Smasharoo wrote:
You don't think a sound byte with " I don't care about the Poor" attached to it isn't going to hurt in November?
Is this your first election or something? Of course it won't matter in November. Here are a few reasons why:
You missed one: There isn't actually a sound bite of him saying that. You'd have to rely on either the actual sound bite (which doesn't have as much weight), or reporters talking about it in a "remember when Romney said ...?" way. Which also isn't going to reach or affect most voters. Most voters do not follow politics. They don't watch cable news. They don't listen to talk radio. Most voters know only what they see in the blurbs of news they get while watching their favorite TV shows, or see on paid advertising while watching the same.
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Voters don't worry about the poor, they worry about themselves. "I think we should take money and power from everyone else and give it to people like you" is the only political message that matters to voters. This is no way interferes with Romney attempting to deliver that message.
I'd argue that liberals appeal to that side of people, while conservatives appeal to the opposite, but that's more of a philosophical difference. The conservative who believes in lowering taxes even for people richer than himself isn't doing it just out of altruism. He also believes that he benefits from this as well (in a variety of ways). You are correct though that the liberal argument is purely about telling people to vote directly for their own personal self interest. It's why the argument about raising taxes on "the rich" works so well. Most voters aren't rich.
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It's still *at least* 6 months away from anything any candidate says or does mattering...at all.
While I agree in this specific case, I think that's more wishful thinking on your part. Same with your "GOP needs to hope for higher unemployment" bit earlier. It's about what you hope the GOP does, not about what would actually be the better choice for them to do. The reality is that the left uses a constant repetitive message to affect people's opinions. The specifics don't matter, of course, but the general feel of what is said and how that affects perceptions of candidates in a race absolutely does.
They wont parrot the line Romney said, but they will play on the perception that is created by those things. And you can bet that over the next 6 months, the liberal media will not stop finding every way they can to remind the public over and over that Romney is wealthy and doesn't like poor people. And he eats puppies!