http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/mitt-romney-poverty-san-diego-114359.html?hp=t1_rThe reinvention of Mitt Romney
Former Obama campaign aides mock their 2012 opponent’s new anti-poverty crusade.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
1/18/15 8:05 AM EST
Mitt Romney, sudden champion of Americans trying to make ends meet — it’s coming off to progressives and veterans of Obama’s winning re-election campaign as a little too rich.
The 2012 Republican nominee’s sudden return to presidential politics already had them dusting off old attack lines. His reinvention Friday night as an anti-poverty warrior has them in a frenzy of excitement, even glee at what they see as the Democratic Party’s stroke of good luck.
“In a word,” said one of President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign alums, describing the reactions bouncing around on private emails and text messages, “disbelief.”
Another word might be mockery.
“Romney is 47 percent concerned about inequality,” the president’s 2012 campaign press secretary, Ben LaBolt, said in an email. “The other 53 percent of him would rather polish his car elevators.”
The car elevator is a common refrain.
“Romney’s problem has always been really about believability and connection with the challenges of average Americans,” said Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager. “It’s simply never going to be believable to go from car elevators, off-shore accounts and his famous 47 percent comment to the populist income equality warrior.”
The Romney of the 2012 cycle was indeed his own worst enemy – a weakness the Obama team skillfully exploited to paint him as Mr. Monopoly.
There was “corporations are people, my friend,” from the 2011 Iowa state fair. At a breakfast in New Hampshire a few months later, Romney declared, “I like being able to fire people.” And in an interview that aired the day after he clinched the Republican nomination, he remarked, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”
A week after the election, Romney blamed the loss on “gifts” he said Obama promised to minorities if they voted for him.
Now that Romney wants back in on the game, convincing his party to give him a third shot is going to require not just some reassurances that he’d do things differently, but a little pizzaz to stand out from a very crowded field of more dynamic newcomers.
So on Friday, he took to the the deck of the U.S.S. Midway to argue to Republican National Committee members in San Diego that Obama’s the one who’s failing to to close the wage gap between rich and poor.
“Under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before,” Romney said. “Their liberal policies are good every four years for a campaign, but they don’t get the job done.”
“The only policies that will reach into the hearts of the American people and pull people out of poverty and break the cycle of poverty are Republican principles, conservative principles,” Romney said to no applause from the Republican crowd.
On the other side of the country, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who became a progressive icon when he made income inequality the centerpiece of his 2013 mayoral campaign, said he was astounded.
“Doing it in such a ham-handed manner in what appears to be a deathbed conversion is a strange way to suddenly come out of the box with it, and I find it disingenuous, and I think a lot of other people will too,” de Blasio said, speaking Saturday evening from New York. “This is a guy who was pretty brazenly uninterested in addressing income inequality in 2012.”
At this point, Romney is just toying with another presidential campaign. If he does go through with a run, Messina argued, “Voters will see it for what it is: a tactic and not a vision or commitment.”
“A message only works if it’s authentic to the messenger,” said Obama’s 2012 deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter. “I’m not sure voters will trust that that’s the case here.”
Eric Fehrnstrom, a top adviser to Romney who’s remained close during the relaunch deliberations, did not return emails about the criticism or about how Romney landed on making “American people are struggling to make ends meet” a centerpiece of his official unofficial return.
Democrats also haven’t quite known what to do with the interest in addressing income inequality that’s bubbling up from their base. For all the evident pleasure Obama’s former campaign staff is taking in Romney’s sudden conversion — Obama himself deflected a question about Romney earlier Friday with a smile and a “no comment” — the president himself has been bit repeatedly for being insufficiently committed.
Progressives were upset in December when he signed off on a change to the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill sought by banks, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) made a cause of stopping the confirmation of blocking Obama’s nominee to a top Treasury Department job, Antonio Weiss, in part because of his Wall Street background.
On Tuesday night, Obama will use his State of the Union address to lay into the case further, promoting his free community college plan and a series of tax changes that progressives are already embracing as an assault on the ‘1 percent’, without much care about which have a chance of passing Congress.
Then there’s “dead broke” Hillary Clinton. De Blasio has deep Clinton ties, and she’s been trying to cleave close to him because of his identification with income inequality and progressive politics. Out of the blue on Friday, she took a break from talking about her Clinton Foundation work and not talking about her presidential campaign to tweet out, “Attacking financial reform is risky and wrong. Better for Congress to focus on jobs and wages for middle class families.”
But hearing it from Romney, de Blasio said, is a sign that income inequality has really arrived as the defining issue of the 2016 campaign.
“This is on the minds of more and more people around the country, because income inequality is basically the touchstone of what we’re dealing with right now,” de Blasio said. “It is very telling that a guy who’s trying to find his way back to political relevance will grab onto it.”
Of all the Republicans who could have attached themselves to income inequality, de Blasio said, Romney might be the biggest stretch.
“It’s a fascinating and disingenuous play,” de Blasio said. “But at least it will cause people to talk more about the issues.”
