his balderdash of a blog post he blames the nation’s antipoverty programs for its fiscal insolvency. How dare Mitt suggest that the federal government might ever do more for the poor than the too-much it’s already doing! For folks like Steyn, there are three kinds of poor people: the spectacularly wretched cared for by private charities, those who can’t take care of themselves only because the federal government keeps getting in the way of “job-creators,” and (the largest group) those who have no one but themselves to blame and might even be improved by a little cold and hunger.
I would venture to say that Romney gave more money to charity that 99+ out of 100 people who complain that he does not care about the very poor.
Mark: in fact he gave more money to charity than I’m going to earn in my entire life.
But in percentages, his tax+charity contributions to the common good add to a lot less in percentage of income than what lots of us give just in taxes.
Claire:
Percentages schmentages. The poor need cash/food to eat. They can’t eat a percentage. The bottom line is, the Romney’s have worked harder than the rest of us over the years, and because of that, they’ve been able to do more for the poor than the rest of us. THEY have done more for the commonweal.
Mark: Romney has worked hundreds of times more than you or me? Romney works harder in one day than you or me in one year? Of course not. His fortune is shameful.
Giving charity to the poor is not as commendable as instituting programs that will raise them from poverty. Charity keeps the power in the hands of the person who chooses (or doesn’t choose) to donate.
“Charity keeps the power in the hands of the person who chooses (or doesn’t choose) to donate.”
Breathtaking.
I speak as someone who’s myself below the poverty line, but I could be wrong. I appreciate as much as the next person the idea of private charity, but I’d still prefer rights and services guaranteed by law and provided by the state. Charity and justice are not the same thing – justice redresses financial inequality in our society … remember the pope mentioning the redistibution of property? Social services and laws may not be as warm and fuzzy as charity, but they’re more dependable, have no agenda, and are in a manner of speaking, the poor helping themselves through their taxes and their votes, rather than being the powerless recipients of some person’s largess.
I agree that Romney’s statement was taken out of context and it’s being misrepresented.
In the first place, he did not say “I don’t CARE about the poor”. He said “I’m not CONCERNED about the poor”, which in the context of his just saying “I’m not concerned about the rich -they’re doing well”. Obviously, what he meant was that neither the poor nor the rich are what requires his attention, his *concern”. He thinks (mistakenly) that only the middle=class has problems. He’s wrong, but he neither said nor implied that he doesn’t care about the poor.
Just an addendum to my earlier post. Pete Spiliakos quotes this passage from Mitch Daniels’ response to the State of the Union address. Obviously the quote was made prior to Romney’s statement on the poor, but I think it provides a superior conservative response to the issue:
“Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last three years are those unemployed or underemployed tonight and those so discouraged they’ve abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one’s been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country, the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did.
“As Republicans, our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life’s ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.”
Notice that Daniels uses the very same word “concern”, but he states that those who might classify as poor are the first concern.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/postmodernconservative/2012/02/02/i-care-about-what-you-care-about-whatever-that-is/
I just want to comend to Mr. Proska thbne story of the widow’s mite.
How hard Romney worked compared to many poor guys putting in all sorts of hours.
What’s the phrase “breathtaking…..”
I would venture to say that Romney gave more money to charity that 99+ out of 100 people who complain that he does not care about the very poor.
Percentages schmentages. The poor need cash/food to eat. They can’t eat a percentage. The bottom line is, the Romney’s have worked harder than the rest of us over the years, and because of that, they’ve been able to do more for the poor than the rest of us. THEY have done more for the commonweal.
Doesn’t this almost contradict the parable of the poor widow’s offering?
Bob/Claire–
You are judging Romney’s soul; I am judging his impact.
If he paid 35% taxes, he would have more impact.
Agree with Mr Karlson that the quote does not sound unreasonably when replaced in its context. Prediction: Romney will quickly become more sensitive and careful on this front and be better poised to challenge Obama.
Why, really, does Romney want to be President?
What does Mitt really think? Krugman today says that 10 days ago Mitt was complaining the the safety net for the poor doesn’t work, so he’s going to dismantle it — repeal Obama care, gut Medicaid, reduce food stamps drastically. Now this week he’s saying that the poor have a safety net that works, “Or I’ll fix it”.
He doesn’t have a clue. Just doesn’t have a clue.
“Giving charity to the poor is not as commendable as instituting programs that will raise them from poverty. Charity keeps the power in the hands of the person who chooses (or doesn’t choose) to donate.”
Thank you, Crystal, for reminding us liberals that there is one conservative principle that makes a lot of sense :-)
Unfortunately, too many conservatives don’t seem to practice this principle when it comes to government programs — they hate supporting them.
“Giving charity to the poor is not as commendable as instituting programs that will raise them from poverty. Charity keeps the power in the hands of the person who chooses (or doesn’t choose) to donate.”
This is a good reason to support programs that really do raise people from poverty: private and (some) public education, union organizing, private-agency-managed housing assistance programs, and so on.
Government plays an important role in providing grant money to these initiatives.
Regarding government public-aid programs, Crystal’s critique – “charity keeps the power in the hands of the person who chooses (or doesn’t choose) to donate” – certainly applies to them, on a massive scale.