The REAL Mittens Showed Up... Or Did He?

Ever since Mother Jones' fateful unveiling of Mitt Romney's 47/53 opinion from a private fund raiser, there has been much talk across the journobloggingtalkinghead-o-sphere about whether we've FINALLY seen the real Mitt Romney. Depending on who you were reading, these opinions have taking both good and bad connotations. Personally, in your humble bloggers opinion (IYHBO?), I agree that it is impossible to pin down the REAL Mitt Romney politically and still think that this WAS the real Willard.

Wah, wah, wwwaahhhhh, you say? Well, I do not necessarily believe that the talk revealed much of anything about his political beliefs and that he would be anything to anyone to get elected POTUS. At the same time, from my long experience having dealings with self-entitled douchers, it fits a pattern where, at each turn, Romney peels a layer to further reveal his self-entitled doucher core. The first instance of this was revealed when it came out that he was the ring leader of a group that harassed a fellow student by pinning him down and cutting his hair. Many cried homophobe when this was revealed, but it sort of just seemed like the seedling of a self-entitled prep school doucher (of course, the most common of all douchers). This trend has continued with his absolute refusal to release any tax returns outside of the two years he already has, despite requiring his VP candidates to give him 10 years of tax returns, essentially telling the American public to just trust him on this. Self-entitled douchers who think their deserved presidency is an essential fait accompli do NOT show the general public anything more than what they want to. Facts. In his mind it is probably unfathomable that he would not be President considering that the markets would rise upon his election.

The truly indicative phrase in Governor Romney's talk at the fundraiser, however, was not about the 47% of the electorate who will never vote for him. Do no misunderstand me. That little tidbit was certainly damaging and the coup de grace of calling them too lazy to rise up was horrible. But to really get into the mind of Mitt Romney (the self-entitled doucher) look no further than these words:

By the way, both my dad and Ann's dad did quite well in their life, but when they came to the end of their lives, and, and passed along inheritances to Ann and to me, we both decided to give it all away. So, I had inherited nothing. Everything that Ann and I have we earned the old-fashioned way, and that's by hard work and…[applause] I see that—

I say that because there's the percent that's, "Oh, you were born with a silver spoon," you know, "You never had to earn anything," and so forth. And, and frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you could have, which is to get born in America. I'll tell ya, there is—95 percent of life is set up for you if you're born in this country.  

These are the words on a man who was born on third base but continues to suffer from the misperception that he hit a triple. Or, to be fair to a man who did work hard to get where he is but still had a TON of help and advantages along the way, the words of a man who hit a blooper for a single and then got to third thanks to a series of unforced errors. Though it IS fantastic that he did very well for himself in private equity and gave away any money left to his family from both sets of parents, he still does not recognize that he was still born with a silver spoon and all the built-in advantages that infers. This idea was further reflected in Ann Romney's admittedly great RNC speech where she talks about their struggles living in Boston while Mitt pursued his graduate degrees while leaving out the fact that they were living off of a vast, and bequeathed, stock portfolio that most people couldn't dream of.

Though clearly not the same level of megalomaniac, Romney's self-perception reminds me of figures like James Dolan or Woody Johnson (sorry about the NY sports team references but they are the only examples I can bring to mind of this phenomenon, since they are the co-banes of my existence; pun not intended) who go about doing whatever they want, infuriating their fan base, because they think they deserve it.

Anyway, long story short, Governor Romney probably does not hold disdain for 47% of the voting public. I doubt that he really thinks about 90% of the voting public at all. He's just a self-entitled giant doucher, surrounded by people of his ilk, who felt comfortable to let out his dawgs contained douchiness. I think his own self-entitlement matter a lot more in that talk than any other entitlement that he addressed.


IMAGE: Mittens goes for the full Boehner at the Univision Forum from miamiherald.com