It's not merely that he said this. It's not the ugly history and pointless division this conjures. It's not even that what he said was demonstrably false. And it's not totally about whether or not he believes it (though that's fun to muse on for a bit... and he probably does).
It's that this is what the base believes. Republicans can strive to separate themselves from it, but this is the trajectory the party has been on since Obama became president; hurdling wildly across the cosmos until it collides into a larger force. There remains hope on the saner right that that collision will come soon (perhaps in the form of an Obama reelection in spite of the efforts of countless yammering, semi-conscious, craggy-faced hyper-partisans). I tend to doubt it. Until Republicans have someone who can publicly dismiss Limbaugh and all the other braying, intellectual hacks without getting castrated and exiled from the "movement," that will always remain their own beautiful dream.
And now Mittens, already an inept campaigner, is caught up in it, as he was always going to be. Because for all the talk of his putative moderation, the standard-bearer of this Republican Party was always going to have to, well, bear this standard. Romney was always going to have to go through those motions to buy his party's clearance to run in their name. And then, governing in their name, he'd have to keep it up; Congress is still going to have the pungent stink of the Tea Party on it, remember? He wants the presidency. It's his birthright.
So when he's at a closed-door fundraiser, hot off surviving the primaries, and these people are looking for the right foreplay buzzwords to make them spread their pocketbooks, what was he going to do? Reveal that the man from Bain was alive and well and all too happy to reduce the American public into makers and takers, men and leeches? Or walk away in the middle of the question?
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