Weigel

The Full Romney: Hey, Man, Stick Up for Being Rich!

Mother Jones has released every second of the Romney fundraising video leaked by James Carter IV. The amazing thing about this new move: Mitt Romney called for the (avowedly liberal, investigative) magazine to do it. Why? That’s a great question. Nothing in the new video makes Romney look any better.

Other people are focusing on Romney’s unvarnished foreign policy musings, but I’m interested just as much in the donors. These aren’t sans cullottes puttering around before a Sarah Palin speech starts. They’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars to talk to Romney. And their message is exactly the message of the base and National Review.

“Why don’t you stick up for yourself?” asks one donor. “To me, you should be so proud of your wealth. That’s what we all aspire to. We kill ourselves. We don’t work 9 to 5.” He wants a defense of the Bain record. “Why is bad to kill yourself [with work] and why is it bad to cut 30 jobs out of 300?”

Romney’s answer: Heck, I’ve been trying. “The thing I find most disappointing about this president is his attack of one America against another America.”