This isn’t likely to hurt Mitt much, really.
I mean, I’d love to be wrong, and see him lose 90-10 instead of 60-40 like he probably will, but come on.
This is what Republicans basically think.
Everybody but them is getting away with something.
Everybody but them is getting some kind of special government help to succeed.
Everybody but them has unearned happiness, undeserved prosperity, and suspect advantages.
They don’t see themselves when Mitt talks about people who don’t pay income taxes, even if they don’t pay income taxes because they’re old, or have kids, or don’t make enough money. They don’t see themselves as beneficiaries of government help, even if they are.
These are the 27 percenters and probably another 10 percent for good measure. Government is something other people benefit from. Black people, mostly, and lazy people, and immigrants. Not them.
They’ve been told this for years and years and years, basically without having to ever once confront an opinion to the contrary, and it’s so ingrained in them you can hold up their tax returns and show them on the goddamn forms what government benefits they received and they’ll still spout this at you:
Because THAT’S NOT THEM.
And they are voting for Mitt Romney the way they voted for John McCain and George W. Bush and Saint Ronnie Reagan and every other Republican critter who ever ran for office on making you feel like you were at least better than somebody. They are voting out of a staggering, bullying desperation to keep kicking the weaker kid, even if the weaker kid is their reflection in a mirror.
They don’t see themselves as part of a system. They see themselves as the victims of it. That Mitt secretly holds them in contempt doesn’t matter. They don’t know who they are, so they assume he’s kicking somebody else.
A.