During the campaign I gave Mitt Romney plenty of chances. When the Republicans in the primary and then Barack Obama tried to paint him as a snide, distant elitist I chalked it up to character attacks in the campaign.Even after he made his infamous 47% comments I thought he was just acting like most ultra-rich people but didn’t necessarily think of him personally as a bad guy. But all of that has changed now. Mitt’s behavior in the week since losing the election, capped off by his “47%-lite”comments on a conference call to GOP donors yesterday has shown that he’s not just rich, and out of touch, the man is actually a jerk, and thank goodness America didn’t elect him.
Webster’s defines a Jerk as:
Jerk: \`jerk\
A: an annoyingly stupid or foolish person
B : an unlikable person; especially : one who is cruel, rude, or small-minded
Mitt isn’t foolish, but he certainly has demonstrated a rude and cruel temperament since losing the election last week. No one is happy after losing, but the petty “So what America? I’m still rich – So THERE!” mindset that he’s had on full display never would have fit in the Oval office. Here are just a few examples in the last 8 days.
1. Concession Speech: When you’ve dedicated 2 years of your life to getting someone (who you’ve probably only met in person twice) elected it stings when they lose. You need encouragement, consolation and deep heartfelt appreciation from your candidate for all of your hard work. So what does Mitt Romney do for his concession speech on election night? He gets up and chats for about 3 minutes then walks off stage. That’s it. That’s all the time his dedicated supporters deserved. A lousy 3 minutes, before he went back to being rich and happy. Take a look at McCain and John Kerry’sconcession speeches and that will show you what a classy nominee is supposed to do.
2. Shock and Awe: This entire narrative on the part of the Romney campaign that they were totally blindsided in their loss is just more of the same post – election jerk behavior. I could accept Team Romney saying they were shocked by the margin and breadth of the loss. What I can’t buy is that they had no idea they were going to lose when every national poll for the last two weeks shoed him losing the Electoral College. At least admit you had an uphill battle.
And now this infamous conference call with big money donors to cap off the Jerk-Hat that Romney has been wearing with derisive pride for 8 days now. Various news outlets have reported that Romney had a post – election conference call with big time donors to talk about the campaign, and what they should do moving forward. In this call Romney explains away his resounding loss to Barack Obama by saying the President offered “Gifts” to different constituents and that’s why they voted for him. For example when it came to African Americans he said:
“With regards to African American voters, ‘Obamacare‘ was a huge plus — and was highly motivational to African American voters. You can imagine for somebody making $25—, or $30—, or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free healthcare — particularly if you don’t have it, getting free healthcare worth, what, $10,000 a family, in perpetuity, I mean this is huge. Likewise with Hispanic voters, free healthcare was a big plus.”
Really Mitt? I didn’t realize that the Affordable Care Act only helped African Americans and Hispanics. Or are there no White people in Romney/Ryan America making $25-$30 a year? Even better, if you knew that this policy was important to African Americans why march right into the NAACP convention last summer and refer to it as “Obamacare”? However I think the biggest message from this quote alone (and he had several doozies about college kids and Hispanics) is that Mitt – the Jerk – Romney seems to confuse “Gifts” with “Policy”. If voters can’t point out a single policy you propose that will make their life better, they will not vote for you. That’s why you lost.
Usually you want to ignore the character attacks of a political campaign because we don’t really know who a candidate is in person. However in the case of Mitt Romney, it looks like Santorum, Gingrich, Paul and even Obama pretty much had this guy pegged from the start. He is a dismissive, arrogant, “lectures a homeless guy before giving him a dollar” elitist that viewed the presidency as the next promotion rather than a chance to serve America. His recent comments should serve as a huge indicator that America dodged a bullet on November 6th.
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.