Yesterday was not a good news day for the former Bain executive:
Both Gingrich and the DNC are beating up on Romney for the comment. Michael Brendan Dougherty notes that Romney said almost the same thing in October:
Turns out that this is just the way Mitt Romney thinks. Politically, the problem isn't necessarily the substance–almost no one votes on poverty issues– but the overwhelming sense that Romney says these gauche out-of-touch things all the time.
Many conservatives are worried about the substance of the remark, and not just Romney's "inelegant" delivery. As Matthew Boudway explains:
[T]he conservative response to Romney’s gaffe is telling. Rush Limbaugh doesn’t fault him for saying he’s not concerned with the very poor. (Who hasn’t lapsed into imprudent candor from time to time?) No, Limbaugh’s upset because Romney said he’d fix the safety net if it needed fixing, when he should have said he’d tear it up and get the government out of the way so the poor could find jobs.
John McCormack, who says the line "may be the most idiotic thing a politician has ever said," elaborates on Boudway's point:
A candidate can say he's "focused" on the middle class without saying he's "not concerned" about the very poor, just as a candidate can say he's "focused" on the economy without saying he's "not concerned" about national security or even less vital issues like education. But Romney's remark isn't merely tone-deaf, it's also un-conservative. The standard conservative argument is that a conservative economic agenda will help everyone. For the poor, that means getting as many as possible back on their feet and working rather than languishing as wards of the welfare state. … Had Mitt Romney picked up his conservatism sooner, perhaps he would know these arguments by heart.
Cohn says the real problem with the rhetoric is what is says about Romney's policies:
[They] would require cuts that go well beyond any realistic expectation of savings from efficiency. As noted here and by the Center on Budget, there's simply no way to take that much money out of social services, in such a short time span, without reducing the assistance that people get and very much need.
Ezra Klein piles on:
Romney's tax policy, described simply, is to extend the Bush tax cuts and, then on top of that, sharply cut taxes on corporations, the wealthy, and upper-middle class investors, while letting a set of tax breaks that help the poor expire. The result, according to the Tax Policy Center, would be a $69 tax cut for the average individual in the bottom 20 percent and a $164,000 tax cut for the average individual in the top one percent. And Romney would pay for this through unspecified cuts to domestic programs. Since domestic programs mostly go to the poor and seniors, the regressive tax cuts would be regressively financed.
The Dish 