It’s piling on at this point to comment on Mitt Romney’s utter disdain for almost half of the U.S. population. If you really want the good stuff, check out Ezra Klein, Josh Marshall, David Frum, Kevin Drum, and Atrios (actually, you should be reading them ever day). But if there’s one thing that I am, it’s analytical, and I couldn’t help but do some investigation into my own situation to see which side I fall into (Spoiler alert: it’s in the title).
As a Democrat and a Barack Obama supporter, one would think that I’m a moocher, somebody who never pays into the system and just thinks I’m entitled to food, shelter, a job, etc. I’ve been open with my tax situation before, but that’s just one year. Being the data hound that I am, though, I conveniently have every tax return I’ve ever filed at my disposal (like you should). It turns out I’ve paid federal income taxes in 16 of the last 17 years, the lone exception being my first year of college when I didn’t have a job. That’s 15 years of consecutive fifty-three percenting! I should be writing checks to Romney and Ryan left and right.
Of course, lots of people who pay federal income taxes like me are supporters of Barack Obama, and plenty of people who don’t are supporters of Mitt Romney (such as a large number of seniors who just get Social Security). The real difference between the two groups, I think, is this: Mitt Romney thinks that wealth itself is proof of his moral superiority: whoever has a lot of money has to be doing the right thing. I, on the other hand, recognize that not just hard work, but luck and the circumstances you grew up in determine your economic success in life, and at least one of those you can’t control.
What Romney said is not unusual in conservative circles by any means. Ascribing moral superiority to those who merely have more zeros on a balance sheet is a convenient way of measuring who is good and who isn’t, without having to worry about things like privilege, opportunity, and so forth. It may be unusual for a presidential candidate to be so open about it, but given the stance of Republican leaders in the past few years, it is probably inevitable that at some point a candidate would just come out and say it. The only unusual thing to me is that so many conservatives have rebuked Romney, and genuinely so.
Romney may not survive this statement, but there are plenty of people living in a bubble that think this way. I’m not sure when they will lose the contempt for half of their fellow countrymen.