Get a job

There's a lot of hay being made today over Mitt Romney's (out-of-context) "gaffe" where he said he "likes being able to fire people." The consensus is that this is a very damaging quote, reinforcing the current line of attack against Romney that he made his money by buying companies and eliminating jobs. The other GOP candidates are foaming at the mouth to go on the attack using that line against Romney (he of the "it's ok to use put of context quotes in politics" line coming back to bite him, so no sympathy).

It's amazing that it just takes a filthy rich principle-free front runner to turn the rest of the Republican field into a economic populists for middle America. But anyway.

I'm not one for giving Mitt Romney any help, and deep down I believe that his "gaffe" was pretty Freudian (and also completely dishonest when not taken out of context - but what's new with Mitt Say Anything Romney?), which point everyone is going to be driving home from now until November.

However, if Mitt is as smart as he thinks he is, or his handlers are even remotely competent (and they've been working on thinking up some damage control on this all day, without a doubt), it's going to be pretty easy for him to recover and turn the line into a positive. "It's never easy to fire someone, but you're darn right sometimes I enjoy firing someone who deserves to be lose his job. And that's why I'm in this race. To fire Barack Obama. And I'm not going to apologize for that." The "firing" line is the perfect and natural lead-in for Romney's contemptible assertions and ad hominem attacks on the President.

If that's not red meat for the Tea Party right wing, I don't know what is.

P.S. On the real point that Romney way trying to make - that somehow the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") deprives individuals of the ability to select and change health care insurers in the free market, that's also nonsense, by the way. The key problem is without the ACA, where, if you have a problem with your insurance - generally because you have become ill - you are completely screwed. You are stuck with that evil, poor service providing insurance, because you have a preexisting condition that has now taken you out of the market for any other insurance. And even if you don't have a pre-existing condition, you're still stuck, because you don't get to choose your own insurance, anyway. Your employer does. And it's worse, because Romney knows this. It's his Massachusetts plan. But the man is such a fraud that he can say what he says straight-faced and is rarely called to account for his dishonesty. Good job, mainstream media.

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Location:Nashua, New Hampshire (not really)