Romney: he must be doing something right...

Whenever some rabidly rightist Republican complains about Mitt Romney being the weakest available challenger to President Obama, I try to tell him that their very own complaints will make Romney the strongest challenger. As I've tried to explain here, extremists' disdain will only make Romney seem safer to the "centrist" swing voters most likely to be dissatisfied with the incumbent. Irrepressible rightist contempt for the Man From Bain will also make it more difficult for Democrats to portray Romney as an extreme rightist. For example: no sooner had liberals had their innings on Romney's "gaffe" from yesterday, when he stated that he wasn't really concerned about the "very poor," then the reactionaries came to his rescue -- with knives drawn for Romney.

Recall that Romney had explained his unconcern in part by noting that the very poor had a safety net that he would consider fixing should he learn that it was inadequate to its purpose. It turns out that the same complacency about the safety net that makes Romney appear callous to liberals makes him appear, yet again, insufficiently conservative to the Republican ideological base. To Rush Limbaugh, Romney's comment proves him indifferent to "one of the biggest cultural problems we've got." Forgetting the distinction usually drawn between the "safety net" of temporary assistance and the alleged "hammock" of permanent dependence, Limbaugh protested that "the safety net is contributing to the destruction of [the very poor's] humanity and their futures." Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal complained that Romney should have concerned himself more with ending dependency than with ending poverty. The editors may complain about my paraphrase, but that's the implication of their critique.

To review: Romney offended kneejerk liberals and kneejerk rightists by affirming the viability of the current social safety net. Paradoxically, both sides are offended for virtually the same reason. Liberals would prefer that a candidate directly empower the "very poor" by giving them jobs rather than depending on the "middle class" to eventually hire them, while rightists would prefer that a candidate tell the very poor to get a job rather than sustaining or fortifying the safety net. Meanwhile, Romney's avowed emphasis on the "middle class" is rhetorically little different from what we have heard and will hear from the President on the subject. A swing voter is likely to review events and conclude that someone who manages to offend base voters at both extremes of the Bipolarchy may well be saying, if not doing, something right. But then again, Romney does like to fire people....