So Bain pays you $100,000 to do nothing?

Unlike Chris and many other savvy observers, I’m not convinced Mitt Romney went to the NAACP convention to be booed.

The Romney campaign reportedly bused in supporters and Mitt couched his speech with a pained attempt to reach out to the audience by leaning on his father’s civil rights record and some God talk. No doubt he was definitely sending a message to his base by being abrasive and dogmatic about his agenda. But that’s Mitt only option.

This is a man who is constantly afraid of losing his base. He knows that he was pretending to be a pro-choice progressive as recently as 2 ½ national elections ago—well after the debut of TV’s 2 ½ Men—and he’s constantly petrified that the radicalized diehards in the GOP will turn on him in a minute. And he’s right. They would.

Mitt is dangerous because he always has to overreact to keep his title as “The Most Severely Conservative Man in the World.” This is why I’m certain his presidency—it hurts just to type those words!—would be more extreme than even Rick Santorum’s would be. This is why he would have to spend every waking moment avoiding a primary challenge for 2016 and gutting ObamaCare.

Nevertheless, what Mitt said after the NAACP speech is reprehensible and a perfect example of how strained the GOP view of reality has become:

“Remind them of this: if they want more stuff from government, tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff.”

Here is Mitt Romney, a man who wants us to believe he received at least $100,000 a year from Bain Capital for 3 years for doing nothing, assuming that African Americans want MORE free stuff.

Forget the legacy of slavery, in which millions of slaves provided “free stuff” for centuries. Forget that our government spent billions propping up financiers like Mitt Romney. Forget that our government still provides nearly free loans to bankers while regular citizens often pay usurious rates. Forget that we give oil companies billions in subsidies they don’t need and pay defense contractors billions to build defense systems we don’t need.

When did we become a country where the millionaires are jealous of the people on food stamps? A country that thinks teachers and fire fighters are sucking us dry? A country that thinks the richest who are paying some of the lowest taxes in 80 years are the ones being beaten up?

I don’t think living through poverty is a virtue but when someone like Mitt Romney who was born well off makes such a certifiably inane statement, I’m assuming he missed some essential part of brain development. He has no idea what it’s like to struggle. No idea how humiliating it can be to have no option but to accept charity. No idea what it means that people who denied the vote until the 1960s are now being forced to pay a new form of a poll tax to get it back.

The freedom the far right seems to crave more and more is a freedom from reality, a freedom from consequence and responsibility. And if they win this year selling these insulting bromides, they’re going to have Mitt on a string and all the free stuff from the government they could ever want.

[CC image by DonkeyHotey]