Look, I'll acknowledge that last night I questioned whether Mitt Romney's remarks on that now-notorious video would kill his campaign. I did so because I've seen how susceptible hearland Americans are to rugged-individualism propaganda.
But I'm not denying that what Romney said is profoundly insulting to much of America. Chuck Todd, on the other hand, is denying that. I know his job is to tell you at all times that the system isn't broken and both sides are equally extreme and both sides are equally to blame for anything that's gone wrong in our politics, but on last night's NBC Nightly News, confronted with incontrovertible evidence that Mitt Romney holds us peasants and non-scions in utter contempt, Todd basically insisted that it was unfair to ascribe Mitt Romney's words to Mitt Romney:
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CHUCK TODD: ... you don't necessarily know. Is the candidate saying what he truly believes? Or is he saying what he thinks the audience wants to hear? Particularly at a place like a fund-raiser where partisan red meat is had, not just rubber chicken, if you will, that they eat. But, you know, in this videotape -- which, of course, our national investigative correspondent, Michael Isikoff, acquired -- you do get a sense of at least what the campaign is thinking sometimes. And in many ways Mitt Romney was sounding like a pundit -- right? He was saying there are 47% of the country that is going to be with the president no matter what. But the part that he said, talking about that they pay no income taxes, that they want to be part of a government, it's probably going to have legs and something he's got to deal with. He's put out a statement, sort of a non-, innocuous statement, trying to deal with this a little ways. And it is a reminder: President Obama, when he was candidate Obama, had a similar incident where he was overheard talking about analyzing folks in the state of Pennsylvania, saying they cling to their guns and religion. And, Brian, it's a political comment to this day that's still a political problem for the president to deal with in those states.So to sum up:
* Romney was calling half the country parasites just to be polite to his dinner guests.
* Romney was saying "what the campaign is thinking sometimes," which lets him off the hook because Romney is not to be held responsible for the actions of the Romney campaign.
* Pundits just sling statistics to fill airtime and column inches, with no actual core beliefs -- that's their job. When Romney said that half of all Americans are parasites, he was just being a pundit.
* This could hurt Romney politically, which is what's really important here.
* Oh, and both sides do it.
Thanks for that perceptive analysis, Chuck.
